Jurgen Klopp has explained the half-time team talk that helped Liverpool reach the Champions League final, saying his players needed to ‘get their mind right’ to turn it around at Villarreal.
Jurgen Klopp said: “I told them to play better than the first! Usually like this, when we don’t find a way into the game, we try to find a situation at half-time which we can show the players that explains it. I told [the analysis team] to find one situation of how we did it right in the first half and [assistant manager] Pete Krawietz said he couldn’t find any. It was clear, the start was difficult for us to take. We were impressed by that and we had no real build up. We didn’t play in the right spaces and all of a sudden we were just kicking long balls and trying to force it. We had a bit of a moment when we were kind of dangerous but never enough to get some momentum. We explained to the boys what we had to do to get stronger and move smarter. In the first half we didn’t move enough and couldn’t find the half-spaces in midfield. We were too fixed, there was no flexibility so we had to mix that up to cause them problems. We played into their hands, so that is what we had to do to change. It was tough for Villarreal. They were man marking in moments, they took a lot of risk but the physical aspect we didn’t mention. So no, I cannot tell you exactly what I said at half time because I have forgotten already but I was talking about playing football and showing up and being brave. It was a football problem and it could only be fixed by a football solution if you can get your mind right, because after the first three minutes our mind wasn’t right. We were too rushed, you have to play your own football and in the second half we did that.”
