KLOPPED OUT
Liverpool boss’ World Cup fear: Players will be knackered after Russia. Premier League must help us
JURGEN KLOPP has warned Premier League standards will plummet if nothing is done about football’s gruelling fixture schedule.
The Liverpool boss is incredulous that the 2018-19 season will kick-off on August 11 – less than four weeks after the World Cup Final in Moscow.
Klopp is worried something has to give.
And he reckons the quality that has enabled the English top-flight to generate a TV deal worth £5.1billion is about to suffer if Prem bosses continue to resist the calls to introduce a winter break.
“We have just started to look at the schedule after the World Cup and in England the league starts two weeks earlier than Germany,” said the Kop boss.
“Maybe in Germany they think they will be in the final? I have no idea.
“We start around August 11 – and that will be one week earlier if we win the FA Cup and we are playing in the Community Shield.
“When the World Cup ends it is the only time the boys can have a holiday and you should give them three weeks at least.
“But that would mean you are playing before they should come back. Wow!
“When do you give them any rest? How can they deliver?
“Two weeks after next season starts we will stand here again and you will ask me, ‘Why did he play like he played?’ I will say, ‘It’s because he had no time off since 1960-something!
“There comes a moment when somebody has to say ‘please, don’t forget the players in all of this.’
“It’s not about me. I have enough holidays and I could do what I do for 365 days a year. But if you really want to keep the level up, the quality high, then please, you have to think about it.”
Klopp took his players for a brief break in Dubai ahead of last weekend’s vital clash with Manchester City – and saw them produce a stunning performance to end Pep Guardiola’s unbeaten start to the season.
He said: “For us it was always clear. The first moment we have the opportunity to give the boys a few days somewhere else, we had to do it.
“You have to do it after the unbelievably intense Christmas period.
“In the last two years we couldn’t do it because we were always in the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup.
“This year, there is nothing good to say about going out of the Carabao Cup other than you don’t have to play two games in a moment when everybody is pretty much on the edge.
“The German winter break this year was not really long.
“They had, I think, seven, eight or nine days maybe.
“What that means is that they can rest and then they can prepare properly.
“Why can’t we do it in England?”