Updated at 15.32
JURGEN KLOPP HAS expressed his pride at how his former club Borussia Dortmund performed in their rescheduled Champions League fixture last night, just 24 hours after the team bus was caught up in an explosion.
The German club was hit by three blasts while travelling from the team hotel to Signal Iduna Park, for the first leg of their quarter-final tie against Monaco on Tuesday. The attack resulted in defender Marc Bartra needing surgery for a fractured wrist.
He now faces a four-week stint on the sidelines following the procedure, according to sources at Sky Sports.
Speaking at at a press conference ahead of Liverpool’s Premier League meeting with West Brom this weekend, the former Dortmund boss said that hearing the news was ‘difficult’ for him.
“Everyone can imagine (that) it was a really difficult moment for me because I don’t know how I often I have been in team hotel with my team in Dortmund. I know exactly the road, I know exactly the place where it is. A lot of my friends were in the bus.
It was strange, I was really concerned. I was scared for them. In the first moment it looked like maybe relief and not too serious, and then you hear the more information you could get, the more serious it got and that was really difficult.
“I had contact with a few people but I didn’t want to bother them with my silly questions. So, I was waiting like the rest of the world for more information.”
Uefa has come out to deny criticism regarding their decision to re-fix the match for the evening after the incident took place, with Dortmund player Sokratis Papastathopoulos suggesting that his side were treated like ‘animals.’
When asked for his reaction to the dispute, Klopp said he could appreciate both sides of the argument, while also adding that Uefa officials may have felt differently about postponing the match for longer, if they had been in the bus.
“I watched the game and can 100% understand both sides. It was difficult, first of all, to find another date in this really tight schedule because when would you want to play the game?
“Of course, I think everyone would understand if you say, ‘don’t play it,’ and find a solution next week or whatever. I saw the game and I was really proud of Borussia Dortmund, how they handled it, how they created this atmosphere.
“Again, the game was not too important but when they played the game, they tried to be at their best and after the game I saw the faces of my former players and I saw the shock in their eyes. It was really hard and I forgot about the game again, I only thought about them.
It was difficult but it’s a really serious thing. It will obviously take time to deal with it in a proper way because I’m pretty sure if some of the people who made the decision afterwards would have been in the bus, they wouldn’t have played the game. But when you are not in the bus, I’m sure you cannot imagine how it was exactly.”
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