Benitez hails Liverpool character

Rafael Benitez
12 April 2012

Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez is confident his side can turn around their Europa League tie against Benfica after watching a battling performance in the controversial 2-1 first leg defeat in Lisbon.

Defender Daniel Agger had put the visitors ahead by converting Steven Gerrard's ninth-minute free-kick with a clever backheel. However, Ryan Babel was sent off on the half-hour for pushing a hand in Luisao's face and in the second half two controversial penalty awards allowed Oscar Cardozo to score twice having earlier missed a host of chances.

"Our play for 60 minutes with 10 players was good and we are disappointed because we had chances," he said. "It means we are a good team because we had chances."

He added: "They (Benfica) were trying to push very hard and we were defending well.

"We showed we can be strong, we can create and we can score goals.

"The team was working very hard and with the fans behind us we can progress in the competition.

"Hopefully we will not need to push too hard (in the second leg), just push and play well and score goals."

Benitez said he was disappointed with Babel for his response but felt Swedish referee Jonas Eriksson should have been stronger when he only gave Luisao a yellow card.

"I was surprised because a foul from behind is more serious," he said. "I would like to analyse the foul before. It is a big difference when you kick a player from behind to a player touching another in the mouth.

"It is difficult to understand and impossible to change but we have to move forward and think about Anfield."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in