'It's only pain': Jürgen Klopp sums up the spirit of Liverpool's squad
The prevalence of a simple, three-word attitude present throughout Liverpool’s squad has enabled their remarkable feats this season: ‘It’s only pain.’
That was Jürgen Klopp’s distilled description of the mindset he sees within a group who have amassed 94 points with one Premier League game remaining and who, incredibly, reached their second successive Champions League final by beating Barcelona 4-0 on Tuesday.
“The group of players we have here is so special,” the manager said.
“Since Tuesday, maybe Wednesday morning, if I had to find a very short description for the group I would say ‘it’s only pain’. That’s how they went through the season. There was always pain, it was always hard, it was always difficult but ‘it’s only pain, let’s carry on’.”
Following the unforgettable victory over Barcelona at Anfield, Klopp revealed that he had told his team pre-match that overcoming a three-goal, first-leg deficit against Lionel Messi and co was possible due to their ‘mentality of giants’.
Asked to explain what makes that so ahead of their final top-flight outing of the campaign against Wolverhampton Wanderers, the boss continued: “The readiness to deal with difficulties, to deal with problems, in a game.
“That’s how it is because we have a specific plan for a game and then it never works out 100 per cent, but to stick to the plan is really important. So the relationship between us has got better and better and better and better because of our own experiences, what we did together, what we wanted to do, how we deal with the moments when it was not that beautiful and all that stuff.
“So the boys did really an unbelievably consistent job and being consistent is the most difficult thing in life and football as well, because there are a lot of good footballers out there but to show your quality week in and week out, that’s the most important thing to be really successful. That was the biggest step, obviously, we did so far.
“So the boys were a lot of times really happy during the week, but there was never a moment where I had to tell them to calm down, now information again. But how can we get 94 points until this point with having a random group of players?
“We don’t have that, we have a really special group and that’s why we are where we are. But there are still two very important games to play and one of them is on Sunday.
“We need exactly the same again and if we can do that, we have a chance to win the game. If we have a chance, we should do it.”