Klopp issues warning to FIFA and UEFA over football's future as fixtures pile up
Jurgen Klopp has called for the future of football to be placed into the hands of players.
The Liverpool boss is incredulous that the on-going conversation about burn-out is being ignored and that next year FIFA are cramming an extended Club World Cup tournament into a fixture schedule that is already at breaking point. Klopp believes the issue is that his profession’s future is being driven by people who have never played the game at the highest level.
Klopp said: “The people who decide don’t care. There isn’t one guy deciding who can remember what it was like when he was a player - if he ever was a player. That’s how it is. I won’t be in there deciding and I won’t have the power for that.
“At some point, someone will have to press the brake. But we are obviously not in charge because, if football people were in charge, it would look completely different. Not because we are lazy, but because we are the people who really understand the intensity of what the boys are doing.
“The outside world discusses it and say ‘I work eight hour a day, seven days a week’ - and that’s 100 percent true. It’s just that they don’t run, sprint, tackle, sprint. You can’t compare it. If we did compare it, that would be dumb. It’s just a different intensity - and it is really difficult for the human body as we know it, to deal with.
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Klopp feels the game is being stretched to breaking point (This Is Anfield)“Now UEFA and FIFA are arranging a new tournament - and suddenly getting a winter break in January is the smallest problem. When is the new Club World Cup? Is it 2025? In the summer? I don’t know how to compare that to anything else, where you take time off your best employees and then just think ‘they will go again and play a full season’.”
Liverpool played eight games in December. After beating Newcastle on New Year’s Day to go to the top of the Premier League, they are scheduled to be in action another five times this month.
Pep Guardiola will take his Man City players to Abu Dhabi this month (John Bradley/ProSports/REX/Shutterstock)If the FA Cup third-round tie at Arsenal ends in a draw that would add another game to their schedule at a time when the Gunners are planning a training trip to Dubai and Manchester City ’s squad will be recharging their batteries in Abu Dhabi.
Everton boss Sean Dyche feels the winter break favours the biggest clubs. Klopp, whose team meet Fulham in the Carabao Cup semi-finals, said: “I read what Sean said about it - that it just favours the bigger clubs - but I think the facts are on the table.
“He said that it would be cool if we could take some games out of a really busy December and put them into January. That might be an idea, but it would then kill the winter break.
“There’s so much tradition in this competition. If I, as a German, stood here and said stuff about the FA Cup… I love the FA Cup. It’s just so difficult to stay on your feet and get through these rounds.
“You need a top squad to get to the end - and that also means moving other games. If you get through to the final of the Carabao Cup then it takes a league game out and you have to fit it in somewhere where it definitely won’t fit in. It’s unbelievably tricky.”
Klopp will be without Mo Salah and Wataru Endo, who are both away on international duty for Egypt and Japan respectively, while Dominik Szoboszlai is sidelined by a hamstring injury. He insisted he will be picking a full-strength team at the Emirates for the showpiece tie of the weekend.
Sean Dyche said he feels the break favours bigger clubs (Javier Garcia/REX/Shutterstock)Klopp said: “Can you go to Arsenal and play a team with boys in a situation that Arsenal are in and will probably go all in? Of course not. We are Liverpool we can't go there like that.
“Four years ago, we played Everton and it was one of the biggest nights of our lives. We went into an Everton derby game with a very young team and somehow we won. It was great.
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“All the boys with us in the dressing room are ready for games. That's how it is. There is no doubt about it. That is our life and the life of the boys. We have to make sure we get through.”
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