JURGEN KLOPP says Liverpool learned a “very important lesson” after Mainz sent his side crashing back down to earth on Sunday.
The Reds were on a high after drubbing Barcelona 4-0 at Wembley on Saturday afternoon – but were thrashed by the same scoreline in Germany just 24-hours later.
Former Arsenal keeper Alex Manninger started in goal for the visitors but could not stop Daniel Brosinski and Jhon Córdoba putting the home side two up at the break.
Yunus Malli and Yoshinori Muto also got on the scoresheet in the second half to condemn Liverpool – featuring first-team stars such as Jordan Henderson, Emre Can, Divock Origi and Adam Lallana – to defeat in their final pre-season clash.
And Klopp – who began his managerial career with Mainz in 2001 – revealed he slammed his under-performing side for their lacklustre showing.
He said: “At half-time I told them that’s not how it should be, of course. It was hard for us today, 100 per cent.
“But that’s a very important lesson for us. If it’s hard – and there will be some hard moments this season – we have to trust our style of play, our philosophy and all of the things we usually do.
“[Such as] how we want to defend, final organisation and if you lose organisation in a moment, that can happen – find it back again and use it, not suffer under it.
“We came here at 2am and it’s not perfect. But they are only things to explain the circumstances.
“We created a very tough situation. Of course, we should not lose 4-0 but it happened and we can work with it.”
Related stories
The performance in Germany was in stark contrast to Liverpool’s mouth-watering showing against Barca.
Impressive new-boy Sadio Mane netted in the first in front of nearly 90,000 fans in London.
Origi, Marko Grujic and a Javier Mascherano own-goal completed the rout in the second half as the Reds ran the La Liga champions ragged with Klopp’s high-intensity pressing style.
And Klopp, 49, is confident his side will be ready to hit the ground running in their Premier League opener against Arsenal on Sunday.
He added: “Yesterday we could not stop smiling but that was not right, and today if we cannot stop being disappointed that’s not right either. It’s not between these two poles, if you want.
“We are in a good way, 100 per cent. And if we have a proper line-up, which we can have of course for next week, then we will be strong.
“Until now we did a really good job. But in moments like this today, we need to find other solutions than we found. This work will never stop.
“The line-up was a compromise, changing players and we flew a few players in this morning. That’s not optimum and not very good. But we always expect of ourselves that we have to do better and we should have done better.”
Leave a comment