12 January 2024 , 11:13
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Former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg once dubbed Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp a "strange bloke" and claimed he tried to intimidate the official before a game.
Klopp is widely viewed as one of the more warm and friendly bosses in the English top flight, but Clattenburg appears to have seen a different side to the Reds boss, though nowadays a few fourth officials may agree with his sentiment. Klopp joined Liverpool in 2014, meaning he and Clattenburg shared three years in the Premier League together before the referee upped sticks to Saudi Arabia.
In an extract from Clattenburg's book Whistle Blower, the official discussed his first-ever meeting with the former Borussia Dortmund boss, which came in the form of a Champions League quarter-final first leg between the Bundesliga outfit LaLiga titans Real Madrid.
Dortmund fell to a 3-0 defeat at the Santiago Bernabeu, which meant Klopp wasn't in the best of moods by the time the full-time whistle was blown. His anger only grew once he spotted Clattenburg taking post-match pictures of some of the Real Madrid players, as admitted by the referee himself.
"After the game, I came out of my dressing room and Real defender Marcelo and his wife asked for a picture. It was a private picture on their phone so I said yeah, no problem," Clattenburg explained. "Klopp walked past just as the photo was being taken, 'Oh, so that's why we got beat, is it?' he said. He was not being humorous or friendly, he was being sarky.
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"'You're lucky you only got beat 3-0,' I said. The fact we were in Madrid probably gave me a bit of bravado to answer back. It annoyed me when managers could not be gracious in defeat."
Clattenburg's issues with Klopp didn't end there. Things followed a similarly tense path when the German coach arrived to take charge of Liverpool and the 2016 Champions League final referee discussed the Reds' manager's contrasting moods.
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Mark Clattenburg had his fair share of run-ins with Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp"Klopp never took losing well. When he was winning he was happy, he was good fun. When things were not going his way, he got prickly. My final game with Klopp was in January 2017 against Chelsea at Anfield.
"Managers rarely came into my dressing room for the exchange of team sheets an hour before kick-off. On this occasion, Klopp came in with Jordan Henderson. It was bizarre, he stood and stared at me for about 30 seconds.
I just stared back at him. I could see Jordan was a bit like, ‘What the hell's going on?’ Did Klopp think I was stupid? I was not going to be bullied by him. He left and all I thought was: 'What a strange bloke.'"