Virgil van Dijk has revealed what Jurgen Klopp told the Liverpool players at half-time of their Champions League semi-final second-leg against Villarreal to inspire them to victory.
The opening 45 minutes did not go how the majority expected it would, with the Reds' 2-0 advantage from the first-leg being wiped out courtesy of goals from Boulaye Dia and Francis Coquelin. The home fans were starting to believe that one of the Champions League's most memorable upsets was on the cards.
However, goals from Fabinho, Luis Diaz and Sadio Mane alongside a woeful goalkeeping performance from Gerónimo Rulli killed any hope that Unai Emery's side may have had of toppling the Premier League giants. Villarreal had already taken some major scalps en route to the final four, having dumped out Juventus and Bayern Munich previously.
However, Klopp ensured his side were not going to meet the same fate with some words of wisdom at the interval to send his players on the way to victory and book their place in the final later this month. Van Dijk opened up on his manager's instructions at half-time when speaking to BT Sport post-match.
The Netherlands international revealed Klopp told his side to "Play football! Play the Liverpool way how we’ve played all season! Get on the ball, have a lot of movements with the ball and in behind the last line. With the speed we have we need to mix that up as well, and we needed to show how much we wanted to go to the final. Second-half we played so well."
Van Dijk was honest in his own assessment of Liverpool's shortcomings in the first-half and admitted his side were guilty of making the "wrong decisions". "We didn’t play football enough. When we had the ball there wasn’t a lot of movement so we made the wrong decisions," he added.
HAVE YOUR SAY! Will Liverpool win the Champions League this season? Comment below
"You lose the ball in difficult situations when you’re wide open at times, the early goal after three minutes put even more pressure on ourselves." The Dutchman did go on to add that analysing the weak aspects of the game immediately after the full-time whistle is too demanding.
"If we think about the first half after we just made it to Paris, we are being harsh on ourselves I think, what we have achieved so far this season can’t be taken for granted and we will keep going. A couple more nice weeks to look forward to, so we’ll enjoy and wait and see."
The victory means Klopp has guided Liverpool to three of the last five Champions League finals. Over the course of the German's managerial career, he has now reached the final of European football's most elite competition as many times as Sir Alex Ferguson.
