Klopp reveals his family suffered their own Paris nightmare
JURGEN KLOPP believes good fortune was the only reason a catastrophe was avoided at the Champions League final as he revealed his family refused to tell him about their own harrowing experience.
Liverpool’s manager had not previously spoken about the events in Paris but has now called for UEFA and football’s authorities to learn lessons from May 29 to ensure nothing like it happens again.
Klopp had 50 family and friends in the Stade de France, headed by wife Ulla and their two sons. They had messaged him in the build-up to the showdown with Real Madrid and sent him their best wishes to put his mind at rest — but the reality was different.
It took them 90 minutes from sending the message to getting into the stadium and Klopp received another 47 accounts from those closest to him that tallied with the nightmares Liverpool and Madrid fans went through due to shambolic policing and organisation.
‘There are different things to talk about,’ said Klopp. ‘Some of them it makes no sense to talk about because there is an ongoing investigation. There is the other part of what I know — even if I didn’t know a lot immediately after the game.
‘But a situation outside? I heard from my family because they were in the middle of everything. They texted me before the game: “We are in, good luck” stuff like this but they were pretty much one-and-a-half hours away from being in the stadium.
‘What happened to them happened to everyone. Then there were all the issues through the game. People sitting on seats next to them that were not theirs. They were thinking: “What are you doing here?”. There was not one Liverpool supporter in the wrong spot. There were a lot of spots occupied by people without tickets but they were not Liverpool supporters.
‘This is pretty much the story everyone told, everyone had this experience. That is not how it should be. In the end, it felt for them that the smallest problem we had that night was that we lost the game. Imagine that around the Champions League final. Crazy.
‘My family didn’t tell me on the night. They told me next morning. Obviously this is a good example of how it should not be. We all know how beautiful Paris is and the big events they have got coming up in the next few years.’