Slot on Liverpool's 2-1 champions league win over Lille
21.01.2025
Anfield, Liverpool, UK
21.01.2025
Anfield, Liverpool, UK
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Obviously, a refee new goal, I think 90 plus six minutes means that you haven't got a
00:29sealed top spot in the standings, but you are through to the last 16, so how much satisfaction
00:35do you take from that, from the performance, the work rate as well that got you seven wins
00:39from seven in the Champions League?
00:41Let's start with a compliment for the referee in Lisbon, because for the times I've worked
00:50in football, I saw four minutes of extra time and then there was three minutes of time delaying
00:54and then at four minutes the referee blew his whistle, but this referee kept on playing
00:57for a while, so maybe that was not in our advantage this time, but I like to see these
01:03things.
01:04For the rest, it doesn't tell me anything, because if in tennis you are number one seeded,
01:10you know it's always better to face the number 24 than to face the number eight or the number
01:1512, because this is a ranking that is done for years, but now we are in a new format
01:22where some teams are high in the league table because they had a lucky draw, or some teams
01:28are low because they had a very difficult draw.
01:30So it's far off to say that it's an advantage to be one or two, we still don't know yet
01:37if that's an advantage or not, you might be lucky, you might be very unlucky, and ending
01:41up eight can mean that you are maybe lucky.
01:46For me it doesn't tell me anything, what for me is the most important thing for tonight
01:49is that we've managed to skip a round, and that is definitely worth a bit.
01:55Performance and the work rate that you saw tonight?
01:58Like I'm used to from these players, what maybe today was asked a bit more from them
02:05is that they had to be patient, because the reason why Lille has done so well, 21 games
02:11unbeaten and the teams they've beaten in the Champions League, is without any disrespect
02:16at all, but they don't have the best players in the world, they have very good players,
02:20but they don't have the best players in the world, and then to be able to do so well tells
02:23you how disciplined they are, how hard they want to work, how well the manager does, they're
02:30over there.
02:33And we were not starting to force, because they are really compact and defended really
02:38well and we didn't force a pass, we just kept the ball for as long as we could.
02:42The only thing I wasn't happy about is that, not for the first time in recent weeks,
02:46it was one chance for the other team and a goal.
02:50But that's maybe the face of the season we are in at the moment.
02:55What more can you say about Mo Salah, the first Liverpool player to get to 50 goals in Europe?
03:01Special is the word that describes Mo's performance at this club the best,
03:10or maybe there are even better words to use, but he's been outstanding for this club for so many years,
03:15and still he does. Today, great goal, if Mo goes on a 1-1, there's a serious chance he's going to score,
03:24but this goal we scored probably tells you a lot about why we are top of the league and why we are doing so well,
03:30because the work rate from the players that won the ball back before Curtis gave the great pass to Mo,
03:37tells you also why we are doing really well.
03:40Can I just check, Curtis was an injury and all the other substitutions,
03:45Graeme Virtue, Bosley, Diaz, and Conor was more about managing workloads, was it?
03:49Yeah, the idea was to take Dom off and Ryan off at half-time,
03:55but Curtis unfortunately couldn't continue, so that's why Dom stayed a bit longer.
04:00And Conor, the idea was to play him 90, but in the end you could see
04:04that it got tougher and tougher for him in terms of loads,
04:08so you don't want to take the risk of him getting injured in the last few minutes,
04:12like it happened against Madrid.
04:15We wanted to win this game, but we were also aware of the fact that we had to manage the loads,
04:20because we would have been really, really unlucky if we had lost twice and still not been in the top eight,
04:26and as we know now, I think 18 points would have been enough to play in the top eight,
04:32but now with 21 there's no discussion anymore.
04:35Sorry?
04:37There was a moment in the game, what he felt, and he said,
04:43let's play for five more minutes and then let's see how it is.
04:47But he said he had to go off at half-time.
04:56Arne, you conceded a goal tonight, but before then you set a record
05:00for the longest Liverpool have gone in Europe without conceding.
05:03How pleased are you and what do you put that down to?
05:07Very pleased. Where I put everything down to, first of all, the quality of the players,
05:12second of all, these quality players have an incredible work rate.
05:15If you combine those two things it's very difficult to score against the team.
05:20Apart from that there were also games, I think when I look back at Girona for example,
05:25they created quite a bit of chances, Alisson was fantastic back then.
05:30So the nice thing for me is that we keep clean sheets, not by defending a lot,
05:37we keep clean sheets by attacking a lot.
05:41That makes it even more nice than if we are all the time in the low block,
05:46kicking every ball away, don't take any risk in build-up and then keep a clean sheet.
05:50Still nice, but I prefer it like this and I think the fans prefer it like this as well.