Fifth Champions League final in a row with a German coach
“Outstanding, tremendous”, that’s how it feels, said Klopp, who failed with Liverpool in the 2018 final at Real and won the handle pot in 2019. For the fourth time he is coach in the Champions League final, equaling the records of Alex Ferguson, Marcello Lippi and Carlo Ancelotti. “It feels like it’s the first time” said Klopp.
It will also be the fifth premier class final in a row involving a German coach. In addition to Klopp, Hansi Flick was with Bayern in 2020 (1-0 against Paris St Germain) and in 2021 Thomas Tuchel with the Chelsea FC (1-0 against Manchester City) there.
“Heroic Action” and “Football History”
Boulaye Dia (3rd minute) and Francis Coquelin (41st) had given Villarreal the lead, who had knocked Bayern out of the competition in the quarter-finals. “We just shot the long balls somewhere and tried to force it,” complained Klopp.
The Spanish newspaper “mark“, on the other hand, wrote of one “Heroic feat. What Villarreal did is football history. (…) The team won’t be in the final because Liverpool are better. That’s it, but nobody will forget the first half. Not even Klopp himself.”
Klopp on the “mentality monsters”
Klopp reported about his half-time speech in an interview with “Amazon Prime“: “A bit of a tactics board, a bit of an explanation of where we want to go.” The “stupid” thing about halftime is “she’s bad, the good thing is, she’s easy to improve”said Klopp. “And then we thought, let’s try that now that we’re there.”
The substitution of Luis Díaz, who scored in the 67th minute, paid off. Before that Fabinho (62nd), then Sadio Mané (75th) was successful for Liverpool. He told the boys before the game he wanted to read the headline: “The mentality monsters were in town”, said Klopp, who translated into Spanish not bad at all: “Mentalidad monstrous”.
Chance of quadruple
In the premier league Liverpool go up a point behind man city into the final phase of the season, in the FA cup-The final on May 14 in London is Chelsea FC with coach Thomas Tuchel. Liverpool have already won the League Cup this year – against Chelsea.
“The excitement is there, I don’t have to do much. We play every game that was possible on the schedule.”said Klopp. “We’ve gone through everything, we’re playing all the finals, there’s a reason nobody’s won the quadruple yet.”
Source: dpa/sid/red