Arne Slot was left pleased by what he believed to be a strong team performance during Liverpool’s 3-1 victory over AC Milan on Tuesday night.
The Reds produced a comeback success in Italy in the head coach’s opening European fixture in charge, with goals from Ibrahima Konate, captain Virgil van Dijk and Dominik Szoboszlai.
Christian Pulisic had netted for the hosts in the third minute of the Champions League encounter, though the visitors took a lead into half-time thanks to their central defensive pairing.
Szoboszlai ensured they would go on to claim a deserved three points in the second period, nudging home a Cody Gakpo assist at San Siro.
Read on to see what Slot had to say during his post-match media briefing…
On whether it’s a good birthday present getting the win…
Yeah. I said a few times already, normally you celebrate your birthday with your friends and your family. But this was a real good alternative to play a first Champions League game against a special club for Liverpool, but also a special club for Dutch people in a nice venue. Then to win it the way we did after going 1-0 down after five minutes with the result of Nottingham Forest still in our head. I think it was very good to see how they took the game in their hands the players and in the end we scored three goals and won 3-1.
On the performances of Gakpo and Ryan Gravenberch in particular…
I was standing just a second ago next to Clarence Seedorf on the desk. They also talked about Ryan and Cody and I said it’s a special place for Dutch players to play because of the former players that have played here. To put a performance in like this is always nice as a Liverpool player and at a venue like this it’s even nicer. Yes, you can pick these two, but I think I could pick a few others as well that played really well. Like always, it’s very difficult for an individual to play well if the whole team doesn’t play well and vice versa. The whole team played well and then the individuals can shine from there.
On being the fourth manager to win a Champions League tie on their birthday alongside Bobby Robson, Roberto Mancini and Arsene Wenger…
It’s pretty good company but I hope to do more special things in the future and be in the special company of these legends of the game instead of only winning a tie on your birthday. Hopefully in the future I’m also trying to manage certain things what these managers did. This was not the most important thing to get.
On whether he felt set-pieces were somewhere they could hurt Milan…
I don’t look at the other team, I always look at my own team. I think we were a bit disappointed with the result against Nottingham Forest [but] we were also disappointed from getting eight corner kicks and not scoring, but we were very close.
We felt with all the work we put in on set-pieces that at some moment we should get the reward.
I think [it was] two very good set-pieces and two very good headers that got us two goals, which was important because I think we were very comfortable on the ball, pressed really well, but in the end you need goals as well. We hit the crossbar a few times today out of open play, so we needed set-pieces and it was good to see that we scored them for all the work my assistants and the players put in. It is nice to see it got rewarded today.
On the positions of Alexis Mac Allister and Szoboszlai…
You asked me something about Dom and Mac Allister being wingers, [but] maybe the translation wasn’t perfect. I think both of them played a good game, but they were not playing as wingers – they were playing as midfielders. The team took control of the ball, kept it for a long time, switched the play really well, which led to numerous chances for us. Unfortunately we couldn’t score them in the first half, but in the second half we had a great team goal apart from the two set-pieces we scored in the first half.
On the difficult start to the game, conceding early…
It sounds a bit weird if you play three, four, five minutes and we already conceded one chance, which was offside, and then afterwards you concede a goal [and] that I’m going to tell you now that we didn’t even start bad. I think we took control of the game from the start. But in the first five minutes we also lost the ball from two choices that were not the best to make and then they could counter-attack us.
Afterwards we dominated possession even more and that didn’t lead to counter-attacks from them. Although it sounds weird to say that we started well if you concede two chances, but we took control of the ball from the start of the game. Except from the first five minutes where they had two counter-attacks, I think we dominated possession and created chances as well.
