Villarreal star talks Champions League, working for Unai Emery and facing

On Sunday afternoon, Arnaut Danjuma sat on his sofa to watch the Merseyside derby. Villarreal didn’t have a game at the weekend due to the Copa del Rey final, so it gave the Dutch winger a perfect opportunity to watch Liverpool, the team he will face Wednesday in their Champions League semifinal, first leg.

To be clear, there was nothing Danjuma didn’t know already about Jurgen Klopp’s team: He’s one of those players who is a football fanatic in his free time as well. He just loves the game — loves playing it, watching it and talking about it, but the main reason he watches is to learn. Learn about his opponents, learn about what other forwards do, learn about how to get better and emulate other forwards. And, in doing so, how to get better himself.

“I watch everything,” he tells ESPN. “I am a fan to start with and because I want to become one of the best in the world, watching a lot of football will improve my skills. Watching can teach you a lot. I also do a lot of analysis on my own games. One hour every day, I watch clips of myself in games or training. I have a personal striker coach, Antonio Rodriguez, working with me. We scrutinise everything together.

“In modern football, it’s not just about your talent. It’s also about football intelligence and the amount of work you put in outside of the pitch. There is so much you can learn by just watching yourself back. And then, you also learn a lot by watching your opponents.”

So on Sunday, his full focus was on Liverpool: how they played, how they set up, their patterns of play, their movement. There’s a lot to be impressed with when it comes to Liverpool this season. However, it’s not the approach that Danjuma or Villarreal are taking.

“The best way of approaching this game is to approach it in the same as we did before,” he said. “We have beaten some European giants along the way already, which is already an achievement and we are all confident in our own ability. We should keep doing what we have been doing and believe in our own strategy.”

The “Yellow Submarine” will have the same mindset they had against Juventus and Bayern Munich in the two previous rounds. In both ties, they shocked everyone, not just by getting through but by the way they did it. Their journey so far in this competition has been exceptional. They finished second in a group with Manchester United, Young Boys and Atalanta, charging their way to the semifinals with huge victories away at Atalanta to qualify for the last-16, in Turin against Juventus to book their place in the quarterfinals, and at home against Bayern to defy all the odds over the two legs, eliminating the Bundesliga champions 2-1 on aggregate.

“Maybe the rest of the world didn’t expect us to get this far, but we have always been confident,” Danjuma said. “Our path to the semis was not easy, which makes it even better, but you don’t beat the teams we have beaten by coincidence, which is a good sign for us before facing Liverpool — another…