Jurgen Klopp paid tribute to the "massive impact" of Luis Diaz as Liverpool reached the Champions League final with a 3-2 win at Villarreal on Tuesday.
After Unai Emery's men had cancelled out a 2-0 deficit from the first leg thanks to goals from Boulaye Dia and Francis Coquelin, Klopp brought on Diaz for Diogo Jota to inspire a turnaround at the break.
The Colombian winger turned in a superb performance on the left of Liverpool's front three and made it 2-2 on the night with a header after Fabinho had reduced the arrears with his strike just after the hour mark.
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Klopp was full of praise for the January signing from Porto but played down any perceived disappointment with the first-half showing from Jota who was brought off at the interval.
Klopp said: "Luis had a massive impact on the game, but what I don’t like now about this is the next story will be about Diogo Jota being the one who was our problem. He wasn’t our problem one little bit. We had 11 problems.
"We just had to mix it up and we did that. But you need fresh input as well. I wanted Mo Salah and Sadio Mane to stay high and wide in specific situations, but not in open play.
"All of a sudden we were not ourselves and in the second half we were ourselves and what a goal from Luis. He could have had one before that with the bicycle kick when he could have taken it down. But what a performance.
"It is not that Luis was the solution, the solution was that moved more. If you play against a man-marking situation pretty much, you play into their hands because of the wrong movements. You need options in midfield as well. Thiago got massive pressure when he dropped our two full-backs, especially Robbo (Andy Robertson), who was too high too early and there were so many problems.
"You saw them as well and you saw the second half. We just had to start doing what we wanted to do in the first place. The first pass through the half-space (in the second half), Naby Keita could turn and Sadio is there and all of a sudden they have the problems we had in the first half."
Liverpool will meet either Real Madrid or Manchester City in the Paris final on May 28.
