Arjen Robben has hailed “great” Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp for transforming the team into Premier League and Champions League contenders.
The Bayern Munich and Dutch great delivered his verdict on his club’s last-16 opponents in Europe’s premier competition ahead of next Tuesday’s first leg showdown at Anfield.
Robben explained how the current Liverpool side are different to the 2004-05 one managed by Rafael Benitez to Champions League glory and which famously beat Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea team in that season’s semi-finals.
‘Now I think it changed and they developed really well,” Robben told the Mail on Sunday. “Credit the new manager, who has done a great job. Last year they were in Champions League final, doing well in the league and at the moment they are level at the top, City is close.
“That’s the title everybody is waiting for in Liverpool. It’s a long, long time ago that they won the League and that’s the one, of course, they’re dreaming of.”
OPINION
Liverpool fans will appreciate the compliment of Robben, a modern great who has been an international and world star for a decade-and-a-half. Such longevity at elite clubs – he has been destroying defences at Bayern for a decade ahead of leaving the Allianz Arena at the end of the season – is the mark of the real A-listers. Robben will miss the first leg at Anfield due to injury, although he is hopeful of playing the second match at home, when he would likely come in direct opposition with Andy Robertson, the outstanding left-back in the Premier League this season. Robertson has had a brilliant campaign, both in terms of defending and providing quality service on the overlap in the final third, but he is unlikely to have faced too many wingers with the technical quality and goalscoring potential of Robben. Everyone knows what Robben is going to try and do, cut in from the right flank on to that wand of a left foot to create and score goals, but stopping him has always proved more difficult.