Klopp on Ben Woodburn, win over Leeds and LFC optimism
Jürgen Klopp called for calm over Ben Woodburn after the teenager scored in Liverpool's 2-0 EFL Cup victory over Leeds United on Tuesday night.
The Academy forward followed up his debut for the club at the weekend with the second goal of the quarter-final tie, four minutes after Divock Origi had broken the deadlock.
His strike at the Kop end made Reds history, with Woodburn becoming the youngest player ever to score for the senior team – aged 17 years and 45 days.
Here is what Klopp had to say about the Wales youth international, the win against the Championship side and the positivity surrounding Liverpool, during his post-match press conference…
On Woodburn’s contribution…
We know what Ben is capable of and what he is already able to do. My first job is to help these boys so that they can be the best. In this case, Ben Woodburn. There’s a lot of things to do, especially to keep the public away as long as possible. That’s quite a difficult thing to do. But on the other hand, we only bring him in because we want to use him. So that means when he’s on the pitch he’s absolutely allowed to score goals, to prepare situations, to make crosses – how Trent did, for example. So, all good. I’m really happy for him. The only problem is I’m a little bit afraid about you [the media]. That’s why I’m so quiet on this. Think and do what you want, but don’t write anything – only ‘Goalscorer, Ben Woodburn.’ Done. Quite a challenge!
Watch Klopp's post-match press conference
On what he said to the 17-year-old…
I don’t think it makes sense that I say the obvious things. So first of all, I said ‘Well done, but it was not too difficult! I would have scored too if I would have been in the situation!’ That’s maybe the truth. All good. Nothing we say here is important enough that it would help Ben Woodburn or myself. It’s all good. We know how to handle the situation and I know I can say to you whatever I want, [but] if he scores goals then it’s quite difficult to stay cool from your side. No problem. Tonight it was very important that we could have him on the bench and could bring him into the game, because of our situation in the offensive department. [He was] a very important player for us today and he scored a goal, which makes it more enjoyable.
On Trent Alexander-Arnold and the other players who came into the team…
We don’t even talk any more about Ovie [Ejaria]? Because he’s 19, meanwhile! All the young boys did very well – 17, 18, 19, they did well in a very important game. It’s a quarter-final. How I said a lot of times, we don’t make line-ups because we don’t respect the tournament, we make these line-ups to win the game. We need fresh legs, I can’t change it. Obviously we needed the fresh legs today so it was a mixture of youth, a mixture of experience and fresh legs. It worked well. It was not too beautiful to watch in the first half, but with eight changes it’s not easy against a deep formation. We could have created better, we could have been more creative, we could have showed more greed in the last third – that’s all part of the truth, but at the end, I made the changes so I know how difficult it is. The second half was better. It was difficult for Leeds to stay that concentrated for 90 minutes against our passing game, so you need to do the same long enough and then it’s right at one point. We tried to change a little bit at half-time because it was a real challenge from the first second and Leeds are really strong. They couldn’t show it tonight how strong they are, that’s the biggest compliment I would say, from my side.
On whether he feels the good atmosphere among the fans and around the club this season…
I have the same feeling, but it’s difficult to feel it because we’re not too often in the city. Most of the time we’re at the training ground and then at the stadium! We want enthusiasm in the stadium. It’s a good moment for LFC, but it’s difficult too because there’s a lot of work to do and a lot of games to play. Four weeks ago we had no clean sheets, now we start getting clean sheets but we don’t anymore score six goals in a game and all that stuff. We have problems, we have injuries, we have strong opponents, but we have wonderful people around us, we have a wonderful crowd, a wonderful stadium, wonderful away supporters. We go now to Bournemouth – small stadium, but very intense, good team. We are in a good moment until now, but we have to carry on and that’s how it is. We feel good in the moment and we have to carry on. Hopefully it stays like this.