Jurgen Klopp has clarified his comments regarding Liverpool’s controversial defeat to Tottenham Hotspur last weekend.
Speaking at his pre-match press conference before the Reds’ Europa League clash with Union Saint-Gilloise, the German shared his belief that the game against Spurs should be replayed after Luis Diaz incorrectly had a goal disallowed for offside after VAR failed to intervene despite ruling it was a goal back at Stockley Park.
Having been sent off against Tottenham, Diogo Jota bounced back to score Liverpool’s second goal in their 2-0 victory over Union as they put the weekend’s controversy behind them.
And despite his stance on a replay, Klopp emphasised that both he and his squad have already moved on from the loss in North London and were fully focused on Thursday night’s clash with the Belgian top-flight leaders.
“Very good, how should he (Jota) deal with it?” the Liverpool boss told reporters. “So I knew it will be difficult, when yesterday I spoke about the other game (Tottenham), you proved me, again, everybody, how the world is.
“I think everybody here heard what I said but everybody understood something else. That’s okay. But if I made the impression yesterday that I was still in the game against Tottenham, I was not at all.
“That is long ago and we are over that, that’s fine and Diogo is over it as well. And Joel (Matip, who scored an own goal against Tottenham) could have played tonight because he is over it as well. That’s all fine.
“We are not children or whatever, we just had a few questions to answer and did that and that’s it.
“From a focus point of view, it was not a problem to focus on the game. In the game it was a problem to keep being focused because that’s how it looked a little bit.
“We got a bit sluggish, I didn’t like that too much but that was not with Diogo or any of the team to do with the last game or the last week. That’s the challenge in football anyways.”
