Jurgen Klopp: 'The tie is over but maybe not in three weeks'

Jurgen Klopp told reporters that he thinks the Champions League round of 16 tie with Real Madrid is over after his side's 5-2 defeat, but admitted that it could be different before the return leg.

Carlo Ancelotti said that he did not think that it is over. However, the Liverpool manager believes that the Italian was bluffing.

"I think Carlo thinks the tie is over - and I think it as well in the moment," he said.

"But in three weeks, it is how it is in these moments, the closer you get to the game the bigger our chances become and the less likely it is the tie is over.

Tonight, with the 5-2 and you see the game, they are pretty good in counter-attacking and we have to score three goals there and take some risk, so that could be a bit tricky.

We go there, I can say it now already, and try to win the game. If that is possible or not, I don't know now but that's what we will try and from there we will see."

On the performance

Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah gave the Reds the lead before a brutal capitulation led to the reigning champions running away with the contest.

Individual defensive errors were far too common, and were key factors in all of the visitors goals.

The manager gave his thoughts on the performance.

"The start in the game, in our situation where we are, it is really important that we see positive steps - and I think the first half was, besides the two goals we conceded, the best we've played for probably the whole season.

The first goal we conceded we have to defend better, there were enough players around, nobody puts a foot in and stuff like this. It's very tight and it is just a world-class moment from Vinicius then as well, but I think it is obvious we can defend it better.

Vinicius Jr scores his first of the night (Photo: Marc Atkins/GETTY Images)

The second goal, we cannot defend better because it is slapstick, but it equalled pretty much our second goal that we scored.

We don't want to concede goals but I think if we just think about the first half, everybody's impression was, 'Wow, that was a really good first half' even when we conceded two.

I really thought our people saw it exactly like that, they were outstanding tonight in a difficult game. The first half it was not too difficult to be positive but in the second half when it was difficult to stay positive, they were positive and I am thankful for that.

In the second half, the game was the game Real Madrid wanted to play.

Half-time, rather positive, to be honest. You think, OK, this happened, we have to play in this and that space, if we keep doing that they will have problems and then we start with conceding the third goal, which was a horrible goal and today it was pretty much the game-changer. We lost the momentum in that moment and never really got it back.

Both of the other goals they scored, one is deflected and they are not really well defended, to be honest. We lose the ball in the wrong moment, which is obviously a massive problem against Real Madrid with the counter-attacking threat they have and that's how it came to the result. That's it."

Result will not affect future performances

The Reds boss insisted that the result will not affect his players performances and confidence going forward in the season.

"I told the boys directly after the game, there are different things that happened tonight, this was a result that was the exact opposite of what we wanted.

We made mistakes around the goals, yes as well, and I said a couple of times that a defeat is a defeat if you don't learn from it.

If you don't learn tonight that the start of the game was outstanding and the way we played was us in a nutshell, was us like we want to be, and that's what we have to keep doing. So if we now allow this one game to be influential, well, we are really silly.

It's a different game than in Paris, of course, but anyway the intensity, the effort we showed, the football we played, pretty much everything was like how we want to see ourselves so we have to make sure that we keep that. I know, 5-2 could be damaging, but I hope I can make sure that is not happening.

Obviously Madrid is one of the best teams in the world so we don't face them, thankfully, every three days. There are things we have to improve, even in that period we could have been calmer on the ball. We prepared too much in these moments but it was really difficult to defend for Madrid I would say."