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Georginio Wijnaldum said he discovered a new respect for his Liverpool team-mate Roberto Firmino after playing as a fake nine in the Champions League defeat against Barcelona.
While Brazilian striker Firmino was only able to be on the Reds bench, Wijnaldum was pushed from his usual midfielder position to play alongside Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane.
Wijnaldum did not have much impact at Camp Nou. Barcelona beat 3-0, but the Dutch revealed that he had talked to Firmino about his role as an attacker after the loss.
He told Sky Sports: "After the match, I had a lot more respect for Roberto Firmino. I already had it for the way he had played as an attacker, but now I have more in this position.
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"I know how difficult it is to play the number nine for Liverpool, especially if you do it as he does and as we want to play, it's really hard.
"I spoke with him after the match and told him how much I respected him for his role as an attacker throughout the season, because it's so difficult."
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp, meanwhile, explained his surprising decision to use Wijnaldum as an attacker during the Champions League match.
"It was a big task," said the Reds official. "I told him," What does it say about you? He said, "I do not know. "I said," You can play everything! "
'When I told him that he was in that position, he was surprised himself. It was for a variety of reasons and he needed 30 or 35 minutes to really adapt to the situation, but he did a great job.
"We needed this type of player, an offensive player who is also very good in defense, because we obviously can not ignore the quality of Barcelona.
"But we needed a player between the lines that was good enough to keep the ball and pbad it.
"I know that for outsiders it's easy to say,"[You need] another attacker "or something else, there are different jobs to do in the field, Gini was very successful.
"As a football player, you have to be educated in a lot of things and he has this education. So it helped, it was really good. '
Wijnaldum also admitted that Liverpool were "devastated" after their 3-0 loss to Barcelona. The Reds have created a number of chances before Lionel Messi's double in the second half.
"We were really devastated," he added. "But you still have to regroup, even after winning a game.
'We had games where we had not played so well this season and won. Hopefully, we would have scored some goals that would have made it easier to return, but that was not the case. "
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