Jürgen Klopp on Napoli, pre-season form and how Liverpool will change
Jürgen Klopp vowed Liverpool will be a 'different animal' next week to the side that were beaten 3-0 by Napoli in Edinburgh on Sunday.
The Reds suffered defeat in their penultimate fixture of the 2019-20 pre-season after goals from Lorenzo Insigne, Arkadiusz Milik and Amin Younes at Murrayfield.
But with a training camp in Evian to follow and players returning to the fold, Klopp is looking forward to seeing his team in action when the FA Community Shield against Manchester City arrives on August 4.
Read on for a summary of the boss' post-match press conference in the Scottish capital.
On the tough afternoon for his side...
Two very different aspects of the game - one is a much more positive thing, it's the atmosphere and the reception when we came in. I asked today when we drove in - because it was outstanding how the people were waiting for us and how the atmosphere was there when we drove in with the bus - when we were last in Scotland and nobody could really tell me when it was - 2012. I had goose bumps when I left the bus, that was incredible. That was the positive part and then the lesser positive part obviously was the game.
The start was good, and that's it. The start was good and the ending was good because the young boys came in and brought some freshness and they were cheeky and all that stuff. That looked nice. We just conceded two simple goals, each ball we lost was pretty much a proper counter-attack. Napoli are good in that, but you have to defend that obviously better or you have to keep the ball or you have to have a better formation. Pretty much you need to have everything better than we had in these situations and they had more chances. We had a couple of chances as well, the first one especially.
The fight with the physical status with us, what can I say? I know everything what I say when you lose a game, everything what you say to explain, people think it's an excuse. But the last thing I want to look for is an excuse because we don't need it. But in fact, Napoli start in the same moment as we started with the pre-season but their season starts on the 24th of August, like three weeks later than ours. It means they train nice and smoothly. They train a little bit because they can train over the whole period. We have four weeks and need to be spot on. We have to train - I cannot change it. That's how football looks sometimes that we have rather heavy legs after a couple of weeks. We have another week which we will use to get freshness back, 100 per cent. But apart from that, if you are tired, we of course have to make better decisions than we made today in protection, we need a better formation than we had today. So, that's it. It was, of course, not good and we lost a couple of games now in the pre-season already. We try to use them, that's how we always try to do it, and I'm pretty sure we will play better football.
On the impact the missing players had on preparations...
[It's a] strange pre-season because everybody tells you constantly congratulations, congratulations, congratulations. We are all friendly people, so we all think, 'Welcome, welcome'. Before the game, Napoli - very nice, absolute class - the staff [gave us] a bottle of red wine and that finished with the game. It's kind of a new situation, but that's not the reason what's happened. Missing six players is strange. That you lose players during a pre-season, we are used to - that happened from time to time. But that they don't start from the beginning and come a couple of days before or after we start with the season is not cool. Again, that's how it is and we prepared everybody as good as possible. We have to fight the start of the season 100 per cent with all we have. The good thing is, if the opponents want to analyse us now, they think 'easy job', but we will be a different animal next week.
On what Harvey Elliott will bring to Liverpool...
That's why he's here. Look, I could say so many positive things about the boy because we signed him. He came here, he decided for us, he could have gone pretty much everywhere but he wanted to be part of Liverpool. But the stories about this boy start too early and he had already the story [when] he was the youngest Premier League first-team player of Fulham, all that stuff. He already has a few records because of his talent. Now he's here, let's work with him. He needs game time and we will see where he gets that, but he's obviously a fine, fine footballer and that's the reason why we were really interested.
On whether there were differences in readiness between Liverpool and Napoli…
They are not Serie A ready, they are just a good team. They miss a few players as well. It's just a different thing. We now have round about, for the majority of the team, three weeks to prepare for a full season. There's no alternative to training. So you have to do a couple of things which make you tired, that's how training works. They [Napoli] have six or seven weeks' pre-season. It's a completely different situation. They had to fight as well. The intense sessions are the games, we have to train intense and play intense. That's the difference. We played Napoli a couple of months ago and that was difficult as well; at Napoli we played similarly bad to today in the middle of the season and we took the right information out of that game, it helped.
On whether the Premier League could be a 'two-horse race'...
Of course not. It became a two-horse race last year but unfortunately there are too many good clubs in this competition. I think even City see it like this; they are the big favourite and all the others try to beat them - and we are one of these teams. At least we should give it a try, but we have to play better football and we will play better football, I know.
On if he has any concerns about pre-season form...
I think the worst thing that could have happened is if we had won all the games without the six players; 4-0 or 5-0 against Napoli and Sevilla, then everybody would be flying from last year and into the new season, then getting the problems in the season. That would have been the worst thing. But between the worst thing and that now would have been a few levels I would have preferred. I knew before we started that it would be exceptionally difficult because of the situation. We have to adapt to a few things and we have to create a specific spirit. For this we have a week's time. For the first time since the Champions League final we have 99 per cent of the squad tomorrow, only Sadio is missing then, and that's the moment where we really start talking and preparing a couple of things and then we have to go again.