Liverpool welcome Villarreal to Anfield on Thursday night, looking to overturn a 1-0 defeat in the first leg of their Europa League semi-final and secure a place in the final on May 18.
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“They [Villarreal] scored a goal in the last minute so if they hadn’t celebrated something would have been really wrong”, the German told reporters before the match.
The Spanish club arrive at Anfield for the Europa League semi-final with a 1-0 lead from the first leg courtesy of a last-minute victor, which sparked jubilation among the home squad and fans.
“The only thing I thought in this moment was “half-time”.
He said: “This game is a big opportunity in a hard season for Liverpool”. They face Watford, Chelsea and West Brom in the league and all three of these are tricky fixtures that can leave Liverpool in an embarrassing position come the end of the season.
“Villarreal are a ideal counter-attacking team but we need to believe in ourselves”.
‘This group of players needs to be proud of what they have achieved as we are already qualified for the Champions League, ‘ he added.
“If we can create with our game a similar atmosphere as Dortmund then it will be much more hard for Villarreal than they imagine in this moment”.
“My goal is to come back as soon as possible and I just want to go back on the pitch”.
“We will suffer at moments in the game, we will find it tough but we can cause them trouble. It is most special”, he said of the fans’ support.
“He was not ignoring the fans, I went in immediately also, I hope our fans know how close we are to them”, Klopp said.
“These moments when you really know we’re all together”.
“In October, Liverpool changed the manager”.
Liverpool fans are once again preparing to welcome the team coach into Anfield by meeting on the Anfield Road before kick off.
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“The performance [was not good enough], effort was not the problem, we played like we played, we could have played much better with this line-up but we didn’t”.
