Whether it is a nice birthday present to achieve victory…
Yes. I’ve said it a few times, normally you celebrate your birthday with your friends and family. But this was a really good alternative, playing a first Champions League game against a special club for Liverpool, but also against a special club for the Dutch, in a beautiful stadium. And then to win like we did, after being 1-0 down after five minutes and still having the Nottingham Forest result in our minds. I think it was very nice to see the players take control of the game and in the end we scored three goals and won 3-1.
Especially the performances of Gakpo and Ryan Gravenberch …
I was just standing at the desk next to Clarence Seedorf. You also talked about Ryan and Cody and I said it’s a special place for Dutch players because players used to play here. To put in a performance like that is always nice for a Liverpool player and it’s even nicer in a place like this. Yes, you can pick those two but I think I could pick a few others who played really well. As always, it’s very difficult for an individual to play well when the whole team is not playing well and vice versa. The whole team played well and then the individuals can shine from there.
About being the fourth coach, alongside Bobby Robson, Roberto Mancini and Arsene Wenger, to win a Champions League match on his birthday…
It’s pretty good company but I hope to do more special things in the future and be in the special company of these legends of the game rather than just winning a tie on my birthday. Hopefully in the future I also try to manage certain things that these managers did. This wasn’t the main thing I was able to achieve.
When asked if he felt that set pieces could harm Milan…
I don’t look at the other team, I always look at my own team. I think we were a little bit disappointed with the result against Nottingham Forest (but) we were also disappointed that we got eight corners and didn’t score, but we were very close. We felt that after all the work we put in on set pieces, we should be rewarded at some point.
I think it was two very good set pieces and two very good headers that got us two goals. That was important because I think we were very confident on the ball and pressed really well, but in the end you need goals. We hit the bar a couple of times from open play today, so we needed set pieces and it was nice to see that we got them for all the work my assistants and the players did. It’s nice to see that rewarded today.
