Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp on his unfinished business with the Europa League
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Article summary
"In my very first year, we qualified for the final and lost it," remembers the coach of his first Europa League season with Liverpool. "Now it's a test of will and we'd love to qualify again."
Article top media content
Article body
Jürgen Klopp announced that he would step down as Liverpool manager this summer, bringing the curtain down on a sensational nine-year period for the Reds, in which they have reached three UEFA Champions League finals (winning in 2018/19) and, in 2019/20, won their first English title in 30 years.
However, as he tells UEFA.com, the German coach has some unfinished business as the Reds battle to reach the final of this season's UEFA Europa League in Dublin. His side lost out to Sevilla in the final in his first season, and the 56-year-old would love to put that right in his last campaign at Anfield.
On the Europa League
Last year, for the most part of the season, we didn't think at all we could qualify for any kind of European football and we were over the moon about the fact that we could qualify for the Europa League. So we wanted to make it, from the first day, our competition. It's obviously a fantastic competition, historically and for us as well. In my very first year [at Liverpool], we qualified for the final and lost it [3-1 to Sevilla in 2016]. Now it's a test of will and we'd love to qualify again but for that we have, obviously, a few very important steps still to go.
[The 2015/16] Europa League gave me the opportunity to go back to [my previous club] Dortmund pretty early. We played an exceptional game there [drawing 1-1]. Divock Origi played probably the game of his life. Then Dortmund had to come here and the game was, until we played Barcelona a few years later [overturning a 3-0 deficit with a 4-0 win in the 2018/19 Champions League semi-finals], probably 'the' game. Very special and spectacular. The first time that we really realised properly what Anfield can do. Being [3-1] down properly and then having a comeback in the second half [to win 4-3] was super, super special. One of the best memories of my working life.
On the 2016 final against Sevilla
We had massive injury problems at that time. That was game No64 for us. An insane season. Hendo [Jordan Henderson] was injured, some others were injured. We couldn't line up our first XI. If you play a final, you should have the best players on the pitch. You see that quite frequently. We were unlucky and in the second half we were running out of fuel, and Sevilla, together with Unai Emery, the serial winner of the competition, turned it around.
We lost that game and it was not great. I'm not sure how everything would have turned out if we had won it. I don't think it would have been worse, but we kind of used it in a good way. We were nearly there, we didn't make the last step but we really had the feeling we would come back. We did that, obviously, with Champions League finals and stuff like this, but we never came back to the Europa League so the only chance we have is now.
On Liverpool's new arrivals this season
I think Macca [Alexis Mac Allister], everyone knew that he's obviously an outstanding player. Dom [Dominik Szoboszlai], obviously in Germany, of all young offensive players, was 'the' talent. Then we brought in Wataru Endō. We are extremely lucky that the transfer worked out because Wataru is a machine. He is keeping it all together and it's wonderful to see the dreams of the boys get fulfilled because if you would have asked Wataru where he wanted to play one day he probably would have said, ten years ago, the Premier League.
On how he likes his sides to play
We are a very offensive-oriented team, but I'm very much a maniac when we are talking about defensive organisation. That's what it all starts with but we only want to be perfectly-organised, perfectly protected, [so] that we can feel completely free for all the offensive stuff. I don't mention counter-pressing 25 times a day because I like the word. It's because it's the best way to win the ball back as quickly as possible and you can be in possession again but it's, obviously, a defensive idea.
If you are the football team of Liverpool, you have to create, you have to be spectacular in moments, to give to people what they give [to us]: everything. That's what we try and it leads, in an ideal world, to all these goals.
