Klopp: Why have we let this happen?

JURGEN KLOPP has admitted he has little appetite to watch the World Cup after being left cold by the issues around it. Liverpool’s manager intends to take a holiday during the group stages in Qatar and will then travel to a warm-weather training camp in Dubai with his players who are not involved.

Klopp made it clear that players and managers of the 32 nations should not have to face a barrage of questions on politics when they are there for football.

And there was no mistaking his ambivalence for the tournament. The German said: ‘Don’t put Gareth Southgate constantly in a situation where he has to talk about everything. He has an opinion but he is not a politician, I’m not a politician, he is manager of England so let him do that.

‘If you want to write about something else then do it, but without asking us so that it’s “Klopp said” or “Southgate said”. As if that would change anything. ‘I will watch the games but it is different. I watched an old documentary about the whole situation, about when it got announced that Russia and Qatar are the places for the next World Cups. I think it was the first time in history they announced two in one go.

‘We all know how it happened and that we still let it happen, with no legal challenge. Now it is open, now everybody knows, but still it was hidden and you think, “How can that all happen?”

‘In the moment you put it there, all the things that followed it up were clear. The people who were involved at that time should have known.

‘Later on we talk about human rights in terms of the people who have to work there in circumstances that are, let me say it nicely, difficult. The situation makes you angry. How can it not?’

The issue of player welfare is also something that has enraged Klopp, with a growing number of big name injuries already. He added: ‘I hate this subject. These problems were so clear — so clear! — and nobody mentioned it until three weeks before the World Cup. Nobody cares about us and how we feel. ‘The players who get injured and cannot play, it is a disaster. But how can we change it now?’