A second-half fightback by the Portuguese side saw the match end 3-3, which allowed Jurgen Klopp’s side to win the tie 6-4 on aggregate.
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Liverpool survived a few nervy moments against Benfica before booking their passage through to the semifinals of the Champions League. A second-half fightback by the Portuguese side saw the match end 3-3, which allowed Jurgen Klopp’s side to win the tie 6-4 on aggregate. Their reward is a semifinal clash against Villarreal, who have been the ultimate giant killers of the tournament. They defeated Juventus in the last-16 before overcoming one of the leading favourites for the competition title – Bayern Munich – in the quarterfinals. Hence, Klopp is wary about facing them and knows how “tough” an assignment that would be for them.
“Tough, tough, tough, tough. Both games [against Bayern Munich], they deserved to get through. I didn’t analyse them because you watch the game and you try to figure out both teams with real quality,” he added during his post-match press conference. “And Villarreal has probably the most successful cup-competition manager in world football, so he knows what he is doing. And the team is really strong. Two different approaches away and home – it’s clear that they defended at Munich even more than they did at Villarreal. It will be difficult. But it’s the semi-finals of the Champions League – if it wouldn’t be difficult then something would be really wrong.”
On Wednesday night, Ibrahima Konate opened the scoring for Liverpool through a header from a corner after 21 minutes. But immediately after that Goncalo Ramos equalised for the Lisbon side. A Firmino double in the second half seemed to have done the trick for Liverpool, however, Roman Yaremchuk and Darwin Nunez leveled the scores to have a feisty ending.
READ MORE – Liverpool vs Benfica: Is Roberto Firmino an underrated forward?
Speaking about Benfica’s fightback in the second half, Klopp said, “Great. Very strong, really good, but, of course – and I think you see it as well – it was about us in this moment, as well. It was difficult. I made seven changes, that’s one thing – the last line never played together like this. I decided that yesterday, so you have one, 15-20 minutes to try to put it right, and the majority of the time they did really well. I liked it, I liked it a lot. I liked the way we played football, the only problem was when we lost the ball our protection was obviously not perfect. And the thing with defending in a Champions League quarter-final is it is about details,” he explained.
“I didn’t see the offside situations back, but it is part of defending to put the opponent offside. Tonight that didn’t work out too well, we have to admit, but that’s my fault because I changed seven times. The next problem that we had is we are 3-1 up, on aggregate 6-2, it’s an incredibly busy period and some of the boys didn’t play 90 minutes for a while, so that’s then the next step. They are human beings, we are like this, you think, ‘OK… job done’ – and Benfica was still on fire and I respect that a lot.
“They scored really good goals; it is not that easy against us, it should not be that easy as it was tonight, but Benfica deserved the three goals. That’s how it is and, of course, we could have scored more, that’s clear in other situations, but I’m really happy about it. I know about challenges in football games which you face constantly and tonight it was after 3-1, everyone thought – me included – that’s it, and Benfica, ‘Let’s give it a try.’ I couldn’t respect that more.”
