News Jurgen Klopp reveals tactical masterstroke that won Liverpool

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has explained the tactical masterstroke that helped them turnaround a UEFA Champions League tie in their favour over Villarreal on Tuesday evening.

The Premier League side seemed headed for the worst when they trailed 2-0 at half-time to the Spanish hosts in the semifinal second leg match.

However, Klopp showed his tactical acumen as he tweaked his tactics around to enable Sadio Mane, Luis Diaz and Fabinho score. 

Speaking to Liverpool FC website, Klopp said he told his team to be more fluid and find the spaces in the second half.

The start was obviously really difficult for us to take, we were obviously impressed by that,” the German said.

We had no real build-up, we didn’t play in the right spaces, all of a sudden we just kicked long balls and tried to force it. We had, kind of, dangers, but never enough to get a little bit of momentum. So we just explained to the boys where we have to play, what we have to do, where we have to be stronger and where we have to move smarter because obviously in the first half we didn’t move enough.

“We couldn’t find the midfielders in the half-space because they were not there, the front three were too fixed: Sadio left, Mo right and Diogo in the centre. There was no flexibility so we had to mix that up definitely, to cause them more problems. Because of their very man-orientated defending we played in their hands and that’s what we had to change.”

Liverpool proceeded to the final 5-2 on aggregate after having won the second leg 2-0.

Liverpool will now meet in the final either Real Madrid or Manchester City who are facing off in the other semifinal second leg contest on Wednesday evening.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *