NAPLES, Italy — Jurgen Klopp refused to be drawn in on the bitter feud between Manchester United’s Jose Mourinho and Paul Pogba after the Liverpool manager was asked about the nature of his relationship with his players.
Mourinho recently told Pogba that he would never captain Man United again in the latest storyline of the pair’s souring relationship.
The question of his relationship with his players was put to Klopp during a news conference on Tuesday to preview Liverpool’s Champions League group-stage match at Napoli, but he believed an answer to it could easily be constructed as his view on the current events at Old Trafford.
“I’m not as smart as Carlo Ancelotti, but I’m smart enough to not answer this question in these times,” he said.
“Because we all know what you all would make of all the things I could say about this. That’s why I will not answer the question.”
Liverpool take on Ancelotti’s Napoli on Wednesday in the second match of their Champions League Group C campaign, having dramatically beaten Paris Saint-Germain in the first round of matches.
Klopp returns to the Stadio San Paolo for the first time since he was handed a two-match touchline ban for berating the fourth official in 2013 when visiting with Borussia Dortmund.
On that night, Klopp felt it took too long to allow Dortmund’s Neven Subotic to return to the field of play and took his frustration out on the referee’s assistant. The German was subsequently sent off and ended up watching the rest of his side’s 2-1 defeat in the company of Napoli caretaker Vincenzo Gerrone.
“It was one of the bad experiences I had, to be honest,” Klopp said. “I heard he’s still here, that’s nice. We couldn’t speak that much last time, but my Italian skills are not much better than five years ago.
“How can I say, it was not my best performance personally. I reacted in a way which was absolutely not OK. I still understand why I was not happy with the situation, but the reaction was a bit too much and then they gave me a two-game ban. I had to watch two games from the stand.
“It was because my behaviour in the Bundesliga was not too good before that. Since then, nothing happened. It was, how you say, my last time when I was a bit too excited. I know it will not happen again.
“They sent me in the stand and I went there, but it was not nice, sitting there and getting all the comments from the people around.
“So I decided to do something different in the second half and I was then with the groundsman in a little room with a big Maradona shirt on the wall.
“I heard now there’s a Marco Reus shirt next to it — a few things stayed the same and a few changed in a better way.”
Meanwhile, Georginio Wijnaldum has hailed the resurgence of teammate Daniel Sturridge and backed him to receive a recall to the England squad, having not been part of Gareth Southgate’s team that reached the World Cup semifinals.
Sturridge returned to Liverpool in the summer following an injury-ravaged spell on loan at West Bromwich Albion in the second half of last season, and is currently the club’s joint-top goal scorer so far this season after Saturday’s spectacular equaliser at Chelsea.
“I don’t know what he did in his preseason but when he came back he was really fit,” Wijnaldum said at a news conference.
“When I came back, because I came back a few days later, he did really well, even better than the years before. I don’t know what he did during his preseason, but he was quite fit.
“During the season he will show that he is really important for us, not only because of his goals, but also the way he is playing.
“Against Paris Saint-Germain, you saw [Sturridge] playing in a way you didn’t see before — defending, switching positions with one of the front three and did that job. He’s really in good shape, fit and in form. I think he deserves to be in the England squad.”
Be the first to comment