Jurgen Klopp has revealed how his reaction to suffering Champions League to Atletico Madrid in March was put into perspective. The second leg at Anfield, during which Diego Simeone's side prevailed in extra time, was the last high profile game to be played before much of Europe went into lockdown at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
"I woke up Monday morning [March 9] and heard about Madrid closing schools and universities," Klopp said in a new film 'The End of the Storm', documenting his time at Liverpool. "We had an incredibly important Champions League game against Atletico. And we had five to six thousand people from Madrid coming to the game tomorrow. That made absolutely no sense.
"It was very difficult that night to prepare a football game, to ask the players to do everything to win it, without knowing what will happen the day after. "I remember I was really angry about the way Atletico Madrid played. But five minutes later after I did all my interviews I thought: 'What an idiot are you, you worry about losing a football game but the world is in the most difficult place ever.'"