"Even Liverpool can lose football games": Arne Slot explain why their team fell to Newcastle in the EFL Cup final

After being mostly unbeaten this season (only one defeat in the Premier League, as well as the elimination from FA Cup), Liverpool suffered two defeats in a row last week: on Tuesday, against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, and on Sunday, against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup final. There were two huge almost consecutive blows to one of the strongest teams in Europe, so how does Arne Slot explain it?

"This game went exactly the way they wanted it to be: a fight with a lot of duels through the air. And if we play 10 times a game of football through the air against them, they win it probably nine times because they are a stronger team through the air than us". Both goals by Newcastle (Burn and Isak) were headers.

Unlike on Tuesday, where Slot defended that Liverpool was better than PSG and deserved the win, here he admits that Newcastle played better, or at least, to their strengths. "You can judge a team if they are tired and they press. But there was nothing to press because they played over our press".

Dan Burn's goal that surprised Slot: "99 out of 100 times this will never lead to a goal"

Talking about Newcastle's first goal by Dan Burn, he explains that "<social>I have never seen in my life a player from that far away heading a ball with so much force into the far corner</social>", a play that 99 out of 100 times will never lead to a goal. "So credit to him, I think he's one of the few players that can score a goal from that distance with his head".

Liverpool's coach adds that he is sure that exhaustion, mentally or physically, from Tuesday's match had nothing to do with the match against Newcastle, and states the obvious, "even Liverpool can lose football games", and that's what can happen is you go far in tournaments: "the opposition you face gets stronger and stronger".