Jürgen Klopp aims dig at FIFA and UEFA as Liverpool schedule grows after FA Cup win
Jürgen Klopp has taken a swipe at FIFA and UEFA as he discussed the intense schedule his Liverpool side is once again facing this season, which has just grown again.
Jürgen Klopp has hit out at FIFA and UEFA while speaking about the added strain placed on players, in particular his Liverpool squad. The Reds are once again facing a packed schedule after coming through their FA Cup third-round tie at Arsenal on Sunday.
The 2-0 win, thanks to an own goal from Jakub Kiwior and a late Luis Díaz strike, means Liverpool will be in the hat for Monday’s fourth-round draw, and keeps them in the hunt for four trophies this season. It does, additionally, mean that a dreaded replay at Anfield has been avoided.
It does, however, in the sense of there being another competition to focus on, put extra strain on a squad that is already being stretched to its limit amid a growing injury list, while Mohamed Salah and Wataru Endō are currently away on international duty. The Reds did at least avoid eating into its upcoming winter break by dodging an extra game against Arsenal.
“We can’t plan (for the winter break),” Klopp said before Sunday’s FA Cup win at Arsenal (via the ECHO). “I don’t know if I’m ready to be the voice for that again. Coincidentally I read what Sean (Dyche) said about it — that it just favors the bigger clubs — but I think the facts are on the table.
“He said that it would be cool if we could take some games out of a really busy December and put them into January. That might not be a bad idea, but it would then kill the winter break. I don’t know if that has to be the case.
“But there’s so much tradition in this competition. If I now, as a German, stood here and said anything about the FA Cup, everybody goes on (about it). I love the FA Cup. It’s just so difficult to stay on your feet and get through these rounds. You need a top squad to get to the end. And while you get there, you have to play other games.
“You play in the middle of something, you then play, if you go through, the final of the Carabao Cup, and that takes a league game out. It puts the league game somewhere it will definitely not fit in. It’s just the first space available and then boom, you play there. It’s unbelievably tricky.
“But we are obviously not in charge of this because if we (football people) would be in charge, it would look completely different. If the football people were in charge, and not because we are lazy, not at all, but because we are the people who really understand the intensity of what the boys are doing.”
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Klopp added: “While we are talking, probably UEFA and FIFA invents a new tournament and puts it in somewhere and suddenly getting a winter break in January is our smallest problem. The least of our problems.
“When is the new Club World Cup? Is it 2025? In the summer? I don’t know how to compare that to anything else, where you take time off your best employees and then just think, ‘After that they will go again and play a full season.’” But again, talking here I have again said too much…
“The people who decide about it don’t care about that. I am 100 per cent sure there isn’t one guy deciding who can remember what it was like when he was a player — if he ever was a player. That’s how it is. I won’t be in there deciding and I won’t have the power for that. At some point in the future, someone will have to press the brake.”
Liverpool.com says: Klopp will undoubtedly get some criticism from some quarters, as he always does when he speaks about player welfare, but there can’t be any denying that he’s right about players being afforded more breaks. We’re seeing more and more injuries now in the Premier League, and it does feel like more managers should be banging the drum, and not just Klopp.
As for the new Club World Cup, FIFA has hit on a truly awful idea. Never mind putting more strain on players, the format and criteria for qualifying teams is ridiculous. Chelsea will qualify for the inaugural tournament based on its 2021 Champions League win — you’d have a tough time arguing a case for the Blues being one of the top 10 teams in the Premier League at the moment, never mind the world.
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