Dejan Lovren delivered a half-time ‘wake up’ call in Liverpool’s Champions League win over Manchester City.
An early goal saw the Premier League leaders heading into the break of Tuesday’s quarter-final second leg with their aggregate deficit reduced.
But the Reds struck back through Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino to book their place in the last four of Europe’s elite club competition.
Lovren has revealed that he issued a rallying call to his teammates inside the dressing room during the interval at the Etihad Stadium.
He said: “To be honest I was shouting a bit at half-time.
“I told the lads to wake up because it was not good enough and I said we were sitting too deep.
“Of course Klopp said ‘Yes, you are sitting too deep because you are not pushing up’. He wanted me and Virg (Virgil van Dijk) to be more compact and push the team up.
“But it was quite difficult you know to push up when City had the ball.
“It was all positive, there was nothing negative, but I needed to remind the guys that we had 50 minutes to be in the semi-finals of the Champions League and we needed to give more.
“The first 10-15 minutes wasn’t good enough. When you see the second half, again they had a couple of chances but nothing too serious.”
The Croatian defender admits that Real Madrid are the only team he hopes Liverpool will avoid in Friday’s draw for the Champions League semi-final.
“The competition is wide open and anything is possible now,” added Lovren.
“It depends on who you get in the semi-finals. From a personal point of view, I don’t want Real Madrid in the semi-finals.
“They have a lot of experience in the Champions League, a lot of records and over the past three seasons it is always them.
“But whoever we get will find it difficult to come to Anfield and score some goals.”