Jurgen Klopp admitted that he wanted Liverpool to prove that they were 'mentality monsters' against Villarreal and is ecstatic that he got his wish.
The Reds advanced to their third Champions League final in five years after beating the Yellow Submarine 5-2 on aggregate, but were given quite a scare when Unai Emery's side wiped out their first-leg deficit in the opening 45 minutes at the Estadio de la Ceramica.
Liverpool then produced a ruthless second half display to ensure that they advanced to the final in Paris, and Klopp - who has now reached the joint-most amount of European Cup finals as a manager with four - admitted post-match that the feeling of reaching the showpiece event remains special.
"Outstanding, massive – it feels like the first one because it’s always so special," he said. "I love it, the sound of it…the whole night.
"It feels so special because it was so difficult for us. Before the game, I told the boys I wanted the headlines to be the mentality monsters were in town. I wanted it from the first moment but the second half was like that. How we came back in the second half was so special. It was a top performance."
Klopp was not impressed with what he saw in a dire first-half display and opted to bring on Luis Diaz for Diogo Jota after the interval, but defended the Portuguese forward and insisted his substitution didn't necessarily mean he was to blame.
"But Jota was not the problem in the first half - we had 11 problems in the first half," he added.
"The start was really difficult. We looked like we were impressed by them. We had no real build-up and we didn’t play in the right spaces. We played into their hands. Our minds were not right. We felt the pressure. It was a football problem in the first half. And we had to solve it with football."
Source: 90min
