Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
KLOPP: IT’S THE CHOMPIONS LEAGUE
Liverpool boss is wary of facing Simeone’s warriors on their home soil and admits: You have to be brave or they will EAT you
JURGEN KLOPP has warned his Liverpool stars they will need to be brave to avoid being devoured by Atletico Madrid tonight.
The Reds take on the Spanish champions in a clash of Group B’s big guns in Madrid. It is the first of backto-back meetings with Diego Simeone’s side which could decide who goes through as group winners.
The teams last met at the last-16 stage of the Champions
League just before the pandemic halted the world.
That time Simeone’s side outsmarted the
Reds over two legs
– winning 1-0 and 3-2 – but the Spaniards’ style of play irritated the Liverpool manager, who knows his men will have to battle to unlock one of the meanest defences in football.
When asked if it will be a football war, Klopp (above, with James Milner) said: “It will be. Atleti are the best of that sort of team because they have the best players.
“The problem with Atletico is the quality they have and the desire they show. Would it be the style I want to play?
“No. I couldn’t, I’m not the person for it, but we are all different and that’s fine.
“It is all about winning football games and I remember we played an absolutely exceptional game at home against Atletico.
“We haven’t forgotten how bad we were at their ground and I’m pretty sure Diego hasn’t forgotten how good we were at home so I am pretty sure there is a way of causing them problems. “But you have to play a topclass game and be incredibly brave. If you don’t do that they eat you.”
Liverpool will have an in-form Mo Salah at their disposal but Klopp said there is still an issue over his new Anfield contract. Salah, who has scored 10 goals in 10 games this season, has less than two years left on his current deal.
Asked whether
Salah’s red-hot form – he scored a goal-of-theseason contender at Watford on Saturday – will make resolving his contract issue easier, Klopp said: “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
One man whose long-term future is certain to be at Anfield is Virgil van
Dijk, who committed himself to the club in summer. Yesterday marked 12 months since he received the diagnosis that he would need serious surgery on an ACL injury suffered in last October’s Merseyside derby.
But the Dutch star’s return this season has given the Reds more defensive stability.
“I’m still on the way,” said Van Dijk. “I know there are a lot of people wondering if I can get back to where I was but the only thing I can do is try my best each and every game. That’s what I do.
“I feel like I am improving. I’ve said in previous interviews I am not a robot, I have come back from a very serious injury.”