Press conference: Jürgen Klopp on European Super League

Just reflecting on the events of the past week, have you and the players had a personal apology from John W Henry or anyone at boardroom level, how did those conversations or meetings go, and what’s your message to the fans now?

So, no, we haven’t, or we hadn’t [had a personal apology]. I don’t think, to be honest, it’s necessary because I felt, or I think I was even mentioned, in the apology and the team as well so that was personal for me or personal enough for me. No, we didn’t speak about that since then.

[On his message to the fans] That’s a tough one to answer, to be honest, because I cannot tell millions and millions of people how they have to deal with a situation. What I can say is how I try to deal with it and that is I try to focus on what I have to do and that is preparing a team for the Newcastle game. The other thing I can say: I know the owners, I know them since six years, I know there were some moments when they might not have made the right decisions, this time for sure. And that doesn’t change, for me, too much because I prefer dealing with the problems or the people I know than just changing because then you might have the same problems early enough again. I think that it’s completely normal after this that everybody thinks about how can we carry on and stuff like this, but that needs obviously longer time and you cannot sort that now in the week or these kind of things. It’s always like this. We have to, especially we as a team, we have to be concentrated on the things we are actually here for – playing football – and that’s what we try to do.

On the players, how do you feel your captain in particular but also the rest of the first-team squad have dealt with this situation? 

Very good. I’m not surprised about that, they are grown-up people, they are adults, they are top characters, top blokes and it was a really good thing to do – just saying your opinion, and that’s what they did. Not the first time and for sure not the last time.

With the ESL, the fallout and the repercussions people are still talking about – although it isn’t obviously going to happen, the actual league – I was just wondering what positives can be taken out of it, if there are any going forward?

Positives… look, the most positive thing [is that it] didn’t happen. I’m now not involved that much anymore because I started again focusing obviously on preparing the team. But what I’ve heard, it’s not over yet. I don’t mean the Super League could still happen, but obviously now there are a lot of discussions about other things as well. And we could speak a lot about these kind of things, I’m just not here to do that always. Everybody knows my view on more games and stuff like this and that’s why what Pep [Guardiola] said was always my opinion. I didn’t hide that. You cannot just introduce always new competitions. So, yes, the Super League is off the table – good, very good. But the new Champions League is now not that you think, ‘Oh, great, what’s that? Let’s just do that.’ They showed it to me, they called me and I gave one hour to UEFA. They showed it to me, the whole idea and I said, ‘I don’t like it’ because there are 10 games instead of six [in the group phase]. I have no idea where we shall put them in. And then you will see what happens then. Maybe UEFA will ask for the cup competitions [to] get cancelled in England or whatever, or that we have 18 teams in the league and stuff like this. You tell that to the Premier League, they say, ‘No way.’ You tell that to the EFL, they say, ‘No way.’ All these kind of things. The only people who never get asked are the coaches, the players and the supporters. I know the supporters think, ‘Play more games, they get paid a lot of money.’ But we are already on the edge. Believe me, when all the coaches think the same – the coaches of the teams who play international [European] football – if they all think the same there must be something in [it] that it could be a little bit too much. But, again, UEFA didn’t ask us; the Super League inventors didn’t ask us; nobody asked us. It’s always just, ‘Play more games.’ We said before, that’s not possible. In this structure in the moment, it’s not possible. You cannot have 20 teams in the league, two cup competitions, playing 10 international games before Christmas. These things are all not possible. But, how I said, we don’t get asked, we just have to deliver.

I’m trying to think about the comparison between what you and the players must have felt going into the Leeds game on Monday and how you’re feeling now going into this one. Does it feel like a huge weight has been lifted, psychologically, off everyone’s shoulders?

I would say yes because it was really tough at Leeds. We were pretty much thrown into it, we had no idea what’s going on, we didn’t know exactly how people will react. Stuff like this. We had our own opinion. Yeah, that was not so cool but I would not say we only drew at Leeds because of that. It was just the situation. Now actually, we tried to concentrate fully on football again. But we are not there; we realise things are still going on, a lot of talks, different things happening at other clubs. The only thing I can say: I really hope that the bond between us and our supporters might even get stronger and we don’t discuss now always bad decisions in the past. I just don’t understand life like this, to be honest. Good people – and I can tell you, I know our owners, they are not perfect, like I am not perfect and you are not perfect, but they are not bad people. They made a not-so-good decision. Let me say, a bad decision, that’s true. But let’s carry on. But that’s my point of view and I cannot tell other people how they want to see it.

But I really try that all my life, that if there is something you cannot change anymore, ‘Come on, carry on.’ Carry on, make sure you are as good as possible, that you are ready for each fight as much as possible, get a stronger unit if possible and go out there and show the world that we can deal with pretty much everything. So, nothing happened and nothing will happen in the near future with the teams. They will not come around the corner next week again and try to do something. For sure not. They all learned their lesson, I’m pretty sure. But now we have just to make sure we don’t get any harm off it, like a different atmosphere in the club – for other clubs it’s the same obviously – where now fans fight with coaches and managers and teams. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But if things like this happen, that would be then the really bad thing about it. That would be the really bad thing about it, nothing else. Because the rest didn’t happen. So, they tried something, it was not allowed, so come on, let’s go back to the beautiful game it always was.

And I’m not naïve, I know things will be discussed. I have no problem with that. I have no problem with change. We all wanted to have the Super League away, but in the same moment it happened that now the new Champions League is out there and who read this concept properly and says, ‘Oh, that’s perfect’? And who tells me now it’s not about money? It’s a joke. I said before, Nations League, more games. I said before, FIFA wanted to have a Club World Cup. And they don’t ask, they just want to introduce it. What’s the reason for that? Money. These kind of things happen constantly. But in the end, we always could, at least in our moments, have the perfect moment for us: playing football, enjoying the game as much as we can. And that never changed so far. I only want to make sure that it will not change, because it started already. That’s why I said, in Leeds, the Leeds supporters wanted to show us as a team, they were shouting at us that we are greedy. ‘What? What are you talking about?’ But that’s exactly the situation we all create, they need to find somebody where they could put their attention on and in this case it was us. It was not deserved but we are Liverpool, that’s true. But I said before, Liverpool is much more than this and that’s what I want to make sure.

You said that managers barely get consulted on anything, so considering your relationship with the owners, would you have liked an explanation because you are the one who is having to answer all the questions?

An explanation, I know it and I will have time to speak to them and [they] probably will tell me what the thoughts were behind it, but is that really important now? So, what I said before, if they would have spoken to me before I would have told them, ‘No, that’s not a good idea.’ Would it have changed something? I don’t know. Again, I decide a lot of things but never did before these kinds of things – none of us [managers] is doing it. Pep won with City pretty much everything and was not involved in it, so that’s a completely normal thing. There are different levels in a club; they try it, they have made the decision for some reasons, I don’t know them, but it is now not about that I get an explanation. I am not like this. I am happy that it didn’t happen and I have so many things to talk about with them – and from my point of view, this will not be a part and, ‘Why did you do that?’ and stuff like this. We have to plan our future and not talking about what happened last week and these kind of things.

It’s great that it didn’t happen, absolutely great, it would have been really, really bad. But now it didn’t happen and I have a job to do and I cannot do consistently like different jobs and now, again, make sure that will never happen again. The situation shows it – it will not happen again. There was a proper try, obviously, and they couldn’t get it through. Believe me, it’s now for a long, long, long, long time that something like this will not happen, but other things will happen. Other things will happen and we spoke about these things before and nobody listened to the players and the managers. If we mention it, the angle is always, ‘But you get that well paid… rotate your squad…’ and all these kind of things. The football structure in this moment is not prepared for more games and I don’t know, and some others on a really high level have no idea, how you really shall deal with even more games. If we have games, competitive games, when you have an international break and stuff like this, now the national teams play only competitive games as well, where is the drop-off?

We have to make sure the quality of football gets higher – not by buying, no, by training and these kind of things. Even the best players cannot get as good as they could be without training, that’s just not possible, but we cut off training time constantly. We spoke about that, I spoke about that, nobody really listened. It sounds that I’m moaning, it’s just a situation. Now one thing happened where everybody was obviously involved and everybody was on the same page: that should not happen. Now we think that would have been the worst thing – it didn’t happen, so it’s not the worst thing. All the other things still happen, that’s much worse. They still happen. Nobody cuts off games, they just continue – more games, more games. These kind of things, when we spoke about five subs, in this country… ‘Five subs? Why? It’s better for the big clubs…’ No, it is not better for the big clubs, it is better for the players. Nobody listened. These kind of things, they still continue and these are my concerns, not the things that didn’t happen. No, the things that happened and we still have to deal with.

Did you speak to the players as a group? They took a big step on Tuesday to come out collectively in support. Does it bother you that a great relationship that’s been built up over a number of years between the club, the supporters and the team was jeopardised by everything that happened this week?

Yes, of course I spoke to the team collectively. On matchday, because the day before it happened, matchday morning we organised a meeting which was not organised before, we didn’t think we’d need that – or we didn’t know that we’d need a meeting – so then we spoke about it. Yes, I explained it and I said I hope not that the relationship got jeopardised, to be honest. I can’t see that, but who am I to know about that, to be honest?

You’ve got to prepare them for a game and you’ve got banners hanging outside Anfield criticising the club, you’ve obviously arrived at the Leeds game and had distractions there. The preparation has been affected. Does that bother you, that something might be lost in that?

No, I understand. I understand. How can fans show then if they are not happy with something? I was not happy with that around the Leeds game on the matchday, they heard about that, but I understand that completely, meanwhile. What do you want to do? Take off the banners or whatever, that’s completely fine. I get that, 100 per cent. But, apart from that, what I had to say about the Leeds game I said it already. I have no idea what happens tomorrow; I hope nothing, to be honest, apart from a football game, but I don’t know. These are the facts. From my point of view, I don’t see a reason why there should be anything between our supporters and us, to be honest, but who am I to know?