Help Pool achieve the ‘impossible’ over Barca
arrived at the stadium to a haze of red smoke and a resounding chorus of chants.
Along with a deafening crowd, the manager’s pre-match team talk helped shaped Liverpool’s daring strategy.
Klopp recalled: “I said, ‘We have to play without two of the best strikers in the world. The world outside is saying it is not possible. And let’s be honest, it’s probably impossible. But because it’s you? Because it’s you, we have a chance.’
“I really believed that. It wasn’t about their technical ability as footballers. It was about who they were as human beings and everything they had overcome in life.
“The only thing that I added was, ‘If we fail, then let’s fail in the most beautiful way.’”
Barca arrived at Anfield convinced they would score, so much so that the club’s Twitter account declared “we’re going to get at least one.”
It took seven minutes for Origi’s opener to narrow the deficit. Henderson grabbed the ball, running back to the centre spot with it under one arm and galvanising the crowd with the other.
Liverpool had pulled a goal back going into the interval, but they lost Robertson to injury.
Henderson had spent all of half-time on a bike so he could play through the pain of a knee niggle.
An “angry” Wijnaldum replaced the left-back, pushing James Milner into the defensive role and Barca were more confident after the break.
That was until the substitute produced two goals in two minutes.
At 3-3, Liverpool had erased
Barca’s advantage and had them on the ropes. Then came “the smartest thing I ever saw football-wise” as per Klopp.
Trent Alexander-arnold won a corner on 78 minutes, placed the ball and shaped to take it before Xherdan Shaqiri requested responsibility for the set-piece.
The right-back obliged and began to motion away, before noticing Barca had briefly switched off.
Origi, lurking in the danger area, was alert to any opportunity and so Alexander-arnold swivelled back towards the ball sharply.
He delivered a cross for the striker to complete a barely believable comeback.
At the final whistle, Wijnaldum was engulfed in tears as the sound of ‘we shall not be moved’ filled the terraces.
Henderson, sprawled on the sideline, could not move and had to be helped to his feet by Joe Gomez.
Milner welled up as he embraced Klopp, while Alisson and Fabinho spent an age hugging in a cocktail of relief and disbelief.
The manager, constructor of these “absolute monsters of mentality,” conducted a stirring rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone with the staff and squad.
“I’ll never forget this for the rest of my life,” the German said, with the club going on to lift a sixth European Cup in Madrid and the first trophy of his tenure at Tottenham’s expense.
He reminded his players that the only reason Liverpool could achieve the unthinkable against Barcelona was because they have an unbeatable spirit.
Klopp had called it and, against all logic, they had delivered.