Atletico Madrid boss Diego Simeone has aimed a fresh dig at those who criticised him in the wake of his team’s Champions League win at Anfield.
The Spanish team looked destined to leave the competition after goals from Wijnaldum and Roberto Firmino had wiped out Atletico’s first leg advantage over Liverpool.
The Reds held the lead in the tie for just three minutes, however, once Marcos Llorente had responded to Frimino’s extra time goal, pouncing on an error from goalkeeper Adrian.
Llorente fired home in front of the Klopp moments later and Alvaro Morata put the icing on the cake with the last kick of the game to spark scenes of joy among the visiting supporters.
Jurgen Klopp criticised Simeone’s defensive tactics throughout both legs of the contest and the German struggled to hide his ire during his post match media duties.
He said: ‘I don’t understand with the quality they have that they play this kind of football. I don’t understand that. But the winner is always right. When I see players like Llorente, Koke, Saul… they could play proper football but they stand deep in their own half and have counter-attacks.
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‘I realise I am a really bad loser, especially when the boys put such an effort in against world class players on the other side who defend with two rows of four.’
Atletico are still waiting to disover their quater final opponents with the Champions League having been suspended as a result of the coronavirus crisis but they won’t be changing their plan whoever they go up against.
Simeone told AS: ‘Football is like boxing because you have to know when it is time to attack. At Atletico, we know the virtues we have as a team.
‘The example is when we played against Liverpool, a tremendous team, we knew that we could hurt him.
‘When they talk about how we were lucky, I think of a team that lost 2-0 and scored three goals. That is not luck. The games must be valued as a whole. ‘
Simeone went on to say that Alvaro Morata was carrying an injury when he came on to score the final goal of the game, but he was happy to see his faith in the player pay off.
“Against Liverpool, we knew that Morata was injured, and that he was going to relapse. We lost 1-0 and the tension went up,” Simeone added.
“I thought ‘how could I put Morata there, carry on, and get injured again’, I committed suicide; I am going to put up with it until the end. And it went well: he was injured but he scored.”
