On the day…
Another special day. Less pressure than four weeks ago, of course, when we had to win the game to get those celebrations. Now we knew we would get them. The energy in the stadium, how loud the fans were, the way the game ended in the last half hour, going down to 10 men and then seeing such a great reaction from the players and the fans which led to, in my opinion, a deserved goal – we deserved to go 1-1. These players and these fans hate losing, don’t want to lose and that’s what we showed again today.
On the crowd’s reception for Trent Alexander-Arnold…
I think the word ‘brilliant’ and our fans go together. So, how brilliant they were before the Tottenham game, during the Tottenham game and afterwards, I don’t think you see many special celebrations as you saw four weeks ago. I don’t think that you see many of them like we had today. It’s no surprise to me at all that they were brilliant again today as they were throughout the whole season, as they were towards Trent. But maybe it also helps what an unbelievable half he played. The passes he played, if you make a highlight of this, probably it’s going to take you three, four or five minutes. The ball to Darwin [Nunez] was another level, was next level.
He deserved it. I’m very happy for him, for everyone in and around the club that things worked out as they did. I think everybody could see how difficult he had it after the game, and that tells you how hard it is to leave a club like this. That’s all we can try to do: to make it so hard for the players to leave. Many of them stay, now Trent has made the decision to go, unfortunately for us. But it was great for him to have a farewell as he had today.
On going again next season…
Hopefully that appetite will be big but we will see this when pre-season starts and when we start again. A few of them have already shown that they can win multiple times. I’m talking about the ones that have won the league and the Champions League here before and these are also the players that just keep on performing year after year after, even if they don’t win it.
A few of them now won the league for the first time and they have to show that they have the same mentality as the ones that have won it here before. I’m looking forward to being part of that. We know it’s going to be tough again. It was already very tough this season. It’s going be probably just as tough or even tougher next season because the club that we’ve competed with this season have in every window always invested a lot of money and they’re probably going to do so this summer as well.
We did things differently last season. I don’t think it has been said a lot but maybe I’m completely wrong because the one that told me maybe lied to me, but he said to me that since Alex Ferguson won the league, the last time he won the league, not a team has had so many academy minutes as our academy players had this season. So that’s been really special. Apart from signing Federico Chiesa last summer, we didn’t do a lot, and that makes it maybe even more special to win it this season. Now we will see if the team needs. We can do things better already by ourselves without adding any players. But if we can then we will definitely do so.
