Jurgen Klopp hails ‘absolutely insane’ Liverpool win as academy graduates ‘a pain’

Jurgen Klopp described Liverpool’s performance as “absolutely insane” and hailed the “kids” for the role they played in the Carabao Cup final win.

The game was decided deep into extra time by Virgil van Dijk, who had an effort in normal time ruled out for offside.

Chelsea gave as good as they got for the majority of the clash but were described as “blue billion pound bottlejobs” by Gary Neville in extra time.

Klopp said he was “so proud” of his players and explained why the academy graduates who came on “are a pain” in training.

He told Sky Sports: “What happened here tonight is absolutely insane.

“These things are not possible, what an academy full of character, it’s unbelievable what happened here.

“I’m so proud that I could be part of that, wow. We deserve it, we had lucky moments they had lucky moments and the boys showed up, it was really cool.

“I’m pretty sure when we brought on all the kids people thought ‘OK that’s it now, they give up, they have a game on Wednesday’ but that was really not the case.

“We thought we need fresh legs and the fresh legs were fresh but very young. They did the job.

“It’s the environment we created, the boys trained for a pretty long time with us so they know exactly what they have to do.

“In training when they have time for 11 v 11 they are a pain to be honest! That’s what you have to be in these moments and they were today as well!”

Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino admitted losing the final was “so painful” but hopes his side can learn from the match.

He told Sky Sports: “I think it is difficult when you lose a final because it’s one game.

“We lost the last minute of the game and it’s so painful and now we need to take the positive things, we need to keep going, we need to push and to use this type of game to learn and do better.

“You lose a final because you need to be clinical in front of the goal, you need to score goals and we concede.”

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