Juergen Klopp on Wednesday said that every team still alive in the UEFA Champions League would have designs on winning it, but despite Liverpool cruising into the quarter-finals, the German downplayed his own team’s chances as they struggle for form in the Premier League.
Liverpool advanced after their 2-0 second-leg win over RB Leipzig completed a 4-0 aggregate victory, moving the 2018-2019 winners into the quarters for the third time in four seasons.
With the Merseyside club languishing in eighth spot in the Premier League, seven points behind fourth-placed Chelsea, winning the Champions League appears to be their best shot at qualifying for Europe’s elite club competition next season.
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“The only reason you play in this competition is because you want to win it,” Klopp said. “I am not silly, we know so far this is not a season which looks like we will win the Champions League, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to go as far as possible and then we will see what is possible for us.”
“Now we have to wait for the draw; it will be extremely tough whoever we get, but we don’t really think that far, we don’t have to,” he said.
Mohamed Salah, who opened the scoring in the 70th minute on Wednesday before Sadio Mane made it 2-0, said that it was important to focus game by game.
Photo: AFP
“The team is not in the best shape, but we want to fight in the Champions League and in each game in the Premier League,” Salah said. “We don’t have to look to the big picture because sometimes when you do, we see too much pressure carried on to the pitch. We just need to leave the pressure off the field and play.”
Liverpool face Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League on Monday next week.
In France, Paris Saint-Germain coach Mauricio Pochettino told his players to shake off their negative mindset in their 1-1 draw against Barcelona as they completed a 5-2 aggregate victory to reach the Champions League quarter-finals.
PSG endured a humiliating exit at the hands of Barcelona in 2017 as the Spanish side thrashed them 6-1 to overturn a 4-0 first-leg deficit in the round-of-16, and it briefly looked like another difficult night could be on the cards at the Parc des Princes in Paris.
After PSG’s Kylian Mbappe, who scored a hat-trick in the first leg at the Camp Nou, opened the scoring with a penalty against the run of play. Lionel Messi leveled with a jaw-dropping 25m missile before stepping up to take a penalty after Antoine Griezmann had been fouled by Layvin Kurzawa.
He could have put Barca within two goals of forcing extra-time against a PSG side who looked uninspired and shaky, but Kaylor Navas made a decisive save as Messi missed his first penalty in the competition since 2015.
“In the first half, we were thinking too much,” Pochettino said. “We were thinking too much about the qualification and not enough about playing. I told the players to shake off those negative thoughts and think about the game.”
“We were not happy with that first half and we said it to the players,” he said.
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