Liverpool defeated Chelsea 1-0 in yet another final at Wembley to win the Carabao Cup, with Jürgen Klopp describing it as the “most special trophy he ever won.”
Virgil van Dijk scored the lone goal of the game late in extra time to give the Reds an unprecedented tenth victory in the competition.
At 118 minutes played, the captain won the match with a diving header from a corner by Kostas Tsimikas, which ended with Liverpool playing their youthful side on the pitch.
It was a game filled with much drama, with both sides seeing their goals disallowed and Moises Caicedo luckily escaping a red card. In the end, it was Liverpool that claimed the win, ensuring that Chelsea have now lost six consecutive domestic finals.
Klopp hails ‘special Carabao Cup triumph’
Set to leave Liverpool at the end of the season, Klopp did not hold back in his post-match comments, describing the Carabao Cup win as the best in his coaching career.
He said: “That would be cool if I could see goals coming, I would relax [in] a lot of moments of my life. No, I loved it. I think that was the moment where everything just felt, ‘Come on.’ What we see here today is so exceptional, we might never see again and not because I am on the sideline, because these things don’t happen in football. “
“I got told outside that there’s an English phrase, ‘you don’t win trophies with kids’ – I didn’t know that. Yeah! There are longer careers than mine but in more than 20 years, [it’s] easily the most special trophy I ever won. It’s absolutely exceptional. Sometimes I get asked if I’m proud of this, proud of that, proud of that, and it’s really tricky. I wish I could feel pride more often, I just don’t do. Tonight there’s an overwhelming feeling, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on here?’ I was proud of everybody involved in everything here”.”
“I was proud of our people for the way they pushed us. I was proud of the staff for creating this kind of atmosphere surrounding where these boys can just do what they are best at. I was proud of our Academy. I was proud of my coaches. I was proud of so many things. It was really overwhelming. It had nothing to do with maybe my last game at Wembley – I checked that, nothing to do with that. It was really because of how everybody contributed, seeing the faces after the game of the kids – Jayden Danns. Can you create in football stories which definitely nobody will ever forget? It’s so difficult because this happened before, this happened before, they won it then, there. This tonight, if you find the same story with academy players coming on against a top, top, top side and still winning it, I never heard”.
