Champions League heartbreak will help wounded Liverpool be stronger, warns Fabinho

Fabinho thinks Liverpool will be stronger in the Champions League this season after learning a harsh lesson in May.

The Reds were beaten in the final in Kiev by a Real Madrid side inspired by Gareth Bale and boosted by an early injury to Mo Salah.

Summer signing Fabinho watched the match on TV knowing he would soon be announced as a Liverpool player.

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The £40million deal to recruit the 24-year-old from Monaco was confirmed less than a week later.

That Monaco side lit up Europe’s top club competition in 2017 as teenage sensation Kylian Mbappe took the Champions League by storm to guide them to the semi-finals.

Fabinho and his new Liverpool team-mates will discover who their group stage opponents are on Thursday and the new boy is confident Jurgen Klopp’s side can keep progressing.

He told Yahoo Sport UK: “I watched that game [the final] already knowing I would be coming to Liverpool so I was supporting the team a lot and really gutted that they couldn’t get to win it.

“Although it seems like a bad experience, I’m sure that getting to the getting to the final and losing gave the team a lot of strength and we will come back stronger. I would like to play Monaco at some stage.”

The champions of the top six associations, according to the 2017 coefficients, are in pot one for the draw together with the holders of the Champions League and Europa League.

Seedings for remaining teams are determined by current club coefficients.

Fabinho currently wears the new Predator 18+ Team Mode boots, available from adidas.co.uk