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Jurgen Klopp admits Liverpool are still “suffering” from the heartache of losing the Europa League final – but insists they will learn from that bitter experience heading into the new season.

The Reds’ hopes of securing Champions League qualification were dashed in May by a crushing 3-1 defeat to Sevilla in Basel.

Daniel Sturridge fired Liverpool into a half-time lead but they imploded in the second half as Kevin Gameiro restored parity and Coke’s double clinched a deserved victory for the La Liga outfit.

Two months on, the manner in which events unfolded at St Jakob-Park clearly still grates Klopp as he reflects on a final “we should not have lost”.

“Of course I’ve had a lot of thoughts about this,” Klopp said.

“It was long ago but it still feels bad. After the game I was not in the mood to think too much about the first half but later I did and it was obvious that we’d played a good game in the first half and we could have been in a clearer lead.

“We could have had a penalty for handball, all this stuff that you see afterwards. It’s not interesting because it’s over but as a human being it’s quite difficult to accept all this stuff. Of course you have moments when you still suffer a little bit.”

The Liverpool boss says it’s still difficult to pinpoint what went so spectacularly wrong in that second half, admitting “something broke”.

“In the second half, (the equaliser) 18 seconds in was too soon,” Klopp said.

“I’ve thought a lot about half-time but there wasn’t anything too special that I could highlight - that we were not too sure about the game or something like this.

“We knew it was only half-time and there was still a lot of work to be done but then what happened, happened.

It is not a final we should have lost

“When you watch it again you see that something broke at that moment. Different players had no weapons any more. They had no power and no confidence.

“You saw that. We went too deep in a lot of positions and we were not close enough to the challenges.

“All of it was not too good but it was, of course, about the intensity that we had had on the way to the final. We’d had to over-perform one or two times, we had to play very special games and we’d had a lot of games.

“We’d tried everything to have fresh legs for the final, but none of this is an excuse because this was not a final that we should have lost but we lost and that’s the truth.”

It was a costly defeat in more ways than one with the Reds missing out on at least £40million in TV money from being back in the Champions League.

The absence of European football has also had an impact on the club’s summer recruitment plans but Klopp is confident that Liverpool, who travel to Huddersfield Town for a friendly on Wednesday night, will channel the frustration of losing that final into something positive this term.

“It was a hard night and a hard few days afterwards but it is in the past and like all games in the past if you can use them you should do,” he added.

“You have to take the right thoughts from it and that’s what we’ll try to do but that’s not easy because you can’t bring all of this up in the first meeting and say: ‘Look, I hope you had a wonderful holiday, but I want to tell you the second half in Basel was not so good’. That wouldn’t make sense.

“It’s an experience, one that you don’t need, but we will get on with it.

“We had no luck in the game. Sevilla had a few moments in the first half when they needed a bit of luck and they had it, but it’s over and it doesn't feel as bad now as it did at the time.”