Arrogant Klopp maintains AFCON a ‘little tournament’ stance
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is not backing down on his claims that African Cup of Nations is a “little tournament”.
The German who was challenged by a journalist during his post match conference after Liverpool secured a 2-0 win against Porto tried to justify his claims.
Klopp called the AFCON a little tournament last Saturday while expressing his frustration at thought of losing key players to the tournament.
Liverpool could lose Mohamed Salah, Naby Keita and Sadio Mane for the month-long tournament, which runs from January 9 to February 6.
Replying a journalist on Saturday, who asked if Klopp was “relieved” they had got through a busy period with “no international break until March”, Klopp laughed and replied: “I’ve heard that so often that there’s no international break until March. In January, there’s a little tournament in Africa, I just want to say, and I think Asia is playing games, too – South America as well, great, can’t wait.”
He was then challenged for his little tournament statement on Wednesday and he arrogantly stood by his claims.
“I am really not, not even close, not even an idea in my mind that I am going to call AFCON a ‘little tournament’ about the continent of Africa like a little continent, not at all,” said Klopp.
“So what I said is because people said, if you watch the full press conference, then you might, if you want to understand it if you want to understand it in the right way then you could have understood it because they said there is no international break anymore until March and I said:”oh there is a little tournament in January” and I didn’t mean a little tournament.
“I just mean like it is still a tournament it is ironic there is still a tournament a big one, we lose our best players.
But you wouldn’t say that in the Euros a little tournament in Europe, so I know what I mean and I understand the context said the journo.
“I am not a native speaker but if you want to understand me wrong, you can do that all the time,” said Klopp.
“I really don’t, I know that I never would think like this, I don’t understand why you thought like this to be honest.
“But that is really not okay because I would never do that but that is it now.
“It was not my intention but you made something of it, that is not so cool as well too 100%.”
Well, a simple sorry I never meant it that way would have sufficed but Jurgen Klopp went on to defend his comments.
Begs the question what he would say if he won half the trophies won by the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola or Jose Mourinho.
