James Milner today revealed the full extent of Jurgen Klopp’s half-time team talk that inspired Liverpool’s remarkable comeback against Borussia Dortmund.
The Bundesliga club appeared to be on course for a place in the semi-finals after heading into the interval at Anfield last night with a comfortable two-goal cushion.
But the Reds’ turnaround in fortunes saw them strike four times after the break to set up a semi-final clash with Villarreal.
Klopp revealed that he urged his players to invoke the spirit of the club’s legendary Champions League-winning triumph of 2005.
But Milner, taking over captaincy duties from the injured Jordan Henderson, has lifted the lid on the full extent of the Liverpool manager’s pep talk.
He said: “The manager was brilliant. He was calm. He said, ‘It is a long way back but we have nothing to lose. Go out and do it’.
“He obviously mentioned a certain night in Istanbul and that there have been other great nights in this club’s history when we have been in a similar position.
“It would have been easy for him to come in effing and blinding but he didn’t. He was like, ‘Let’s go for it. It is going to be difficult’.
“The drive from everyone, from the fans before we got into the ground, from the manager, the staff, the players was great.”
With a place in next month’s Europa League final in Basel now potentially just 180 minutes away, Milner insists that Liverpool have the belief to push on for silverware.
“It is a young team and sometimes we struggle for consistency,” he added.
“But to beat a team like Dortmund and to come back the way we did, going this far in a major European competition, is obviously massive.
“We got to the League Cup final and while we didn’t win we put ourselves in position again. Hopefully we can get belief from this. If we can beat them, we can beat anyone and hopefully we can now go on to win some silverware.
“It was the same when I was at Manchester City and we managed to win that first piece of silverware. You get that belief and hunger and that feeling that, ‘hang on, we can go again.’ Hopefully this result will kick us on to do that.”