Jurgen Klopp saluted a “really special” comeback after Liverpool made history by reaching another Champions League final on a dramatic evening in Spain.
The Reds saw their 2-0 semi-final first-leg advantage wiped out by half-time at Villarreal on Tuesday, only to produce an outstanding second-half recovery to win 3-2 on the night and 5-2 on aggregate.
In doing so, Klopp’s side have become the first to reach the finals of the Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup in the same season, while keeping alive their hopes of an unprecedented quadruple.
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And when asked about the achievement of reaching a third Champions League showpiece in five seasons, the Reds boss said: “Outstanding, massive. It feels like it’s the first, to be honest. It’s always special. It’s for me the best club competition in the world. I love it. I love the sounds, everything.
“I love the night, respect to Villarreal. It was a really wonderful stadium and what the people do here is absolutely incredible, what Unai (Emery) is doing is incredible.
“It feels so special because it was so difficult for us, but in the end we deserved it. That’s really cool.
“It was massive, massive from the boys. Before the game I said to the boys I would like to read the headline ‘the mentality monsters are in town’ because I wanted us in the first moment not to defend but to go for the win. I couldn’t see that (in the first half) but in the second half I did.
“You could see how impressed we were in the first half (by Villarreal) and coming back the way we did in the second half was really special. Given the 500 games it feels like the boys have played, it’s normal something like the first half can happen. But to react as we did was really special.”
Boulaye Dia put Villarreal ahead on the night inside three minutes with Francis Coquelin levelling the aggregate shortly before the break. But a dominant second-half performance saw Fabinho, the substitute Luis Diaz and Sadio Mane score to earn Liverpool their first away win in a European semi-final in 37 years.
And asked if the comeback was similar to that against Barcelona three years ago, Klopp said: “I don’t like to compare, but yes it’s an absolutely massive one, 2-0 down and the whole world thought that it’s rather (going to be) 3-0 than 2-1.
“But maybe we knew that at half-time, we thought ‘we are still here’ and had to give it a try, we wanted to make sure people saw we could give it a try.
“When I saw us for the first time passing the ball between their lines (after half-time), I knew we could turn them around. Fabinho scored from a position where he had not been before during the game. We had to break their lines and that’s what we did second half. It’s together with the other comebacks.”
Of reaching three finals in the same season, Klopp added: “We will have played each game available, and went through all competitions to the last game. Three of these competitions are not finished yet so I know all the stories around and stuff like this, and in the first half a lot of people might have been happy that we got a knock.
“But it’s really difficult to reach three finals and that’s probably the reason nobody has done it so far. When the finals come around, we will give it a go. It’s really tough.”
