Football
Glenn Price, Liverpool correspondent 6y

Jurgen Klopp hails Liverpool's club-record seven-goal haul at Maribor

MARIBOR, Slovenia -- Jurgen Klopp believes it will be difficult for Liverpool to break the record they set following the 7-0 thrashing of Maribor in the Champions League.

Liverpool delivered the best-ever away win in the European Cup or Champions League by an English team at the Stadion Ljudski vrt on Tuesday night.

Roberto Firmino (two), Mohamed Salah (two), Philippe Coutinho, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Trent Alexander-Arnold all got on the scoresheet in Slovenia.

The Reds recorded their first win in Group E after two frustrating draws in their opening two matches, and Klopp feels the result was thoroughly deserved after heading into the game on a run of one win in their last eight.

"I was told immediately after the game, I had no idea actually," Klopp told at a news conference when asked about Liverpool's record-breaking performance. "We spoke a few times about how the wonderful history of this club can sometimes feel like a backpack so it's nice to write history, and it will probably be difficult to beat that.

"It's quite rare that you win 7-0 but it shows again we did unbelievably well tonight.

"I think Maribor was quite confident before the game because of different reasons [and] because they are a very good team.

"We could read the newspaper today here because my assistant can read the language, and I asked him: 'What do they write?' They were quite confident because an English team had never won in Maribor, so that's obviously another thing that we did for the first time."

Despite two draws in their opening fixtures, Liverpool now top Group E on goal difference over Spartak Moscow, who thrashed Sevilla 5-1.

Klopp added: "I think, really, the boys deserved that because they really kept on going. It's just good to work together but the only problem is that you always have to explain why you didn't win.

"It's probably not the most difficult thing to explain, especially after our games because you see we create the chances but we did not use them. That's not enough for you, how you know, and then you put the finger on all the other problem we sometimes had. So, it was a challenge and it will be a challenge to stay confident in this league.

"We try to use the result now, but the next game is against Tottenham so it's pretty likely it will not be a similar result. But no problem, we have four or five days to recover and prepare for the game, so that's good and we are already looking forward to it."

Oxlade-Chamberlain came on as a second-half substitute and went on to score his first goal for Liverpool following his summer move from Arsenal.

Klopp feels the goal will give the England international confidence going forward, and praised Daniel Sturridge for his unselfishness in squaring to allow Oxlade-Chamberlain an easy finish.

"It helps a lot," the Reds boss said. "He could have scored two, but it was nice from Daniel how he did it and made this goal. It was cool and I liked it.

"It helps in a lot always. The performance was very active. He was not involved immediately because we forgot there was a fresh player on the right wing. We didn't involve him from the beginning. But when they recognised that now Ox is there, he was really involved and it was good."

Summer signing Salah scored twice in 20 first-half minutes, taking his tally for the season to eight, and knew a performance like that from Liverpool was just around the corner.

The Egypt winger said: "It was a great game, we did good in that game. An important result for us. We need to keep looking forward. The team did good and we had a good result.

"I'm very happy. We had bad luck in the last few games, we missed many chances, but I think everyone had confidence the results were coming."

^ Back to Top ^