The head coach of "Liverpool" Jurgen Klopp commented on the victory in the match of the third round of the English League Cup with "Derby County" (0:0, 3:2 penalty shootout).
Jurgen Klopp, Getty Images"I liked it, I liked everything again! This is the most difficult thing in football, when you face an opponent who defends deep, counterattacks, clears the ball, sets up and so on. Obviously, we didn't have much time to prepare for the game, but we could at least practice once because we have changed. That's what I said last year, people always don't like when you get knocked out and it's like, "You're a very young squad, you're not taking the opposition seriously." That's never been true, but we have to do two things: make sure we don't put anyone at risk, that's very important, and secondly, we really like to give young people that opportunity.
So now you can imagine, even if we had lost on penalties today, if people hadn't seen Stefan Bajcetic, Bobby Clarke, Ben Doak, Mel Frauendorf, Leighton Stewart, Fabio Carvalho just a little bit older, of course Kelvin Ramsey and then Harvey Elliott takes the field. So they were eight or nine really young guys and it's so nice to see them, nice to be able to give them a chance to play real men's football against a team that clearly wanted to go further. We all know, I'm pretty sure, I didn't ask anyone, that this game is really important for Derby in terms of money: another round, maybe another big EPL team away or in Derby, where they themselves would fill the stadium. And then to go through it is just a great experience," Klopp was quoted as saying by Liverpool's official website.
