Klopp: I’m responsible

Jurgen Klopp took responsibility for Liverpool’s Europa League Final defeat to Sevilla. ‘Even the start I wasn’t happy with…’

Liverpool took a first half lead through Daniel Sturridge but were pegged back seconds after the re-start and then lost to two Coke goals as Los Rojiblancos sealed a third straight Europa League success.

“Even the start I wasn’t happy with to be honest. We scored a wonderful goal, had our chances, a disallowed goal. 1-0 at half time is usually good,” Klopp recalled in a post-match interview with BT Sport.

“First ball, second half, of course it’s a knock. It’s not about football, it a second, when you’re not concentrating enough. The first goal isn’t the problem. It’s not good, that’s clear, but what happened then is a problem.

“We lost everything, faith in our style of play, we weren’t compact, didn’t defend well, we were nervous. That shows the elements aren’t as good as we hoped. We have to carry on, use this experience and I’m sure we’ll be stronger if we use it in the right way, but for tonight it’s disappointment and frustration.

“We’ve been together seven months and in a few moments it’s enough time and in other moments it isn’t enough time. It’s still that we’re surprised by our good things and then when we have the bad things it’s like that’s usual but that’s not the truth. We’ve had wonderful situations but tonight not enough. We couldn’t reach our level.

“It’s my job to help the boys not feel the pressure too much. There’s pressure inside and nobody could ignore it but we saw it in the game after the equaliser. It changed. I think there weren’t a lot of people who thought we could change it again. They got a lot of free kicks to run down the clock which is clever. The goals were too easy. We lost faith in the second half.

“I’m responsible for this performance. No criticism allowed to my side. I’ve spoken to the players already because tomorrow we split all over the world. Nobody in this stadium believed…I had a few moments I thought we could change it but that’s not enough.”

Tags Jurgen Klopp Liverpool
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