Toure: We know just what to do at Augsburg
Kolo Toure insists he and his Liverpool teammates know exactly what is expected from them when they face FC Augsburg in the first leg of the sides’ Europa League last-32 tie this evening.
And the defender is anticipating an Anfield return leg reminiscent of ‘a final’ should the Reds squad execute Jürgen Klopp’s plan correctly in Germany and keep themselves on track for the next round.
An away goal and a clean sheet are the top priorities at the WWK Arena on Thursday, according to Toure, who has featured in four European fixtures so far this term.
But he knows that the visitors must be tactically disciplined if they are to achieve either of those aims against Markus Weinzierl’s team.
He told Liverpoolfc.com: “We need to be really good tactically in these games with two legs.
“The first game is very important, it’s vital, because if you score a goal away from home, or you get a clean sheet, it can be very important.
“Tactically we have to be really good and we have to be better than we have been defensively. We know that we have to play hard, be well organised, and play as a team.
“[We need to] play smart and work as hard as we can to get a good result there, and when we come back [for the second leg] it’s going to be to like a final.”
Prior to his move to Merseyside in the summer of 2013, Toure picked up Barclays Premier League and FA Cup winners’ medals during stints at Arsenal and Manchester City.
He has a chance to lift the League Cup for the first time in his career when Liverpool face Manchester City in the final at Wembley later this month – though he would still be without a top European honour.
The Ivorian acknowledges that a desire to succeed in continental competition provides extra impetus for him on a personal level, though he is equally motivated by the ‘amazing’ prospect of claiming a first trophy for the Reds.
“It [would be] great. I’ve played in a Champions League final and haven’t won it and I still think about that every day,” he added.
“I’m a winner and everywhere I go I want to win and do my best to win. I thank God for this chance and I really, really want to win a trophy for this club because it’s such a great club.
“I can see that to win a trophy here would be amazing and I want to be part of that.”
Kolo is under no illusions as to how difficult plotting a route to the Europa League final in Basel will be, though, even if Klopp’s men are among the favourites to clinch the trophy.
Having studied the Reds’ next opponents in detail, the 34-year-old knows that the first knockout test of the season in this competition is sure to be a difficult one.
He continued: “It’s massive because we know how Liverpool has been doing in European Cups and for us it means a lot. Every game is really, really important when you play for Liverpool Football Club.
“When you play for Liverpool you’re expected to be one of the teams that can win [trophies] but you have to show that on the pitch. That’s what we will try to do.
“Away in Germany it’s going to be a tough game, different atmosphere, different game, and tactically it’s going to be a different game, so we need to be ready for that.
“It’s going to be a tough game, [we have] big respect for this Augsburg team. After we came back from our win at Aston Villa, we saw their game against Bayern Munich [a 3-1 defeat] and we saw the organisation of this team.
“They have a few really good players up front, they have a young team that fights and they all work as a team. It’s going to be a tough game, definitely.”