Second-half goals from Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane at Puskas Arena secured an advantage for the Reds in their last-16 tie with the Bundesliga side.
The result represented an impressive response to an uncharacteristic run of three consecutive Premier League defeats for Klopp’s men and gives them control of the clash with Leipzig ahead of the second meeting on March 10.
At his post-match press conference, the manager explained why his team’s display was especially commendable against such quality opposition, and more.
Read a summary of his chat with the media below…
On how pleased he was with the players tonight…
Very – very pleased with the performance obviously. It led to a result, I think to a deserved result. It was a game where you don’t expect big advantages for one or the other team because of the nature of both teams, because both are really well organised, both defend really well, both are used to causing the opposition side problems in the way they want to build the game. I thought that worked out slightly better for us tonight. I know Leipzig pretty well and I know how dominant they can be football-wise, how overwhelming they can be in a game from a physical point of view. That’s what we had to deal with tonight and the boys played a really good game – a really good game. We had a day less to prepare, which we have spoken a lot about, it’s a tricky thing. But we did well, played a good game, deserved the win I think, and forced them to make mistakes with a good formation, with a good attitude, in other phases we played good football. So, yeah, I’m happy with the performance.
On Ozan Kabak’s performance…
After such a long time with Schalke, he was new to that and I think his attitude was good. Very happy with his performance. And Hendo can play the position perfectly. It’s not that Leipzig didn’t have a chance, Ali also had to intervene in two or three things, but that’s normal. Overall, I can say I’m very pleased with the whole performance.
On the vital save Alisson Becker made from Christopher Nkunku early in the second half and whether it was a big moment for him personally…
Definitely. But, to be honest, he had big moments in the Leicester game – he had brilliant saves. But of course it helps. A clean sheet, you can imagine Ali will sleep really well on the plane on the way home. How always, he helped us a lot.
On his impressions of Puskas Arena and Budapest…
Thank you for asking. Brilliant, really brilliant, it’s a great stadium. Inside, it looks a little bit like the Atletico Madrid stadium, which felt good for us, to be honest. It’s a great stadium, the pitch was great. I’m pretty sure it’s a proper football stadium so if this one is sold out in the future that will create some atmosphere. Thank you very much, Budapest, for having us. We don’t take things like this for granted in these times. We did everything we could do to keep everybody as safe as possible and I’m pretty sure that worked out. So, thank you. It was really great. If we would have lost the game, the stadium was still great. No excuses!
On the resilience and mentality his team showed…
We are not children anymore, that we now think, ‘OK, now we won that game and now everything is fine again.’ For me, it’s much more important that we played again good football, again. Not the first time in the last few weeks. I understand that and respect that 100 per cent that nobody is really happy with the results, that’s clear. But the football we played, dominating City in a way that happened not often; same against Leicester that happened not often. Stuff like this, we should not forget that. But tonight the result was there – we kept a clean sheet, we scored two goals, we forced the opponent to make the mistakes we made pretty much in the last few weeks, that’s clear. Worked really hard; the boys did again top individual performances but especially how we really worked together and put all that stuff together.
Because if you would watch Leipzig more often, you would really know their game can look completely different to tonight. They cause you problems. We saw the line-up and we had no idea which system they would play. We had just no idea because with these players on the pitch they could have played six or seven different systems, and played them already. Not only they could, they played them in moments. And whatever they tried tonight, we had an answer. They had chances, yes, of course – that’s normal. But the majority of the time we really had good control in the game and that’s very important. It doesn’t happen a lot against Leipzig.