Jürgen Klopp said Liverpool’s refusal not to lose faith was rewarded for taking an important step towards the Champions League quarter-finals with a 2-0 win over RB Leipzig. Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané took advantage of poor defensive errors by last season’s semi-finalists to give Liverpool an impressive lead in the rearrangement in Budapest.
Victory ended a run of three consecutive defeats for the Premier League champions, and Klopp praised the mentality of his players for trusting in their style despite the recent downturn.
The Liverpool manager said: ‘We are no longer children. We do not think one wins and everything is right. It was more important to me again, and I mean again: we played good football. We’ve been doing this a lot over the last few weeks, but nobody’s really happy with the results.
‘Obviously, but the football we played – which dominates (Manchester) City in a way that does not happen often, the same against Leicester, we must not forget that – but tonight the result was with us. We kept clean sheet, we scored two goals, we forced the opponent to make the mistakes we made over the last few weeks, worked very hard, individual achievements, but especially how we worked to put all those things together make.
‘If you watch Leipzig more often, you would know that their game may look completely different than tonight. This is causing problems for you. We saw the series and had no idea what system they would be playing. They can play six systems. They have chances, of course, this is normal, but we had good control most of the game, and that’s very important. But it does not happen much against Leipzig. ”
Klopp was delighted with the return to goal by goalkeeper Alisson, who made a fine save from Christopher Nkunku early in the second half. “He also had great moments in the Leicester game, he saved brilliantly in the game, but that will obviously help,” he said. A clean sheet and Ali will sleep quite nicely in the plane on the way home. Ali helped us a lot. ”
Klopp also claimed that it was a show that many outside the club suspect is outside the champions in their current form: I’m pretty sure people thought ‘It would be really difficult for Liverpool’. It was hard, but we did it. I do not believe in motivating too much in this way, yes, we can use it from time to time, but we do not have enough contact with the outside world to really know how many people want us to fail.
‘But it’s clear: Liverpool play Leipzig; the chances we had of winning the match, people’s perception dropped minute by minute. It is good. I probably would have said the same thing if I had not been so close to the team. But the boys responded in a very good way, and I’m very happy about that. ‘