Van Dijk: ‘Atalanta punished Liverpool sloppiness’ | OneFootball

Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk did not hold back with his assessment of his side’s shortcomings in their 3-0 loss at home to Atalanta in the Europa League quarter-final first leg, admitting that the Italians punished a ‘sloppy’ display.

Atalanta led 1-0 at half-time through Gianluca Scamacca, who added a second 20 minutes after the re-start, before Mario Pasalic tucked home an Ederson rebound to round off a magnificent, albeit slightly surprising display.

Liverpool, who had been the clear favourites on home turf heading into Thursday night’s encounter, appeared slightly off the pace and were not able to produce too many clear-cut chances with Atalanta’s impressive pressing game.

Van Dijk post-match assessment

Assessing his teammates overall performance with TNT Sports after full-time, van Dijk said: “Obviously it’s not great. A very, very disappointing evening. Too many individual mistakes and we got punished for it. It feels bad.

“With the man-marking system they do, we have to do much better. When we have the ball we have to do better and be much stronger. The spaces were open and they punished us immediately.

“A very disappointing night for all of us but we can’t dwell on it for too long. We need everyone to look forward to another big game. We have to switch back onto getting results.

“We were wide open. It’s more that we conceded the goals because we lost the ball in difficult areas. It hurts. But it can’t put us down. We have to react pretty quickly.

Atalanta inflicted Liverpool’s first home defeat in any competition this season. In fact, Jurgen Klopp’s last loss at home came all the way back in January of 2023, a 3-1 loss to Brentford in the Premier League.

“It hurts of course. We haven’t lost here for a long time. But we shouldn’t take the credit away from them. They punished us for being sloppy in possession. We still had chances to score one or two and unfortunately we didn’t.

“If you don’t believe, there’s no point going to Italy. We have made it very hard for ourselves going there 3-0 down. But the way to bounce back is by winning the game on the weekend. We need everyone to switch it back on. Then we can focus on putting out at least four goals over there.”

Atalanta and Liverpool will meet again next Thursday for the quarter-final second leg at the Gewiss Stadium in Bergamo, scheduled to kick off at 20.00 BST.