Do not wreck this!
Klopp plea for peace at return leg in Italy
JURGEN KLOPP is worried by the possibility of violence ruining Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final and urged Rome’s authorities to be extra vigilant.
The two clubs could not have done any more in terms of promoting a message for peace since their first meeting, with the Serie A side wearing T-shirts in training yesterday in tribute to Sean Cox, the Liverpool fan who was assaulted and critically injured outside Anfield last Tuesday.
Liverpool have extensively briefed the 5,000 travelling supporters who have flown in to watch the game about what areas of Rome to avoid but Klopp has admitted he is anxious about flashpoints occurring outside the Stadio Olimpico.
Klopp said: ‘I would have a one-and-a-half hour speech if I thought that somebody would listen to it. The right people would listen to it: why not and why it is important to behave in a right way, but obviously that doesn’t work.
‘I really trust because I want to trust in police, and all the other forces who make these things. I really want to trust these people. For me, I prepare a football game and that makes it quite special because it is a semi-final.
‘But I cannot imagine that somebody goes there and plans something around the football game. I don’t know why they have these thoughts and why they want to express themselves in these moments and have these little or bigger fights. I have absolutely no tolerance for these things.
‘I really hope we are already over the mountain and people are a little bit more aware of what could happen and are responsible. If somebody (messes up), then it should be really massive, the punishment.’
Klopp (below) added: ‘It was a great gesture (the T-shirts). I really hope everyone around the game in this wonderful city, with good weather, all the people can walk to the stadium and look forward to a fantastic, intense, very important football game.’
Roma manager Eusebio Di Francesco backed up Klopp’s message, saying: ‘I’m afraid that rotten apples are everywhere in all sets of fans. Obviously, someone who does not belong to our true fans did something very, very wrong. My thoughts and prayers go with the family. ‘What I can assure you is that the base of Roma fans are really passionate. Unfortunately, hooligans are everywhere and you are familiar with that phenomenon. It’s a massive issue that is detrimental to the whole footballing world. My appeal to the fans is to come and enjoy a sports festival.’ Carrying a 5-2 lead into tonight’s game, Liverpool’s task on the field is straightforward enough. It is to avoid calamity. If they do, they will contest their eighth European Cup final at the end of the month in Kiev. If Liverpool score, they will surely go through. And Klopp’s side almost always score. Danger lies only in complacency and perhaps misfortune.
Much has been made of the way Roma beat Barcelona 3-0 here in the second leg of their quarter-final. Do that again tonight and they go through.
But if Liverpool need lessons, they are not necessarily found in the tape of that game but in their own quarter-final, second leg at Manchester City last month.
Liverpool won that game 2-1 but after having conceded a goal in the second minute, they were drowning for a while. City hit the post at 1-0 and then had a good goal wrongly disallowed. Chasing a miracle, City could easily have been two-thirds of the way towards overturning the 3-0 deficit by half-time.
‘I know what you mean but we didn’t need that game to learn that,’ said Klopp. ‘That is the nature of the game. It can turn in any minutes. It’s all about us being active and doing what we are good at. If you really want to win, you have to accept beforehand that you may lose.
‘We have to be really brave and not wait until we really need to be brave. Roma have to win and take risks and when that happens, we have to take advantage.’
From those few sentences, it was possible to detect a message, a recognition that Liverpool didn’t quite get things right at City.
One of the beauties of Klopp’s team is their ability to set an early tempo but at the Etihad they didn’t manage it. Liverpool, perhaps unsure of how to approach the game, were passive and at one stage looked as though they might pay a price.
Tonight they face a team who are not in City’s class but it is vital that they start the game as though they need to win it. Asked about Barcelona’s failure to convert a 4-1 lead into progress last month, Klopp struck a similar tone.
‘Roma were more ready than Barcelona that night,’ he said. ‘Barcelona probably thought that the game was decided already.
‘Everybody is telling us that this will be difficult. Nobody asked Barcelona that because nobody thought it could happen.
‘So if a warning is needed — and I don’t think it is — then there it is. We need to be ready because Roma will be ready.’