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a team who were actually a little bit better.

“Now Sevilla are a really good side but they are not better than we are. We are both there and both deserve it. But it is not like Sevilla are up there and we are here [Klopp puts one hand up high, the other low] and we have to bring them back down with some tactical movements.

“No. If we play our best, it is quite difficult for each team in this moment to play against us, especially to beat us. I’m not sure if I am a winner, but I want to win.”

There is no expectation from Klopp, just a realisation that the opportunity stretching out in front of Liverpool to claim a ninth European trophy tonight should not go to waste.

Victory in Basle’s compact St Jakob-Park feels like it would represent a huge leap forward towards the restoration of a club who see star quality in the man with the dark-rimmed glasses on the touchline and a group of players eager to please.

It would only be Liverpool’s second piece of silverware in a decade after Kenny Dalglish’s League Cup success in 2012, while providing something tangible for the strides made by the likes of Dejan Lovren and Adam Lallana to name but two previously viewed with suspicion but now 90 minutes from being feted.

Klopp has been loyal to his previous clubs, staying seven years at each, and recognises it would not be the final step but the first.

“It is important, but if someone thinks if we win the final then everything will be wonderful in the future...come on,” he said. “It is only one title, next year we have to go on.

“If somebody thinks, ‘Is it our only chance in life and if we don’t take it then everything will be rubbish afterwards?’ then what can I say? If you make the pressure that big, how can you move in a game? How can you walk? It is hard to breathe.

“It doesn’t work like this. If you want to get to the highest level you need to be ready to fall really deep.

“If you are not ready for this, you have no chance to get the really special things and this is special for us. It is a big opportunity.

“It is a big chance but it is not the last chance in our life. We are only going to Basle to win this trophy. The bad news is that Sevilla will have quite the same plan. That is football, let’s go.”

That sense of perspective comes from a career forever treading the tightrope between triumph and despair. In many ways it should have been expected that Liverpool’s season would go to the wire. It is what Klopp does: starting at Mainz where he stayed up on the final day in 2001, missed out on promotion to the Bundesliga twice in the following seasons before making it third time lucky.

In the early years at Dortmund there was a place in Europe to secure at the death and then, if the title had already been won, a final to savour.

“If you look at my career until now you can say that each season was very exciting until the last match since I’m a manager,” he said. “I stayed in