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Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhuttl shed tears of joy and dropped to his knees at the final whistle after an early Danny Ings goal secured the Saints a surprising 1-0 Premier League win over champions Liverpool. .
The Austrian’s exciting celebrations might have led some fans to think that Southampton had just secured the Premier League title.
But as wins over Liverpool are a rare occurrence for the Saints, with the last one in the league nearly five years ago, it was an occasion to savor for Hasenhuettl, who took over the South Coast club in 2018.
“He had tears in his eyes – from the wind!” Hasenhuettl jokingly told BBC Sport.
“When you see our guys fight with everything they have, it makes me very proud. You have to have the perfect match against Liverpool and I think we had it.”
Hasenhuttl’s team was forced to defend for long stretches in the second half, admitting that injury time was well advanced before he felt his team could get a result.
“It felt like we were under massive pressure and the defense around the box was the key today, so we still tried to play football. We did it in a good way,” he said.
By contrast, his Liverpool counterpart Jurgen Klopp was extremely frustrated after his attacking trio of Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane failed to find the net despite dominating possession in the second half.
“What was disappointing? How much time do we have?” he told the BBC. “The start, obviously, not just the goal but the start in general. Congratulations to Southampton, they deserved it.”
The 53-year-old German said his team knew what to expect from Southampton, but they got caught up in the initial exchanges and couldn’t recover.
“In the beginning, how we played, where we lost the balls, it’s not rocket science. We should have done much better. We played in their hands from the beginning,” he said.
“These are outstanding players, but they weren’t ready from the start.”
Klopp insisted that Mane should have received a clear penalty from referee Andre Marriner.
Mane looked the most likely to throw one back for the visitors and fell into the box just before the hour mark, under the challenge of Kyle Walker-Peters, but Marriner shook up the game and the VAR didn’t throw a second. look at the incident. , which the Reds boss believes was a penalty.
Klopp said: “I turned around, we had it very well seen. It seemed like a clear penalty. I turned to the fourth official and he said ‘we have already checked, there is no penalty’. That is 100% truth. They already do. I checked.
“We had the situation last year against Leicester with the penalty, and people say ‘Sadio Mane goes down too easily.’
“If this guy went down easy, we could have had a penalty in this game and a stone penalty in the last game. But what Andre Marriner did with Sadio Mane tonight, I’m not sure that’s okay, to be honest.”
Klopp added: “We can’t change. I hear now that Man United had more penalties in two years than I have in five and a half years. I have no idea if that’s my fault, or how that can happen.”
“But it is not an excuse for performance. We cannot change it, we have to respect decisions. But we can change our performance. That is our focus now.”
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