‘This is just the beginning’ Anfield heroes sure more success will now follow
Liverpool’ s players have emphatically declared that winning the Champions League is merely the start of their silver ware hunting – and that the Premier League is next.
By beating Spurs on Saturday evening the yd el ivered the first trophy under manager Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool’s sixth European Cup, after missing out on the Premier League by a point to Manchester City despite a record-breaking season.
“The first trophy and it’s the Champions League! It’s the star t,” for ward Mohamed Salah, who scored the first goal, said. “It’s the first competition. We will go next season for the Premier League.
“This season was the first season we were really fighting for the Premier League, last season we were basically fighting for the Champions League. The year before the Europa League.”
Midfielder James Milner experienced winning the first trophy of the Sheikh Mansour era at Manchester City before moving to Liverpool in 2015. “The first trophy is always the hardest one to win for a group of players and hopefully that will help us,” he said. “You can see the improvement over the last few years since the manager has come in and seen how the team has improved.”
Captain Jordan Henderson added :“Hopefully we can use this to win more in the future, it gives us confidence to know we can win the Champions League and together we can move forward and hopefully win more trophies as well.”
Defender Virgil Van Dijk pointed out that the squad is relatively young, meaning they could stay together as a group for many years to come.
“We’ re going to try everything we can to be challenging for the title, challenging for the Champions League but also for the cups,” he said.
“We definitely want to have these nights more often. But it’ s not easy and the only thing to do is keep b eliev - ing, keep working hard, stay humble and I think we’ll definitely be doing that as that’s how we are.
“I think it’ s a great agegroup of players. We have young guys, we have experienced guys, we have players there who can be playing for the next, hopefully, three to four years together at least.”
Of course, the manager,
JURGEN KLOPP
“It’s still a wonderful age group, they all have the best times ahead of them” too, is confident that more success will follow. “Now we won something and we will carry on. We want to win things, 100 per cent. I’ve said it, this is only the start for this group,” insisted Klopp.
“It’s still a wonderful age group, they all have the best times in their careers ahead of them so that’s big.
“For me, I’m really happy. I have a l ot of silver medals and now I have a golden one so it’ll be next to the silver medals in my house and that’s cool.
“But mostly I’m happy for all the other people. When you saw it in the dressing room, ever ybody felt it but you don’t really know what to do with it.”