Liverpool defender Virgil Van Dijk has issued a rallying cry to his Liverpool teammates after their 2-0 loss to Napoli in the Champions League on Tuesday. Liverpool suffered their first defeat since last season’s Champions League semi-final first leg at Barcelona.
Liverpool lost just one Premier League game last season finishing one point behind Champions Manchester City and Van Dijk believes that Liverpool will need to get over their midweek loss if they are going to preserve their winning run this season.
“I don’t know if it’s a wake-up call,” the defender said of defeat in Naples. “Both sides were fully in the game and thought it was going to be a draw. Obviously the penalty changed it all and we’re going home with no points but it shouldn’t be a wake-up call. We’ve been performing since the start of the season outstanding so there’s no reason for panic. The majority in the game we played well, we put them under pressure and we created opportunities on the break. There’s a lot of positive things apart from the result. We have to try to win our other games and we now focus on Chelsea.”
Van Dijk was at fault for Napoli’s second goal with a poor back pass to Fernando Llorente.
But the Dutchman believes that Liverpool was the better side and was unlucky to come away with a defeat
Van Dijk added: “They [Sadio Mané, Mohamed Salah, and Roberto Firmino] made a lot of problems for Napoli and we had opportunities to hurt them a lot but we didn’t do it too much. That can happen. We are human beings; that’s part of the game. Sometimes you pick the other pass instead of the right pass. We had moments in the game we could have done better. If the penalty wasn’t there I think it was going to be a draw. The reality is we conceded the penalty and it was unlucky Adrián was unable to save it.”
