ExplainedJürgen Klopp's pre-match process and how highly he rates Liverpool's squad
Jürgen Klopp detailed his process of providing pre-match information to his players and discussed how highly he rates Liverpool’s squad during the second section of Friday’s press conference.
The boss sat down with journalists at the AXA Training Centre ahead of the Reds’ Premier League meeting with Norwich City.
Read on for a summary of part two of Klopp’s media briefing…
On whether he finds it reassuring that his players are able to win in different ways, as they showed against Burnley and Internazionale…
We knew it before. We go to Burnley, we don’t need to know about the weather, to be honest, it was really strange that day but we don’t need to know about it. We know it will be a massive fight so you just have to show it. Burnley had lost, when we arrived there, only eight games, now it’s nine. Actually for the bottom of the table that’s nothing, you usually have completely different numbers. That means they are completely competitive, so you give this information.
What do you need for that? You need the relationship between you and the players because we talk like this, similar things, every two days, so my job is to make sure they understand the most important game in the world happens now. It’s Norwich tomorrow and without a shadow of a doubt it’s exactly like it is. So how can you make sure that you get there? We give the boys the right information and then they need to listen, they need to believe, they need to trust what you say. Not that you make it up, ‘Burnley is world-class and there is no chance for us’. We don’t do it like this, you have to be in the subject and that’s what we do. It’s the same for Inter Milan and if anybody expected that any team in the world would go there and just ‘bam, bam, bam, a few passes and you are alone in front of the goal, finish it off’ – there is no chance that would happen so we don’t have to think about that.
The potential we have is a fact, the quality we make of it is unsure because it was not always the same. But the fight we have to put in is always at 100 per cent and that’s exactly what we have to do. How I said, in completely different circumstances, different opponents, they ask for different things but two days, one day recovery, one day still to recover and to prepare, next day, go again. That’s the situation of the boys and that’s what we have to make sure, that you are always open for it, let me say it like this – even after you have 800 games [like] James Milner. It’s an incredible number, by the way, he doesn’t look that old! And that still each football game you play is the most special you can imagine. That’s what we try to do.
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On how highly he rates the strength of his squad and on his players’ ability to carry out his tactical instructions…
It would be a shame after seven years if they wouldn’t get what I tell them; it would be a miracle how to survive as a manager if they wouldn’t do that. So we grew together, obviously, as a group and as a team. I had outstanding squads in my life, thank God. The Dortmund squad in 2010-11, 2011-12 was insane, the only problem was we only had it for two years and then the football world thought the Dortmund journey was long enough so now let’s pick a few. That doesn’t happen here so that means we can build on the things we did together, and that makes a difference.
But, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean, because we talk now again about sports – the Olympic Games are happening in the moment, so thank God in the Olympics at least we talk about [places] one, two and three like it’s a really great achievement. In football it’s only one great achievement: you win it or not… you get a medal for second place in a final but it’s not exactly the same like a silver medal at the Olympic Games. In the league it’s the same. We fight obviously with the best team for a long time in City and with a lot of really, really good teams who are close to that, for success. We need that, we need the quality we have. If we didn’t have the quality we wouldn’t be near.
But we came through in the last few years with the same squad pretty much, not exactly, but a similar squad. It’s just that seven, eight, nine, 10 were injured and we had to get through it somehow. Sitting here, we didn’t speak once about the squad, we only spoke about that because the players are not available so we speak just about the players who are available. Now we have more available but the rules didn’t change, you only can line up 11. That’s what we do and because of the character the boys show, you are right, I rate them really high.