Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp insists his side are “not in dreamland” after taking a 3-1 lead from the away leg of their Champions League quarter-final tie against Benfica.
The Reds led 2-0 at half-time after a dominant opening 45 minutes in Tuesday night’s meeting in Lisbon thanks to goal from Ibrahima Konate and Sadio Mane.
Konate’s error allowed Darwin Nunez to halve the deficit soon after the restart and appeared to let the Portuguese side back into the tie but Luis Diaz scored late on to restore the two-goal cushion ahead of next week’s return leg at Anfield.
Diogo Jota then missed an even later chance to make it four and surely put the tie to bed when played through by Jordan Henderson, but Klopp had no complaints at full-time.
“Coming here and winning an away game in the Champions League is tough,” Klopp told BT Sport. “Benfica fought for their lives, we gave them a little bit too much but they deserved the goal as well, even though we could have defended better - they had counter attacks, it is not easy to keep the ball all the time and the more risk you take, they have really good players.
“It was a tough game, what I expected, the crowd was there, we knew 2-0 is nothing, nice but not more. They score the goal and it was much more open than we wanted but the goalie was probably the best player and made a couple of really good saves - we are two goals up, half-time, let’s keep going.
“We usually score more [in those situations] but we didn’t, mainly because the goalie, credit to him, and that is pretty much the story. We could have scored in the last minute, 4-1 would be nice but we are not in dreamland here.
“We know much more about our opponent, they won at Ajax, we are aware of the quality and have a nice game in between but then we will be ready again.”
