Klopp: Liverpool's character was the most important thing in a game with Ajax

Jürgen Klopp explained why the character Liverpool showed in clinching a late 2-1 win against AFC Ajax was the most important factor.

- I think if you put the two games, Napoli and tonight, next to each other you don’t recognise probably that it’s the same sport. So, wholly different – the start was different, the middle was different, finish was different. The football we played, the way we defended, everything was different. Much higher intensity, much more aggression, braver, more ready. How I said, everything was better. It was a first step, nothing else, not more, but everything was good.

Сharacter is the most important thing. Nobody gets carried away tonight, it’s not that the boys sit in the dressing room and cannot get their arms down. So, it’s more relief; we showed us and the outside world we understood, we reacted. The boys really reacted, I liked that a lot. It was a super-intense game. But how it is in life, when you have a problem you want to sort it. If you want to sort it, we all hope as human beings that we sort it immediately, ‘done’. So now we put a bigger shift in, now we work harder again and that means immediately we will get everything back. But that’s not like this.

If you want, the whole story of the game is maybe a real help. I don’t think we need it, especially now with a two-and-a-half-week break until we play again, which is strange. But I was not surprised when they scored, not at all. Not because I thought we defended that bad that they should have scored, no, just because it’s pretty likely in situations like this that they don’t need a lot. And the goal they scored was incredible. I think pretty much each other shot Ali would have saved but this one was not to save, put it in the far corner. Yes, reaction to show that we are still able to do these kinds of things, that was the most important thing tonight.