Klopp throws further doubt on his long-term future with Liverpool

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has cast further doubt on extending his stay at Anfield.

The German has already had one contract renewal to take him up to 2022 and Fenway Sports Group, which owns Liverpool, is keen to tie him down to another. Klopp joined the club in 2015. As he spent exactly seven years at his previous two clubs, Mainz and Borussia Dortmund, there is speculation that he could quit his present post in three seasons.

Asked if he would take some time off after he finishes at Anfield, Klopp told German sports magazine Kicker :“It looks like it. Who can now say if he can give it his all in three years’ time?

“If I decide for myself that I can’t go on any more, I’ll take a break and in that year I’d have to make a definite decision (over my career). I have absolute energy, but I have one problem: I can’t do ‘a little bit’. I can only do ‘all or nothing’.

“But the chances are very high that my energy levels will go up again (after a year’s break), and that I can then do the job the way I want to.”

Klopp’s comments have again sparked speculation that Rangers manager Steven Gerrard will return to Anfield to succeed him, with former Liverpool keeper Jerzy Dudek among those who are confident that the succession will work out that way.

“When I was in Liverpool recently, it was no secret that Steven is the man and indeed [the] only candidate for replacing Klopp when he decides his time at Anfield is over,” Dudek said on a Polish website. “Everyone knows that sooner or later the great captain will return.”