Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool will face Real Madrid in Paris’ Stade de France on Saturday evening in their third appearance in Champions League final.
Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp on analysing Real Madrid’s run to the final ,he said ,”There are different aspects of analysis obviously. So now if we would only take the last 10 minutes of all the last knockout stages they had, then you would say they are pretty much unbeatable, clear, no chance. The comebacks they had are really special. But these games were all longer than only these last 10 minutes and obviously they had to come back in moments, that is like it is. When you remember the PSG game, there were a lot of chances PSG missed which they usually use, but Madrid kept the door open or PSG in this moment left the door open. One is, for sure, this team is full of experience. They know exactly how to approach a game, especially a final. We felt that harshly in the 2018 final that they had a massive advantage that night to us. That was clear. Since then we gained a lot of experience ourselves, which is very helpful.
The team, you can see in all situations that they are full of confidence in one-on-one situations with the ball, everybody is so calm on the ball, really relaxed here and there. The way they build up is very confident, technically highest level, not overly complicated but that’s good for them because football is not that complicated. They bring the right players in the right positions. In the end when they get up front, different opportunities – the speed from the wingers, the flexibility and the presence from Benzema, these kind of things. So, that’s pretty much what they do in the game. And then if they have to, they could now – three times – really strike back in a spectacular way. But these kind of things are not guaranteed, so it’s not that I have to mention it now constantly and say, ‘By the way, if we are not 4-0 up with 10 minutes to go then they will definitely score five goals.’ It’s not like this. It’s just clear they are able to do special stuff and that’s what we knew anyway.
An analysis is like this, my boys know how good they are if we let them do this, this and this. Then we have to show them what we can do [so] that they cannot show how good they are in this, this and this situation. Their finishing skills – not finishing in the sense of scoring goals but finishing games off – are obviously pretty impressive. It’s all clear. But we are not here by any kind of magic. It’s not that we are now, ‘Oh my God, how did we get in the Champions League final?’ We deserve this as well. My boys played a sensational group phase. I heard now, I didn’t know it, the first time an English team won all six games in a group stage, which is absolutely exceptional in the ‘group of death’ how you probably named it as well. And then we had hard moments to overcome, the away games were absolutely exceptional. Everybody speaks – and rightly so – about the European nights at Anfield but this year we saw that the knockout stages [were] away and brought it over the line at home somehow. That’s pretty special as well. That just shows we, as well, have different ways to win football games.
I really want to focus on us, with all respect to Real Madrid and Carlo Ancelotti. I know how good they are. But I cannot go into the game and just constantly talk and think about Real Madrid in the last 10 minutes, or five minutes, two minutes. If that would be our opponent for 90 minutes, that will be really tricky. But, thank God, there are 88 more minutes.
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Champions League Liverpool Real Madrid Jurgen Klopp Football Sports Europe