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