Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk admitted on Wednesday that his team faces a “nearly impossible” task to continue their Champions League campaign after losing 5-2 to Real Madrid in the first leg of the final price.
Van Dijk’s teammates took a 2-0 lead at Anfield on Tuesday, but then conceded five goals against the record-holder for most continental titles (14), for Liverpool to suffer the biggest losses in their home European league. scene.
“After three weeks in Madrid we have an almost impossible task ahead of us, but when the time comes we will focus and do our best to present the club in the best possible way,” Van Dyck said of the second leg in the Spanish capital in March. 15.
He added: “The only thing we can do is look at what happened, learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen in the next match against Crystal Palace (Saturday in the League at stage 25). easy, but it’s not, it’s the harsh truth.”
He continued: “If you look back at the last two games, you can see that we played well (beating Everton and Newcastle) and that’s something we should also focus on and not panic about.”
The Dutch international defender emphasized that Real Madrid “have a lot of great players in all positions and they can punish you and take advantage of your mistakes, and that’s exactly what they did, especially in the second half.”
And he added: “It is clear that we see mistakes (we did) that should not be repeated, but they happen in football. We are not robots.”
The loss added to the hardships of the Reds, who are having a poor season in terms of results as they lost the League Cup and FA Cup titles and are eighth in the Premier League, seven points behind Tottenham. finished fourth and last qualified for the Champions League.
Liverpool also suffers in defense, as this season they conceded three or more goals in 8 matches, and received a new moral blow by injuring their defender Joe Gomez in a match with Real Madrid.
Source: agencies