Klopp relives his nightmares against Atleti: “They made me angry”

Jürgen Klopp still cannot forget the night he was eliminated by Atlético de Madrid from the Champions League last season. Cholo's men have been the only team capable of depriving the Reds of a European final since the German took the reins in October 2015, and eight months later, Klopp still remembers that night bitterly. A night in which the pandemic had already made its appearance and in which it threatened the lives of millions of people around the world and put the continuity of football activity in check.

“I remember we played Bournemouth (on March 7) and we had a 25-point lead in the Premier, a big difference. City played the next day against United and lost. I remember laying back on the couch and thinking hoo… then I woke up on Monday morning to the news that Madrid had closed schools and universities. We had a very important Champions League game against Atlético and 6,000 fans were going to come to see it. It didn't make any sense, ”Klopp says in the documentary The End of the Storm.

In it, the German also remembers the previous hours. “It was a very difficult night to prepare for a football game, to ask the players to do everything possible to win without even knowing what would happen the next day,” he explains. “We played the game, a good game, but we lost it and we were eliminated. I remember that I was very angry about the way Atlético de Madrid played, but five minutes later, after the interviews, I said to myself: ‘You’re an idiot, you’re worried about losing a football game while the world is in the most difficult moment it has ever had to face '”.

That is why, from that moment on, he tried to focus on what was truly important: “I drove home and, the next day in training, it was already clear that the league was going to stop and that we would have to organize ourselves to face confinement . The whole club had to do an incredible job to keep these high-level guys in a safe place where they could only go shopping, although that's very difficult for famous players like them. “