Twenty-year-old Jarell Quansah won the Man of the Match award at Bournemouth under “outrageous” circumstances, and Jurgen Klopp was full of praise for him.
In spite of the harsh weather and sideways rain, the youthful centre defender performed admirably in his eighth appearance of the season in the League Cup match on the south coast.
Despite the unfavourable conditions, Quansah finished the game with the most touches (114) and the highest passing accuracy (89%) of any player on the pitch.
His manager was impressed with his performance and said, “Wow,” following what he considered to be a Man of the Match showing. Few could argue with that assessment!
Was he the star player of the game? “[He was] mine,” Klopp remarked after the game. A truly fantastic game, whoa. He cherished it.
“I told him now, he was really over the moon about the game. He was focused, aggressive in his tackles, and a master at reading the game.
“He had a lot of work to do with the ball that we handed him.
Laughing, he continued, “Caoimh was like, ‘give it to him, let’s see what he can do.'” A great, really fantastic game with one or two challenging circumstances, but that’s normal.”
The “outrageous” conditions, which caused the ball to drift backward with every long ball from Caoimhin Kelleher in the second half, added to how amazing the performance was.
“We should have scored more in the first half when the wind was blowing our way, but there were two different halves,” Klopp remarked. “You could see it right away when it was working against us; it made a huge impact.
“The boys put up a fierce fight, but it was cruel. It was terrible on the bench, extremely bad two yards in front of the bench, and ridiculous one yard on the pitch.
“We had a great time playing, it’s all about the cup and making it through.” The lads are overjoyed.