Real Madrid defeated Liverpool 5-2 in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 match after coming back from being two goals behind at Anfield.
It was Liverpool’s last opportunity to win a trophy this season, but that ambition has undoubtedly been dashed before the second leg at the Bernabeu on March 15.
Tuesday night at Anfield, The Reds exploded out of the gates with to goals from Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah, but Real fought back and were level before the break thanks to a brace from Vinicius Jr.
For the first few minutes of the second half, Eder Militao made it 3-2, and then Karim Benzema scored twice to give Carlo Ancelotti’s team a commanding lead going into the second leg in Madrid next month.
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Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp in his post match conference after his side’s biggest European defeat at home.
“I really think everything was pretty obvious tonight,” Klopp said about his team’s performance.
“I think we gave all five goals away and that means we could have done better there, but they were all obviously different.”
“The start in the game, in our situation where we are, it is really important that we see positive steps and I think the first half was, besides the two goals we conceded, the best we’ve played for probably the whole season. I liked it a lot.”
“Half-time, [it was] rather positive to be honest. You think, ‘OK, this happened.”
“we have to play in this and that space, if we keep doing that they will have problems and then we start with conceding the third goal, which was a horrible goal and today it was pretty much the game-changer.”
“We lost the momentum in that moment and never really got it back.”
Klopp on the effect of this outcome on his players…
“I can see that people think that, understandable, but that’s actually not allowed.”
“So, I told the boys directly after the game, there are different things that happened tonight, this was a result that was the exact opposite of what we wanted.”
“We made mistakes around the goals, yes as well, and I said a couple of times that a defeat is a defeat if you don’t learn from it.”
“If you don’t learn tonight that the start of the game was outstanding and the way we played was us in a nutshell, was us like we want to be, and that’s what we have to keep doing.”
“So if we now allow this one game to be influential, well, we are really silly. We have a few days and we will make sure we take the right things out of this game.”
“Yes, we have to improve, third goal massively, first goal massively, but we have to take the good things as well – that would be horrible if we don’t do that.”
“It’s a different game than in Paris, of course, but anyway the intensity, the effort we showed, the football we played, pretty much everything was like how we want to see ourselves so we have to make sure that we keep that.”
“I know, 5-2 could be damaging, but I hope I can make sure that is not happening.”
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