We look ahead to Tuesday’s UEFA Champions League game at Anfield with our Liverpool vs Real Madrid prediction and preview. Will the Reds repeat their win from last season?
Liverpool vs Real Madrid: The Key Stats
Liverpool are very narrow favourites to win, with the Opta supercomputer giving them just 1.5% more chance of a victory than Real Madrid (38.7% to 37.2%).
The Reds won the last meeting between these sides, but none of the eight prior to that.
Of the 10 players with 50+ goals in European Cup/UEFA Champions League history, Kylian Mbappé has the highest percentage scored in away matches.
The clash between Liverpool and Real Madrid should be one of the most enthralling games from Matchday 4 of the 2025-26 UEFA Champions League. Yet there is likely to be a lot of attention on a player who may not feature at all.
Trent Alexander-Arnold left his boyhood club for Spain in the summer. He has been an unused substitute in the last two matches after recovering from a hamstring injury, so could be involved here. The home crowd booed when he came off the bench for Liverpool against Arsenal in May, so he will surely experience similar if he plays in this game.
The right-back would become just the second Englishman to play against Liverpool in the European Cup/Champions League having previously played for them in the competition, after Larry Lloyd in 1978.
It must be a possibility that Alexander-Arnold plays some part. The three players Xabi Alonso will be without at Anfield are all defenders: David Alaba, Dani Carvajal and Antonio Rüdiger. Their injury absences haven’t harmed Madrid too badly, given they have won their last six matches in all competitions, conceding just two goals.
Real Madrid have also won their first three Champions League matches this season. On two of the previous four occasions they’ve started with four consecutive wins, they’ve lifted the trophy (2001-02 and 2023-24), reaching the semi-finals in the other two (2011-12 and 2014-15).
Liverpool 2-0 Aston Villa - Premier League November 2025
They will be up against a Liverpool side who enjoyed a morale-boosting 2-0 win over Aston Villa on Saturday night, ending a run of four consecutive Premier League defeats. It was interesting that nine of Arne Slot’s starting XI were part of last season’s title-winning side, as they made for a far more cohesive unit.
In the Champions League this season, Liverpool have won two of their three matches, including a resounding 5-1 win at Eintracht Frankfurt on MD3. They come into this game in 10th.
UCL table heading into MD4 2025-26
Will Slot be tempted to repeat his lineup from Aston Villa? As Alisson Becker, Jeremie Frimpong, Alexander Isak and Giovanni Leoni are all injured, there are unlikely to be too many changes to the Liverpool starting XI, though Curtis Jones returned to training on Monday.
The Reds have a very good record at Anfield in this phase of the competition. Liverpool have won 20 of their last 22 home Champions League group-stage games, including each of their last 12 in a row. However, three of their seven home group defeats have come versus Spanish sides, with one each against Barcelona, Valencia and Real Madrid.
Slot has also won 10 of his 13 Champions League matches as Liverpool manager and his team will have to defend very well if they are to make that 11 from 14. They have never beaten Real Madrid without keeping a clean sheet.
Giorgi Mamardashvili kept his first clean sheet for Liverpool against Villa, and will need to be at his best here. Madrid have had the most shots on target in the Champions League this season (37), having 10+ in all three games. Since 2003-04, the only team to do so in four matches in a row are Madrid themselves in the 2013-14 campaign, though Liverpool have only faced 10+ shots on target twice in that period, and never at Anfield.
That said, the visitors are unlikely to need to hit double figures with Kylian Mbappé in such good form. Of the 10 players with 50+ goals in the history of this competition, he has the highest percentage scored in away matches (53% – 32/60). The Frenchman netted a hat-trick in his previous away game in the competition (versus Kairat on MD2) and now has the joint-most away hat-tricks of any player in European Cup/Champions League history (three – level with Filippo Inzaghi).
This will be the eighth time that Liverpool and Real Madrid have met in the UEFA Champions League since the start of the 2017-18 season. Including all MD4 games this season, only two fixtures will have been played more often in the competition in this period: Manchester City versus Real Madrid (10) and Paris Saint-Germain vs Bayern Munich (9).
They say familiarity breeds contempt, but how much of it will be directed at Alexander-Arnold?
Liverpool vs Real Madrid Head-to-Head
Liverpool won their first match against Real Madrid in the 1981 European Cup final. They then knocked them out of the UEFA Champions League 5-0 on aggregate in 2009.
The balance of power swung firmly towards the Spanish giants after that, though. Madrid won seven and drew one of the next eight clashes, a run that included the finals of this competition in 2018 and 2022.
Liverpool won the last meeting, which came at Anfield in the league phase last season. Both sides missed a penalty as the home side won 2-0 thanks to goals from Alexis Mac Allister and Cody Gakpo, both of whom are likely to start on Tuesday.
Liverpool 2-0 Real Madrid - Champions League 2024-25
Liverpool vs Real Madrid Prediction
There won’t be many matches for which the prediction is as close as it is here.
Liverpool have the edge according to the Opta supercomputer, but only by a very small margin. Their chances of victory sit at 38.7%, while Real Madrid won in 37.2% of the 10,000 simulations of the game.
That leaves 24.1% for a draw, an outcome that has only occurred once in their 12 past meetings.
Liverpool vs Real Madrid prediction
Liverpool vs Real Madrid Predicted Lineups
Liverpool: Giorgi Mamardashvili, Conor Bradley, Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konaté, Milos Kerkez, Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexis Mac Allister, Cody Gakpo, Florian Wirtz, Mohamed Salah, Hugo Ekitiké.
Head Coach: Arne Slot
Real Madrid: Thibaut Courtois, Federico Valverde, Dean Huijsen, Éder Militão, Álvaro Carreras, Eduardo Camavinga, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Vinícius Júnior, Jude Bellingham, Arda Güler, Kylian Mbappé.
Head Coach: Xabi Alonso
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 15,000 domestic men’s and women’s football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Tuesday, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
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