Champions League Final 2018: Head-to-Head Record Before Real Madrid vs Liverpool

The 2018 FIFA World Cup is on the horizon, but the biggest club football match of the season is still to be played.

Real Madrid and Liverpool will go head-to-head in the 2018 UEFA Champions League final at Kiev's NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium on Saturday.

Both teams are serial winners of the competition. The Reds are going for their sixth title—and first since 2005—while Real could claim the famous trophy for the third successive year and 13th time overall.

In their previous five meetings in the competition, Liverpool have prevailed three times and Real twice.

The Merseyside giants beat Los Blancos 1-0 in the 1981 European Cup final in Paris, with Alan Kennedy netting the only goal of the game.

At the last-16 stage of the 2008-09 tournament, Liverpool beat Real 1-0 at the Santiago Bernabeu before Fernando Torres inspired a 4-0 victory in their home leg at Anfield.

The pair's most recent meetings were in the group stage of the 2014-15 tournament, when Real prevailed 3-0 on Merseyside and 1-0 at home.

Liverpool have lit up this year's tournament, playing possibly the best football of any side and setting goalscoring records, per WhoScored.com:

Real, meanwhile, were largely comfortable in the group stage and first knockout round, but they showed vulnerabilities against Juventus in the quarters and Bayern Munich in the semis.

The fact is, though, Zinedine Zidane's side made it through against both those teams despite not playing their best.

And that could be what sways the match on Saturday. Real know how to get the job done.

Los Blancos have won three of the past four Champions League finals, and the core of the side has stayed much the same throughout.

Liverpool had not made it out the group stage in almost a decade until this season, and their relative inexperience compared to Real's could be decisive.