Jürgen Klopp has claimed he wanted
to draw Manchester United in the last 16 of the Europa
League as Liverpool need to “clear something” after two defeats to Louis van
Gaal’s team this season.
England’s most successful clubs were
pitted against each other for the first time in European competition on Friday,
with the mouth-watering ties taking place at Anfield on 10 March and Old
Trafford a week later. The first leg will kick-off at 8.05pm, the second at
6pm. Van Gaal has never lost against Liverpool,
winning all four Premier League games as United manager including a 3-1 win at
home to Brendan Rodgers’ team in September and last month’s 1-0 win on
Merseyside.
Wayne Rooney’s 78th-minute winner at
Anfield effectively ended Liverpool’s hopes of Champions League qualification
and left Klopp wanting redress. Having predicated a meeting of the fierce north
west rivals before Liverpool overcame Augsburg in the last 32, the Liverpool
manager believes that opportunity has arrived in Europe.
“It’s great. Really,” said Klopp on
the stand-out tie of the round. “We deserve these games. It is not easy but you
can ask my staff. They asked me yesterday who do we want and I said Manchester
United. I think we have to clear something. We had a good game when I was here
but we lost 1-0. That was not what we deserved that day but we got it. Life has
given us a chance to make it better and that is what we have to do and will try
to do. In this round there was no easy game. Manchester United, cool.”
United have the advantage of the
second leg on home soil but face a demanding fixture schedule compared to
Liverpool. Van Gaal’s side host West Ham United in the FA Cup quarter-finals
between the Europa League ties – when Liverpool will have a
free weekend having been knocked out of the competition by Slaven Bilic’s team
– and have the Manchester derby at the Etihad Stadium three days after the
second leg.
Tottenham Hotspur’s reward for a
comprehensive defeat of Fiorentina is a meeting with Klopp’s former club, and
tournament favourites, Borussia Dortmund. Mauricio Pochettino’s team will be at
White Hart Lane for the second leg against the second placed side in the
Bundesliga. Gary Neville also faces a difficult task to reach the
quarter-finals after Valencia landed an all-Spanish affair against Athletic
Bilbao.
The other ties feature Shakhtar
Donetsk against Anderlecht, Basel v Sevilla, who are looking to win this
competition for the third year running, and Villarreal v Bayer Leverkusen.
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