Arne Slot says he has to convince his Liverpool players they are playing three finals over the coming week, urging fans to raise the roof against Premier League basement club Southampton on Saturday.
Liverpool are closing in on the Premier League title, have a 1-0 lead against Paris Saint-Germain after the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie and face Newcastle in next weekend’s League Cup final.
But Slot is anxious to focus on the visit of Southampton, even though his men are heavy favourites to extend their 13-point lead at the top of the table, at least for 24 hours.
“Our full focus, my full focus, is now on Southampton, which is the first of three finals to be played in the upcoming week,” Slot said on Friday.
The Dutchman was anxious to guard against complacency with the second leg against PSG and the League Cup final at Wembley to come.
“I hope, I truly hope, that our fans will be as loud as possible, at the loudest tomorrow,” he said. “And not in the final and not against PSG, but tomorrow.
“I have to convince my players that we play three finals,” he added. “And I’m hoping, and that’s why I every time I come up with the word final, that I influence our fans a bit as well, that they understand how important they’re going to be tomorrow.
“So I’m hoping they will not come into the stadium five minutes before the kick-off. I’m hoping the whole stadium is already completely filled half an hour before kick-off, and that these players get the reward for what they did in Paris, for working so hard.”
The Dutchman admitted his players had been “really, really, really lucky” to come away from their midweek trip to Paris with a win after the French side had dominated the game, with goalkeeper Alisson Becker playing a starring role.
“But, as Michael Jordan said once, the harder you work, the more luck you have. And this is the biggest compliment you have to give the players,” he said.
“They’ve worked incredibly hard, and I think even the second half we didn’t control possession, we were not the dominant team at all, but we controlled them better than in the first half.”
Slot, in his first season at Anfield, said it was sometimes important to tough matches out when not playing well.
“If you want to win something, if it’s the Premier League or the League Cup or the Champions League or the FA Cup, you need to have once in a while a game where you don’t play your best football and you are lucky, which is maybe not lucky if you work as hard as we do, to come and get away with a result,” he said.
“There are almost no teams that play 38 (league) games or in the Champions League as much, only good football, I think Real Madrid is one of the best examples of that.”
AFP