Liverpool face RB Leipzig in the first leg of the Round of 16 in the Champions League on Tuesday and this match will be interesting for a lot of reasons.
Firstly, Tuesday’s game will be played not in Germany but in Hungary due to all the restrictions in Germany and then there’s the two drastic forms of the two sides.
Liverpool have suffered three losses in their previous three Premier League matches and they are now outside of the top-four in the league table. And on the other hand, RB Leipzig have lost just three games in the Bundesliga this season and right now they are second on the table, just four points behind league leaders Bayern Munich.
Nagelsmann is currently one of the most interesting managers in European football and his side have achieved a lot of great things over the past few seasons. And the young manager’s unpredictability and tactical awareness could be a real headache for Liverpool, according to Jurgen Klopp.
Klopp said, as per Liverpoolfc.com: “Julian is an extraordinary talent. He’s still young as a coach and he’s already proven virtually everything that you can prove as a manager. He’s talented and he seems young and fresh.
“But he’s still also very experienced and serious. And he’s got a really varied profile in terms of his teams and the way they play – there’s a lot of variety, a lot of flexibility, he’s always got different ideas, different ways of reacting.
“He’s got an absolute eye for players, where to play them, how to deal with the players. That’s my impression of him. He’s just an outstanding manager already now and in the future when we are all old he will be even better, I’m sure.
“The last 16 means the 16 best teams in Europe and we’re still part of them. And, accordingly, we would like to go for it.
“What’s cool about football is, no matter what the outcome of the previous match is, you’ve got the same chance for the next match. You have to keep that faith and sometimes you lose faith and need to get faith back.
“We know how difficult it is against Leipzig; I assume Leipzig know how difficult it is against us. And we’ll just try to make sure that our football, that can still be excellent, wins. It just hasn’t been the results recently and that’s what we’re going to start changing tomorrow night.”
Liverpool take on Everton in the Merseyside Derby next weekend and Jurgen Klopp might have one eye on that key Premier League game. But unfortunately, the manager does not have the bench strength to heavily rotate his starting line-up even if he wanted to.
