After the flattering success at Paris St. Germain, Liverpool FC are due to play Southampton FC. Coach Arne Slot emphasizes the importance of the game and tries to ignore the second leg against the French for the time being.
It has been two days since Liverpool FC beat Paris St. Germain in the first knockout round of the Champions League. Given that the more than fortunate 1-0 victory is one of those rather memorable games, the game was still an omnipresent topic in the run-up to the game against the relegated Premier League bottom team Southampton.
“We didn’t just have a little luck, we had a lot, a lot, a lot of luck!” said LFC coach Arne Slot in his press conference, when asked about last Wednesday, and went on to quote one of the greatest athletes of all time. “But as Michael Jordan once said, ‘The harder you work, the more luck you have’.” There are also “almost no teams that play good football for 38 games.” Real Madrid is one of the best examples of this: “They also find a way to win a game when the other team is better.”
Alisson, who according to his own statement showed the best performance of his life, also received his laurels. According to Slot, to be considered world-class in goal, “you sometimes have to make saves that others wouldn’t make. I think he had one or two of those. He made two world-class saves for us in two big moments.”
Despite all the euphoria and interest in looking ahead to the second leg next Tuesday, Slot still tried to keep the focus on the game against Southampton for now. “For me, the game against Southampton is by far the most important,” said the Dutchman, who described the game as “the first of three finals next week”. In addition to the second leg against PSG, the League Cup final against Newcastle United is scheduled for the following Sunday.
So it’s quite possible that a few players will get a bit of rest and the starting lineup will be tweaked a little. However, Slot was keen to stress that possible rotation “is the best way to win tomorrow’s game, not because I want to save them for the game against Paris Saint-Germain”. It was purely “to give us a better chance of winning against Southampton than it has to do with the game against Paris Saint-Germain.”
Slot’s message to the fans
He also wants to transfer this mentality to his players, but above all to the fans. “I have to convince my players that we will play three finals and I hope that I can also influence our fans to understand how important they will be.” He hopes ‘that they won’t just come to the stadium five minutes before kick-off’, but that Anfield ‘will be full half an hour before so that the players get the reward for what they did in Paris’.
And even though Slot tried his best to keep the focus squarely on the upcoming clash, he couldn’t help but glance towards next Tuesday. “Southampton have the same formation when they have the ball as PSG. We have to play much better without the ball to put Southampton under pressure. It’s another good test for us.”
