The champions were unhappy with Klopp’s pre-match comments (Picture: LFCTV / YouTube)
Jurgen Klopp insists he had zero intention of stoking tensions prior to Liverpool’s heated 1-0 win over Manchester City on Sunday and feels his comments must have been ‘misunderstood’.
The Merseysiders secured a 1-0 victory over the reigning Premier League champions courtesy of Mohamed Salah’s breakaway second-half goal, though the match was overshadowed somewhat by bad behaviour off the pitch.
Klopp was sent off for screaming at the linesman, Pep Guardiola had coins thrown at him by Liverpool fans and the away supporters were condemned for chanting about Hillsborough.
On Monday, it was then revealed that City’s team bus had been struck by an object on its way out of Anfield, cracking the windscreen while the players were all onboard.
Further reports then claimed that City felt Klopp needed to take some degree of responsibility for the unsavoury scenes, with his pre-match comments – in which he took aim at City as well as Paris Saint-Germain and Newcastle United – deemed to have ‘unnecessarily and irresponsibly inflamed tensions’.
But for the majority of his media duties Klopp had been hugely complimentary about City and the German coach feels it is unfair to suggest he whipped up Liverpool fans.
At his pre-match press conference before facing West Ham on Wednesday night, it was put to Klopp that he had spent most of his previous interview with the media praising City, to which he replied sarcastically: ‘That didn’t arrive obviously.’
Things got very heated at Anfield on Sunday (Picture: Getty)
Pressed on how it feels to face criticism for his pre-match comments despite so much of what he said having been hugely positive about the champions, Klopp continued: ‘That’s the life of people who speak in public.
‘So it’s not the first time that I’ve been misunderstood. I know what I thought when I said it. If somebody misunderstands that – or wants to misunderstand that – I cannot change that.
‘I have to be careful, I’ve known that since years ago. I’m not always careful, I realise that as well, from time to time – I just answer and say what I think.
‘I will try to do that [say what I think] in the future as well because usually it’s never my aim to blame anybody or whatever, just talk about things – that I think are not that important in life, actually.
‘But I think I say what I know about it, or how I judge it, or how I see it. So that’s it, I cannot change that. Nothing the things were made of [by Manchester City] were my intention, to be honest.’
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The champions were unhappy with Klopp’s pre-match comments.
