Former Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp criticised several of the club’s rivals during a “Danke, Jürgen” farewell event on Tuesday, appearing to aim digs at Manchester City‘s alleged financial rules breaches, Chelsea‘s owners and Manchester United‘s handling of Jadon Sancho.
Klopp returned to the city for the send-off event at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena, nine days after his final match in charge — a 2-0 victory over Wolves at Anfield.
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Klopp, 56, won seven major trophies during his nine-year tenure, lifting the Champions League trophy in 2019 and the Premier League title in 2020. But Liverpool were also pipped to the title by a single point by City on two occasions.
City have been charged with 115 breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules, with the league’s CEO Richard Masters saying on April 26 that the hearing over City’s alleged breaches will take place in the “near future.”
“You leave this club having won the Premier League once,” one of the event’s hosts, comedian John Bishop, said. “There could be a court decision that means you’ve won the Premier League three times…” Klopp interrupted: “If you organise a bus parade, I’m in! How long it takes I don’t care.”
Klopp also said that he had no regrets over Liverpool not signing star players such as Kylian Mbappé, Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland, as it is not the “Liverpool way.”
“Can you imagine LFC as the club with unlimited money?” Klopp said. “Imagine Kylian Mbappé came here. Imagine Bellingham came here, Haaland. It is not us, it just does not fit. We won what we won and we did it the Liverpool way. We had hard conversations, and other clubs didn’t do that in the same time.”
Klopp said that he felt supported by Liverpool’s owners during his time at the club and added that he felt that he would not have been shown as much faith at some other teams.
“We should be really happy that we have these owners and not guys who bought London clubs and other stuff,” Klopp said. “I wouldn’t have survived a year at Liverpool [with them in charge].
“‘Great development but not good enough, sack him!’ A year later: ‘Sack him.’ Then finally they play football where people think they might be back and they sack the manager anyway.
“People always think the grass is greener, but we have owners who really feel responsible for the club and work really hard as well to be successful. I felt supported. We did it as good as we could have done and I’m fine with it.”
Klopp also appeared to criticise United’s treatment of Sancho, who joined the team from Borussia Dortmund in 2021, before falling out with coach Erik ten Hag and rejoining the German club on loan last summer.
“If the whole world loses trust and faith in the player, the manager has to be the one behind the player,” Klopp said.
“I cannot just buy into that, ‘he’s useless,’ like other clubs did by the way, buying a player for £80 million ($102m) and then sending him out on loan.”