Klopp admits he will have a ‘hard night’ but he doesn’t want to see any tears from Liverpool
JURGEN KLOPP stressed there should be no tears after Liverpool came so close to ending 29 years of title pain.
Instead, he vowed his Kop stars are destined for greatness, roaring: “This team is wonderful — now we go again.
“Congratulations to Manchester City and respect to them.
“But we have closed a gap of 25 points or so and this team has learned so much in the past three years.
“Now we have three weeks to prepare for the Champions League final and let’s give it a go.
“Finishing second in the league is not exactly what I want right now.
“So it is going to be a hard night to get used to it — but I don’t see anyone crying out there.
“I didn’t see anybody really on the ground, or completely ‘done’.
We will make the next step
Jurgen Klopp
“People love what the boys did over the year.
“That’s already special, after such a long season, all the brilliant things you could say about us and this club.
“We can decide how we deal with that, which information we take out of that, nobody else can decide that.
“And if we are ready to make the next step, we will make the next step — and that’s the plan.”
Klopp’s Liverpool finished the most thrilling two-horse title race of the Prem era with a record-breaking second-place finish of 97 points after a 2–0 home win against Wolves.
After 27 minutes, as City at first struggled at Brighton, they were top before Pep Guardiola’s back–to-back champions eased to a 4–1 win.
Boss Klopp admitted: “In the end, this day was not so easy — but not completely surprising.
“But this team learned so much, made crazy jumps in terms of maturity and experience and I feel we enjoy the ride.
“It is a better season than I played with my Borussia Dortmund when we were champions in Germany.
“We cannot ignore that one team were better — we could not get rid of them and for so long they could not get rid of us either.
“This is only the first step. Always after a good year we lost key players in the past — but we won’t this time.
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“There is another level we can take and I’m pretty sure we’ll take it.”
But he knows his Reds will have to as he warned: “As long as City are around with their financial power, no team will pass them easily.
“We need to be very close to perfection to win the Premier League.”