Reds manager Jurgen Klopp is famous for watching his opponents warm up before games, which his players describe as “horrible”. Jurgen Klopp is notorious for stalking Liverpool’s opponents from mid-game onwards.
The Manchester United manager denied this, but some pundits and players shared the view that this is a scary tactic. Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher discussed the German team’s pre-match opposition viewing ritual in an episode of the Stick to Football podcast.
Neville told Stick: “I want to know one of the best things. I don’t know what Jurgen Klopp does every day, but one of the best things he does is get up in the warm-up.” This is a football podcast provided by Sky Bet. “He warms up, stands 6 feet tall, looks at his team’s closest opponent and does that every week.
“It’s harassment.”And Reds legend Carragher praised West Ham manager David Moyes’ “clever” tactics to disarm his opponents. “I remember in an interview when Klopp was asked why he was watching the opposition in the warm-up, he said it was not to threaten them but to see what they were doing,” he added. “I don’t think so, but he was talking about playing for Borussia Dortmund in Liverpool’s first season in the Europa League and I’m sure he said that to let the opposition know that I’m Liverpool’s manager.”
I’m not in Dortmund anymore.”What I’ve seen is other managers talking to him even though they have a good relationship with him. I’ve seen David Moyes do that many times and I think it’s a very smart thing to do. When I was with him and talked to him, he started not looking at our team as much.”
I don’t know if he does it really well, but I’ve seen Moyes do it a few times and I thought, ‘If I was the manager, I’d do that.’ I will go and speak to Klopp to make sure the players don’t feel they are being watched.In an interview with Carragher, Ben Foster interviewed Klopp for Amazon Prime Video and asked him if he is aware of how much his warm-up regime affects the minds of his opponents. “Because it isn’t.” replied Klopp. “I want to see, I want to understand.
Sometimes I might see a player limp a little bit, and when I see him do this or that, I try to understand what he’s doing. “It’s not fun when I’m doing something purely physical, but when they come, you watch. I only used it once to scare an opponent. It’s not a nice thing to say, but when I played for Dortmund it was against my old club.” I thought, ‘Let’s do it’, knowing that people would think it was weird, but besides, it wouldn’t be fair to say that someone did it on purpose (to intimidate).” I’m just looking.”
Liverpool face Burnley in the Premier League this weekend and Klopp will no doubt carry out his usual pre-match ritual.
