Klopp confident of success at the Bernabeu

Posted Tuesday, April 30, 2013 by Foxsports.com

Borussia Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp insists his team can cope against Real Madrid when they take to the Bernabeu pitch on Tuesday in the Champions League semi-final.

Klopp, who has described his team's 4-1 first-leg victory over Jose Mourinho's side at the Westfalenstadion as "formidable", does not think they will be get cold feet now.

Asked if his team would freeze in the second leg, he said: "No, I'm sure we won't.

"We played Bayern Munich in the German Cup final last year when we were champions. They really wanted to beat us in the game, as they had all season, and my team was pretty cool in this moment (Dortmund won 5-2).

"The only way to reach your dream is to be brave."

Only one team has been knocked out of the Champions League after winning the first leg 4-1 - AC Milan, who were eliminated by Deportivo in 2004 - but Klopp urged caution.

He said: "Real Madrid believe they can come back against us. And, if they believe so, they will act accordingly.

"We are ready for Real Madrid to try everything they can and we do not feel that we are already in the final.

"We feel the first-leg result was much better than expected. We know we will have to fight tomorrow [Tuesday] with our best strengths. We know we are not a normal semi-finalist and will behave accordingly."

Dortmund rested a host of star names in the Bundesliga at the weekend to save them for Tuesday's match, with Robert Lewandowski, the four-goal hero from the first leg, only coming on late in the 2-1 win at Fortuna Dusseldorf.

The club have the lowest wage bill and the least expensively-assembled squad of the four semi-finalists, but have earned widespread praise for their attractive football. They are the only team to not lose a match in the entire Champions League campaign so far.

"It is a relatively easy philosophy," Klopp added.

"We need to defend well if we are to score many goals. It is easy, the team needs to play together closely, in a very solid way.

"It is important to keep our discipline. If we score a goal we need to defend it, but we need to be daring. We need to score a second. That is the idea we have day by day.

"We've had this idea for a long time. It is not only my idea, it is the idea of the whole team. I haven't invented football."

Klopp also emphasised his team's strengths as a collective and claimed they had been confident of making it this far in the competition when the campaign began last September.

"At the beginning of the season we were already feeling like this," he said. "Last year we played wonderfully in the Champions League, but we weren't successful [they were eliminated at the group stages].

"We have already started to dream about this, but I think this happens to all other teams in the competition, they all dream of the final.

"We have the feeling of a very good team.

"We know the best team with the individual qualities does not win. The team with best collective quality wins."

Klopp finished the pre-match press conference by talking about how far the club have come in recent years, in stark comparison to their plight in 2005, when they were on the brink of going out of business.

"No-one could have imagined this a few years ago, but tomorrow [Tuesday] we have to focus on the game," he said.

"We haven't achieved anything yet. We are only halfway there. In football everything is possible. Something historic will happen tomorrow [Tuesday]."