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Jürgen Klopp analyzed the challenges of facing Manchester City and Pep Guardiola before Liverpool’s trip to the Etihad Stadium.
The Reds visit the team they deposed as Premier League champions last season on Sunday and the manager discussed his upcoming opponents in detail during his pre-game press conference.
Read on to find out what he said …
On whether he learned anything from the most recent meeting of the parties in July …
If you are not 100% focused on the game against City, you will lose a lot! I’m not sure I need that game as evidence, but that’s 100% of the case. This is the first time we have won the league in England, so I had no idea how to prepare for the next game. I didn’t want to exaggerate like ‘Guys, forget it, [forget] what happened three days ago … now it’s City and we can show the whole world blah blah blah. I didn’t do that, I’m not sure if it was right or wrong. So I know my guys wanted to win that game, but we weren’t as focused as we usually are in these games. That says not much, but it explains a little. We still played good football that night, unfortunately we didn’t score and they scored four times. It was, but it was not the hardest defeat of my life.
On his personal record of victories against Guardiola and if facing the City manager brings out the best in him …
Then we should meet much more often! But I’m happy that we don’t see each other that often, to be honest, because of the quality that he and his teams have. No, I am not aware of any records. I know we meet from time to time and I know we didn’t lose all of them, but I know all the games were incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult, they are so intense. That’s the only thing that really worries me and not how we played in the last game of the summer or the game before, whenever that is, that we are ready to compete in a game.
For that you need to have an almost perfect organization and you need to be brave, really brave. Play your own soccer too, cause problems for them too. All in all, it sounds so easy and it’s not rocket science, but it’s still really difficult because it’s under enormous pressure. They put pressure on you, but we can do it too. So it’s always an interesting game and hopefully it will also be interesting on Sunday because that would mean that we will be good, and that would be the first step in the right direction.
