Vinicius Jr’s goal just before the hour mark settled Saturday’s showpiece at Stade de France, with Real Madrid indebted to a decisive goalkeeping performance by Thibaut Courtois.
Courtois. Beast mode & more 🤖#UCLfinal pic.twitter.com/M80k10yuuj
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) May 28, 2022
🇧🇷 Vinícius Júnior writes his name into history 🙌#UCLfinal pic.twitter.com/0hGh9JFeUO
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) May 28, 2022
Courtois made several superb saves throughout the evening.
Defeat in Paris means Liverpool end the campaign having won the Emirates FA Cup and Carabao Cup and finished as runners-up in both the Premier League and Champions League.
Jurgen Klopp spoke about Liverpool’s performance at at Stade de France,he said ,”After the game when I saw the stats it was 50-50 possession. We had a lot more shots, a lot more shots on target, but the most decisive stat is absolutely on Madrid’s side. Just to make sure that nobody thinks I wouldn’t congratulate Real Madrid, I do that now but I [also] congratulated everybody present and involved outside personally. They scored a goal, we didn’t, that’s the easiest explanation in the world of football and it’s hard, harsh to get anyway, [but we] respect that of course. When the goalkeeper is Man of the Match then something is going wrong for the other team, so we had I think three really big chances where Courtois made incredible saves. I would have loved to have had a few more of this calibre.
In the last third we could have done better, a pass here, the crosses, especially towards the end of the game, towards Courtois made not too much sense. We had the best phase probably after they scored the 1-0, then we played immediately exactly in the spaces we had to play. In the first half there were good moments, when we found Sadio, next left to right from Casemiro, their centre-halves stayed deep, Sad could turn, arrived in the box. That was good. We wanted to play a bit more in their formation in the second half then around their formation. The problem is when you play against Real Madrid and they defend that deep, the counter-attacking threat they are is immense. You cannot ignore that. I saw us doing really a lot of good things, to be honest, but it was not enough and we take that.
Jurgen Klopp on what was the key between winning and losing ,he said,”They scored and we didn’t. That is now easy to say. We could have played better football but Madrid could have played better football but they didn’t and they won anyway. Madrid played already a lot of games better, we can now say they played exactly like they have to, fine, that’s how you play a final. If we didn’t want the ball then we would have both played in our halves and that is not possible. Again, the stats is 50-50 possession so it was not that they never had the ball, absolutely, but apart from the goal they didn’t have a shot on target – that is a good sign for my team. We had nine shots on target, that is really a good number, but the problem is they scored with one shot and we didn’t score with nine. That’s the difference between losing and winning.
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Champions League Liverpool Real Madrid Jurgen Klopp Football Sports Europe