OUTSTANDING Klopp troops won’t
JURGEN KLOPP fears his Liverpool team will not get the respect they deserve if they fail to turn their brilliance into trophies. The Reds go into this afternoon’s Mersey derby chasing an unprecedented Quadruple – and the chance of football immortality.
After winning the Carabao Cup in February, the Merseysiders have chased down Manchester City at the top of the Premier League table.
They meetvillarreal in the Champions League semi-finals on Wednesday and will face Chelsea in the FA Cup Final next month.
History beckons. But Klopp admitted that second place is nowhere for some critics.
He said: “If we don’t win we will probably not get the respect we deserve because the world is obsessed with first place.
“It’s really funny.
Most of the time we talk about winning everything and now we talk about winning nothing – so let’s just try to get something out of the season and then we will see.
“But I know that, so far, this is an outstanding season and it will be an outstanding season if we win nothing else.
“And it will be an outstanding season if we got to the Champions League Final.
“But, no, we will not get the same respect for it as if we had won it – but that is the nature of the thing.”
Liverpool have won the Champions League, Premier League, Club World Cup and Carabao Cup under Klopp’s guidance during the last four seasons.
And, just as he did in 2019, Pep Guardiola is proving to be a tough opponent to beat.
Klopp insists his intense rivalry with the Catalan could never turn into anything sinister – despite often coming
second best to
the City boss in both the Premier League and the Bundesliga.
He said: “I said it before that if Man City had not been there we probably would have won one more title at least.
“And if Pep had also not been the manager (at Bayern Munich), I probably would have won one or maybe two more with Borussia Dortmund, as well as cup finals and things like this.
“But, no, it is not at all frustrating.
“I have always respected in my life if someone was better than me.
“That’s easy because so many people were better than me when I was at school! I never hated the guy who was best in the class. Never.
“I think in life it makes absolute sense that you learn to accept your own strengths and weaknesses. It is absolutely fine.
“I feel a little bit for our people – it would be nice if they could celebrate more often – but that’s it.
“When I look back on my career I will not think, ‘Ah, we were only second!’ because I’m not that person.
“I enjoy the journey a lot – and you can do that if you have more good days than bad days.
“If you don’t appreciate them, then I think you make a mistake because that makes your life less enjoyable.”
Klopp believes the experience of the last four years will help his team cope with the pressure of the run-in.
But he insists that the only way forward for his team is to ignore the bigger picture.
Klopp said: “We don’t think about four trophies.we don’t plan now for the Champions League Final, for example.
“We think about Everton and then we don’t have a lot of time to think about Villarreal.
“So we don’t take the second step before the first.
“I don’t think we could ever afford to drop points at this period in any of the previous seasons.
“We put ourselves under pressure and then we had to deliver.
“I trust this group more than I can say. But it was never easy and it will not be easy this year.
“But the only way I know is for us to do it step by step and game by game.
“That is what worked for us in the past.”