Dejan Lovren became a national hero as he helped lead Croatia to their first ever World Cup final after a win over England on Wednesday night. He revealed that the triumph was met by a message from Jurgen Klopp.
To go from being derided as a bit useless to being in the final of both the Champions League and World Cup final in the space of a month is pretty good going, and that's exactly what's happened for Dejan Lovren.
For the entirety of the first half of the season Liverpool's defence was poor and it seemed a lot of the blame was being attributed to Lovren and when the defence improved it was seemingly nothing to do with the Croatian getting better and just Virgil van Dijk being signed.
But during the World Cup the 29 year old hasn't had Van Dijk by his side, and the Netherlands weren't even at the tournament, and yet he's helped Croatia reach their first ever final, just 27 years after becoming an independent country.
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After standing firm against the likes of Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling in the semi-final the Liverpool centre back revealed he'd had a text off his boss in Merseyside Jurgen Klopp and that the Reds boss was proud:
"He's [Klopp] proud of me and what I've achieved. He knows what I went through. He's a good man. Even in tough times he was always backing me up. I appreciated that."
Lovren showed grace by saying that he felt sorry for teammate Jordan Henderson, "I am a little bit disappointed for my team-mate [Jordan Henderson] because he also deserved to be in the final. I wish we could both be in the final for that game but there is only one winner."
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And the former Southampton defender reckons Croatia deserved more respect adding, "This feels incredible, especially after everything that was said about us before the game. We showed our character, we showed that we deserved to be in the final and people should respect us.
"Sometimes it is unfair. Before this game they said we are tired but we showed in extra-time we had fresher legs than them. Simple as that. The difference was mental.
If Lovren can go one better with his national team at the World Cup than his club team did in the Champions League then we may have to start accepting he's pretty good.
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