Problem-solver Klopp presses reset to propel Liverpool into another final

Luis Díaz revved the engine, priming the afterburners. He blazed up the left, taking Juan Foyth, the Villarreal right-back, with him. He slowed and then he went again, purring away from him. The Liverpool winger had just entered as a half-time substitute in his team’s Champions League semi-final, second leg at the Estadio de la Cerámica and he was testing his marker, working out whether he had the beating of him. The answer was emphatic. He did.

Díaz knew it. So did everyone and, as Liverpool set about starting Tuesday night’s tie – albeit 45 minutes late – it felt as though something had been plugged in, the power returning.

For Jürgen Klopp, however, the catalyst lay elsewhere, in a detail closer to his heart, more fundamental. The Liverpool manager had watched everything go wrong in the first half, his team’s 2-0 first-leg lead wiped out – and it might have been worse.

Alisson had been fortunate not to concede a penalty just before Francis Coquelin scored Villarreal’s second goal and it was one of those challenges that, no matter how many times you watched the replay, it was difficult to tell what the goalkeeper had taken first – the ball or Giovani Lo Celso. It was messy, rather like Liverpool’s performance; framed by doubt, the benefit of which probably saved Alisson in the eyes of the VAR jury.

“The whole world thought the game was more 3-0 than 2-1,” Klopp said, going on to reveal that he wanted to show his players a clip at half-time of a positive moment to give them a lift. He would be told by his assistant Pete Krawietz that there was nothing available. There was no buildup play, no momentum, Liverpool scrambled by Villarreal’s fast start and Boulaye Dia’s third-minute opener. “We had 11 problems in the first