Liverpool finished their pre-season tour of the US with a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Roma. However, Jürgen Klopp believes games against Barcelona and Mainz will prepare his side for the new Premier League season.
The fitness levels in Klopp’s side fluctuate from player to player due to the fact that so many returned at different times. The club’s international players who featured at the Euros and Copa America were allowed lengthened lay-offs due to the fact that their holidays were cut short by the tournaments.
The only player who has yet to feature in pre-season is Christian Benteke whose future is heavily clouded in doubt. The Belgian international returned from Euro involvement with Belgium two weeks ago but is yet to kick a ball in a friendly.
“You saw, it’s hard, today was the first game for Emre [Can] and obviously not too good, but we all know he can play football!” Klopp told Liverpoolfc.com.
“It’s because of different intensities, how it felt for different players. So we need to use these two weeks to bring all this together and then find a formation for the first game, then find one for the second game.
“It was good what we could do here, we could train a lot, the club gave us perfect circumstances so that we could be concentrated on work, so that’s what we did.
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“Even if you saw nothing of it tonight! But really we trained, I promise!”
“Sometimes it’s better that you lose when you know why you lose than you win and you have no idea why you won,” he added.
“Today it was clear, the first half was a good beginning and then completely wild because [in] each kind of formation, there were big spaces between all players, the last line was too deep, and the space between the last line and the midfield was too big! The gaps between the players [were] too big – I could have played there.
“The first half could have been 6-5 for whoever, but I hate games like this! We have a lot of quality in offence and we will score, no doubt about this, as long as we create chances everything is good.
“But the problem is that each offensive action of Roma was a chance, and most of them [big] chances, that makes absolutely no sense.
“Tired legs, wet heat, really difficult today, but that’s not allowed. Now we fly home, but I will not forget this game until we meet next time, because of course we have to talk about this.
“I didn’t like the body language around 1-0, it’s okay you can play bad, but today it was obvious why we played bad; no organisation, no discipline.”
The boss did concede that it was preferable to see the mistakes he witnessed against Luciano Spalletti’s side in a pre-season friendly.
But he went on to joke that he will do his utmost to ensure there is no repeat performance for the next ‘500 years’.
“I would like to see that it never happens, but it’s better today than in two weeks,” he insisted.
“So we still have two weeks, we shouldn’t forget, we worked really hard, I know all this. I understand that they were tired today, but when you are tired you need to be compact.
“When you are tired, it’s not allowed that it’s so easy for the opponent to play through. That’s not okay but I understand, we did a lot in difficult circumstances and everybody knew after the game we fly home so maybe not everyone is 100 per cent concentrated.
“But we have to talk about this and hopefully it’s the last game like this in 500 years!”
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