Jürgen Klopp apologised for Liverpool’s humiliating defeat by Napoli and admitted his team needs to reinvent itself following a miserable start to the season.
Liverpool were abject as they suffered one of their heaviest European defeats to leave Klopp raising his hands in apology to the away fans at Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.
“I know all the things they invest and it was a very disappointing night so I had to say sorry to them,” he said.
Napoli’s third successive home win against Liverpool could have been by a greater margin with Victor Osimhen missing a penalty and hitting a post, while the eye-catching Khvicha Kvaratskhelia had a shot cleared off the line. Liverpool’s shambolic defending and failure to counter-press stunned Klopp, who insisted it should be a watershed moment in their season.
“We have to reinvent ourselves, the basic things were not there,” the Liverpool manager said. “It is a difficult period, no doubt about that, but if you are not playing exceptionally well you still can defend on a really high level. We should be able to do that. At the minute we are in-between. If you concede a penalty after three minutes and then another after 10 minutes you cannot do that. It is a job to do. It is not that we have to invent a new kind of football but we have to improve. Everybody would be happy if we could play the stuff we used to play.
“Tonight was the least compact performance I saw from us for a long, long time. From any team in fact. Napoli were really good but we made it easy for them. We lost the ball in areas and the next situation was a counterattack. That should not happen.”
Klopp defended the decision to play his usual high line against a quick Napoli attack. “A high line is not a risk when you have pressure on the ball,” he said. “If you don’t have any pressure on the guy on the ball, yes it is a risk, but that is not normally the case. The problem is we never got close enough to put the opponent under pressure.”
The Liverpool manager was asked whether, in light of his team’s poor start to the season, he feared following Thomas Tuchel in losing his job at Chelsea. He replied: “Not really but who knows? There are different kinds of owners. Our owners are rather calm and expect me to sort the situation out and not expect that someone else will sort it. That is how they always saw it and on the day they change their thoughts they might tell me.”