Virgil van Dijk delivered an honest assessment of Liverpool’s 4-3 friendly defeat to Bayern Munich in Singapore.
The Reds rounded off their Asian tour with a narrow loss at the Singapore National Stadium. Cody Gakpo fired the Merseysiders into a very early lead before Van Dijk doubled their advantage with a powerful header.
Serge Gnabry pulled one back soon and it was 2-2 before the break, with Leroy Sane rounding off a quick break to slot past Alisson Becker.
Luis Diaz’s smart finish again edged Liverpool in front in the second half, however late strikes by Josip Stanisic and Frans Kratzig sealed the win for the Bundesliga champions.
“So many good things, so many things that we have to improve. But yeah, obviously a good opponent, a very good opponent, and they punish you if you’re not on it for a split-second and that’s what happened today. But overall there were so many good moments, especially with the ball I think we showed a lot of improvement, but there is still work to do and that’s what we are going to do,” Van Dijk said.
“We have the quality to punish them if they also make a split-second mistake and that’s what we did. Unfortunately we are not on the winning side today, but obviously it’s pre-season, it doesn’t really matter that much luckily.
“It’s about the progress that we have to make and we have to learn from certain situations and that’s what we are going to do. It’s been amazing to be here again, seeing all the fans, the love, the games that we played, the training sessions we have had. It’s been intense but obviously very good and I think we can go back home with a very positive feeling.
The Netherlands international added: “We work on set-pieces every day and in my opinion I should be more clinical at times as well, so that’s what I am working on and today I was free and I could score.
“Yeah, 100 per cent. Obviously we want to play on the highest level, we want to compete with the highest level players and teams and you have to be on it every second of the game.
“Unfortunately in a couple of moments in the game we weren’t and they punish you, that’s how it is – we can do that as well to the other team. We have to find a way to stay more than focused for 95 minutes and obviously don’t concede but like I said, we are still in pre-season, we made changes, the intensity is up so we have to keep going.”
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