Jurgen Klopp admits his fault rather than his players in the defeat against Napoli at San Paolo but couldn’t explain the cause of the mishap.
The German boss witnessed his side fall prey to a spirited Napoli eleven as they grabbed a late stunner through Lorenzo Insigne’s strike. Not only that, the side from Naples bettered the Reds in the whole game with their pacey counter and feared wing play. Among the instrumental batch, the Italian winger cut a significant figure for Ancelloti over and over again. Added to it, the Reds failed to register even one shot on target only saved by reputation through goalkeeper Alisson’s heroic all night.
In such a chaotic night, defensive pair Joe Gomez and Virgil Van Djik failed to emulate their best partnership, as they have done before, costing Liverpool all three points. Despite all of this, Klopp fumed at charges thrown at his player by calling himself the offender of the embarrassment.
In the post- match conference, Klopp described the whole scenario in an apologetic voice, “I have to accept that a big part of that performance was my fault for sure,”.
“But I need at least one night to watch it again and see exactly what was the fault. It was not like it should have looked.”
In fact, Klopp couldn’t find a way to explain the whole climax of the match up that denied them to move to the top of the Group C table.
“The exact reason, I am not 100% sure. The start of the game was okay, then the timing for our defensive movements was not good enough. We didn’t close the spaces in the right moment, we didn’t react in the right situation and so they could play through our formation.
“Things like this happen but not as often as they did tonight and it costs energy. We had to fight really hard. Then when you have the ball you have to play much calmer.
“There was not that much pressure from Napoli. If you looked how we played you would have thought they were always on us. We should have played calmer but we didn’t so we didn’t create a lot of chances.”
The former Dortmund manager also heaped praise on the Brazilian shot stopper who came up with utter brilliance in safeguarding the English club’s fort in conceding the lesser amount of goal.
“The first half was kind of okay but the second half was not good enough and it’s always a bad sign when your goalkeeper is your best player. But it was obvious tonight,”
However, he admitted that tactical failure in setting up the organization in defence caught the breath out of the team
“Then in the 89th minute we make another tactical mistake, we didn’t close the gap between Joe (Gomez) and Virgil (Van Dijk), and then we cannot react any more.
“We didn’t concede a lot of goals this season but that is the second time we have conceded the same kind of goal. I think we should sort that immediately.”
