The Reds came into the second leg with a mountain to climb having been thoroughly outclassed in last Wednesday\u2019s first leg at the Parc des Princes, where the hosts\u2019 dominance was not reflected by the 2-0 scoreline.<\/p>\n
PSG\u2019s missed opportunities allowed Anfield to dream of a famous comeback, but it was not to be as key interventions and a controversially overturned penalty frustrated a vastly improved Liverpool.<\/p>\n
Ousmane Dembele\u2019s second-half brace eventually sealed PSG\u2019s 2-0 second-leg win and progress to the semi-finals with a 4-0 aggregate triumph, but Slot took hope from a night that saw Liverpool\u2019s final route to silverware end.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we made a lot of progression compared to last week,\u201d the Liverpool boss said. \u201cI have to give a lot of credit to the players, how hard they worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to give a lot of credit to our fans, how they helped us tonight to execute our gameplan. If we have a high press, it\u2019s so helpful if there are fans behind you, to keep on pushing you.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, it\u2019s one of the many examples of this season where we weren\u2019t able to score from the many chances we had.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain, we were so far underperforming in terms of xG (expected goals), and that is just an ongoing thing with us throughout the whole season.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdd to that, as it seems to be, a bad injury (to Ekitike). We don\u2019t know for sure yet. Add to that another intervention of the VAR, which went not in our favour and that\u2019s also not for the first time this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, of course, we are very disappointed because I think there were parts in the second half where you could just feel if we can score now this is going to become a special night.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the future looks very bright for this team, because we\u2019ve shown that we can compete with the champions of Europe in our stadium, to be the dominant team.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot many teams can be dominant against Paris St Germain and generate so many chances as we did. But, yeah, chances is one thing, scoring is a second.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool\u2019s attention turns from pushing for Champions League glory to ensuring they qualify for next season\u2019s competition as their Premier League campaign resumes with Sunday\u2019s derby at Everton.<\/p>\n
Ekitike will miss that match and it seems a substantial period of time having gone down awkwardly in the first half, with the France international leaving on a stretcher amid fears he had suffered an Achilles injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cHugo looks really bad but it\u2019s difficult for me to say how bad,\u201d Slot said. \u201cTomorrow we will investigate this further, (see) how bad this is for him. Let\u2019s see. But it doesn\u2019t look good.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t see him at half-time and after the game he had already gone home so I haven\u2019t spoken to him yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ekitike\u2019s former club PSG have a semi-final against Bayern Munich or Real Madrid to prepare for as they bid to win back-to-back Champions League crowns.<\/p>\n
Head coach Luis Enrique said: \u201cTwo really good teams, Liverpool played a fantastic game, a lot of intensity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a few moments where we had the upper hand. Things got even tougher for us in the second half but we showed what kind of team we are.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a wonderful quarter-final of the Champions League and great to come through and qualify for the semi-finals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Reds came into the second leg with a mountain to climb having been thoroughly outclassed in last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,5859,112],"class_list":["post-399467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-liverpool-football-club","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}