Chelsea vs Liverpool LIVE: FA Cup final build-up, team news, line-ups and more today

Chelsea will be wearing their yellow second strip when they take on Liverpool at Wembley in this season’s FA Cup final and it isn’t the first time they’ve worn that colour in a cup final.

In fact, this will be the third time the Blues have worn yellow in an FA Cup final and the sixth time in a final overall. They donned the yellow kit in the 2009 FA Cup final and had yellow shirts for the second leg of the 1965 League Cup final.

The distinctive yellow socks and stripes on the shorts of the 1970s era made appearances in the 1970 FA Cup final replay, the 1972 League Cup final and both games of the replayed 1971 European Cup Winners’ Cup final.

Why does it matter?

The colour yellow has been associated with several firsts for the club, they were wearing it the first time they ever triumphed in the FA Cup, the League Cup and the Cup Winners’ Cup with the latter being Chelsea’s maiden European trophy.

Will it prove lucky for Thomas Tuchel’s men today?

The FA Cup is the world’s longest-running knockout football competition and is celebrating it’s 150th anniversary this year having started in the 1871-72 season although this game is only the 141st edition of the final.

The destination of the Cup will be decided on the day and teams will be able to name nine substitutes and make five substitutions, with a sixth allowed if it goes to extra time.

This is the first time that the same teams have met in the both the EFL Cup and FA Cup finals in the same season since Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday did so in 1993.

On the 27th February, Liverpool won a penalty shootout against Thomas Tuchel’s men to secure the EFL Cup and today’s final will be the 10th time Liverpool and Chelsea have met in three seasons.

Six Premier League meetings in that time have resulted in three wins for Klopp’s side, one victory for the Blues and two draws. But, the last time the teams met in the FA Cup Chelsea won 2-0 in March 2020 at the fifth-round stage.

Liverpool are chasing an unprecedented quadruple this season after reaching the Champions League final, while they are three points behind leaders Manchester City in the Premier League with two games to go.

The beat Liverpool beat Chelsea in the Carabao Cup final in February and face Thomas Tuchel’s men in the FA Cup final later today.

Eight-time FA Cup winners Chelsea are appearing in the final for the third successive season - and fifth in six seasons - after finishing runners-up to Arsenal in 2020 and Leicester in 2021.

Liverpool are appearing in their first final since 2012, when they lost 2-1 to Chelsea. The Blues have won the competition five times since the Reds last lifted the FA Cup in 2006.

It is the first FA Cup final to be played in front of a capacity crowd at Wembley since Manchester City beat Watford 6-0 in 2019 watched by 85,854 fans.

Coronavirus restrictions meant the 2020 final between Arsenal and Chelsea was played behind closed doors while a reduced crowd of 20,000 watched last season’s final between Leicester and Chelsea.

Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel also has some decisions to make regarding his midfield. Mateo Kovacic and N’Golo Kante both trained on Friday afternoon after missing recent matches for the Blues through injury.

Kovacic sustained a knock against Leeds United on Wednesday and Kante has missed Chelsea’s last three matches.

“We will try it today actually, which is pretty surprising news that we are even in the situation where we can try it.” Tuchel said about Kovacic returning to training . “Mateo wants to try it and the medical department gave the green light to try it.

“The ‘advantage’ is that the ligament is anyway torn from the last incident so there is no new injury, but heavy pain and heavily swollen. So we are hoping that maybe time is enough that he makes it but we will try it... in training and then we know more about it.”

He also gave an update on Kante saying: “He is also trying. He tried yesterday in team training and trained more or less everything. Hopefully now without a reaction.

“It was a reduced training session because of quite a long travel and fatigue of the travelling so it was not a high-intensity training session. We will also try today with him. He is keen to make it and hopefully he makes it to training 100 per cent, then we could plan with him for tomorrow [and that] would be crucial for us.”

Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ben Chilwell will definitely be absent for Chelsea and when asked whether he may gamble on Kovacic and Kante if they were not deemed to be 100 per cent fit Tuchel replied:

“It’s the moment to take risks, yes.”

Liverpool will be without Fabinho for today’s FA Cup final after the Brazilian picked up a knock in their Premier League game against Aston Villa. Manager Jurgen Klopp is confident that the Reds have sufficient midfield options to cover Fabinho’s absence and is confident that the midfielder will be fit in time for the Champions League final later this month.

“[He] will definitely be back for the [Champions League] final, and for the Chelsea final and before, we will see, we don’t know.” said Klopp on Friday.

Thiago Alcantara, Jordan Henderson and Naby Keita are the other three midfielders to regularly take the field for Liverpool this season but Klopp has options with the likes of Harvey Elliott, Curtis Jones, James Milner and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain also in the squad.

The manager was asked whether these players can play a part in Liverpool’s run-in and he replied: “A very important part. They played all the time a very important part,

“These few minutes a week where we can really train, without these boys showing the attitude they showed the whole year we have no chance to deliver the performances we delivered. That’s absolutely 100 per cent true.

“We will see. We might play tomorrow 90 minutes, we might play 120 minutes, that will not change the kick-off time for the Southampton game. Depending on the result from [Manchester] City on Sunday then we go for something or not, or whatever.

“We will see that at Southampton but we need to be ready for that game and we have to make decisions then again. Yeah, enough options for the moment, the job is now to find the right one. That’s it.”

Other than Fabinho, Jurgen Klopp has a full squad to select from so expect a very strong XI to line-up against Chelsea this afternoon.

There aren’t too many similarities between the football of 1953 and now, but there’s something about Saturday that means Chelsea and Liverpool players might feel the way Nat Lofthouse did ahead of that most famous of FA Cup finals. With a capacity crowd returning to Wembley for the first time since 2019, Liverpool enjoying their first in a decade and many of these Chelsea players gracing their first non-pandemic final, they might well have the same sense of wonder Lofthouse did in 1953. The Bolton Wanderers hero had played at Wembley many times, but even he was struck by the uniqueness of the stage as he lined up in the tunnel that day.

“All you can see of the stadium is a small square of light some 20 or 30 yards ahead,” Lofthouse is quoted as saying in David Tossell’s book The Great English Final. “There will be a joke and a laugh but the tension is there. Then you start the long walk towards that square of light.”

Graeme Sharp felt the same in 1984. “The closer you’re getting to the top, the noisier it’s becoming,” the Everton FA Cup hero tells The Independent. “Then you come out of the tunnel into the open air, and it’s just unbelievable.” The immediate thought, Sharp says, is that “I’m in a game now.” Lofthouse described it as being “in another world”.

The truth is that it has been a different world for the FA Cup final for some time, one which doesn’t inspire the same awe. Rather than again lamenting that the competition has lost meaning as it reaches its 150th anniversary, though, it is for once worth reflecting on what that meaning has been for so much of the time. They are values that are all the more important to cherish amid Champions League changes, and two years when everyone has been forced apart.

As supporters return in full capacity for the first time in two years, the historical and cultural significance of the FA Cup final cannot be understated, writes Miguel Delaney, at a time when football’s communal values continue to be under threat

Speaking about the Premier League title race in which Manchester City are battling against Liverpool, City boss Pep Guardiola said ‘“everyone in the country” supports Liverpool’ and would prefer to see them win the league.

That race takes a break this weekend as the Reds face Chelsea in the FA Cup final and Blues manager Thomas Tuchel admitted he understands where Guardiola was coming from with his comments.

He spoke about how Jurgen Klopp is a master at gaining sympathy for his team whether it is during his time at Anfield or previously as manger of Borussia Dortmund in Germany

“Jurgen Klopp is the master of being the underdog,” said Tuchel as he considered Guardiola’s words about Liverpool. “He can talk you into Liverpool being an underdog against Villarreal and against Benfica, and that it is a miracle how they make it to even draw against them. He does it a lot of times and that’s part of where the sympathy comes from.

“There’s nothing to be jealous of from my side. Klopp is a fantastic guy and a funny guy, one of the very, very best coaches in the world. And that’s what he does.

“When he trained Dortmund, the whole country [of Germany] loved Dortmund so now he trains Liverpool, the whole country loves Liverpool and it’s a big, big credit to him.

“This is what you deal with when you play against them. It’s always like this, but it’s also the fun part. So if we are the bad guys, no problem. We don’t want to have the sympathy of the country today. We want to have the trophy.”

For the second time this season, Liverpool will face Chelsea in a domestic final at Wembley, with Jurgen Klopp’s side bidding to add the FA Cup to the Carabao Cup they won back in February.

The Liverpool boss spoke about the team’s run-in to the end of the season which feels like they play a final every few days as they look to clinch an unprecedented quadruple this term.

The next step in that goal is to win the FA Cup later today and Klopp spoke about the expectation leading up to the game saying:

“So, it’s a big expectation, to be honest. It is our first FA Cup final but we played two Carabao Cup finals – once we lost, once we won – so we have a little bit of a sense of the atmosphere, which is absolutely great.

“I loved the Carabao Cup final this year, it was an incredible game, it was against Chelsea and 120 minutes – madness! So, yeah, massive game coming up and you are right: final after final after final, but we make differences still. That’s a real final, there is no game coming after. So yeah, we are all really looking forward to it. It will be big.

“‘Second’ competitions like the Carabao Cup, I loved it so much, and now the FA Cup the same. That’s what I love most about it: that we really can say we are here, we arrived in the final and we used the full squad pretty much, and the extended squad if you want.

“Massive experience for the boys, for Kaide [Gordon], for Elijah [Dixon-Bonner], my God! I can remember his face when he came on and all these kind of things. It’s just great and the boys, the first-team players, they see it exactly the same. Always when you have this kind of journey it brings you closer together.

“We always [did] it but never for that long, to be honest. It started as a similar experience but ended earlier, so this year it is really special and it is a big one. It is our first one and we are a different kind of team than we were in the past.

“These boys are now really ready to go for the biggest prizes and the FA Cup is a massive prize. So, we will try to be the best version of ourselves and bring it home.”

Liverpool ended Manchester City’s hopes of a treble in another engaging encounter at Wembley, having drawn 2-2 in the league six days previously. Defender Ibrahima Konate headed home an early corner before Zack Steffen’s error saw Sadio Mane force home from close range and then beat City’s second-choice goalkeeper at his near post on the stroke of half-time. Jack Grealish scored two minutes into the second half but Bernardo Silva’s 90th-minute goal came too late to give City a chance of forcing extra-time.

Diogo Jota’s 78th-minute goal was enough to end Nottingham Forest’s valiant FA Cup run. The City Ground had been a graveyard for Premier League sides with Arsenal and Leicester both exiting at the hands of former Reds academy coach Steve Cooper’s exciting side. The match hinged on a three-minute spell preceding Jota’s close-range strike when Forest’s Philip Zinckernagel shot wide with only goalkeeper Alisson Becker to beat.