It is not often that the manager of the winning team sounds less upbeat than the one whose side who just lost. But when it comes to pre-season friendlies, results matter less as they can seldom be used as a barometer to judge progress.
And so when Jurgen Klopp was asked his opinion about Liverpool's 2-1 win over reigning champions Manchester City, he simply said there were "a lot of good moments and a lot of bad moments".
Leroy Sane broke the stalemate at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 57 minutes, but Mohamed Salah buried a header less than a minute after coming on to draw things level. Sadio Mane then scored a stoppage-time penalty to help Liverpool, expected to challenge City for the title in 2018/19, to victory.
Neither Salah nor match-winner Mane were expected to feature in the clash, but the latter showed his worth by rolling a spot-kick past Joe Hart.
Who can't wait to see the Reds back at Anfield? 😍
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) July 25, 2018
Tickets available for our final #LFCPreSeason game: https://t.co/kabxzMRI5Y pic.twitter.com/F1vJTDPZoi
"The game for us was very important, but it is not a sign in the direction or whatever," Klopp was quoted on the Liverpoolfc.com site as saying.
"It's only a game we played and a lot of good moments which we can use and a lot of bad moments we can work on. That's all."
The German, however, added that he had no concerns over Salah's shoulder injury.
"I was not concerned about it otherwise he wouldn't have played," he said.
"He came in and scored after pretty much 35 seconds. He had a big impact together with Sadio and Dom [Salanke], and the midfield with Marko [Grujic], Pedro [Chirivella] and Ben [Woodburn] played fantastic."
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City manager Pep Guardiola was, on the other hand, upbeat about his team's display despite the end result.
"It was incredible, what we did," Guardiola was quoted as saying on the Manchester City official website.
"For 75 minutes, it was incredible with the players we have what we did against that team - the finalists of the [Uefa] Champions League, who have amazing players.
"I'm so proud and happy to be manager of these guys for that reason. Our personality was incredible. In the first half, we had a very young average age.
"For the last 15 minutes, we were so tired. We made some changes and in the last few minutes, Liverpool deserved to score goals."
