LIVERPOOL MANAGER JURGEN Klopp believes his team’s return to the Champions League group stage will provide them with a boost when it comes to player signings.
A 4-2 win at home to Hoffenheim on Wednesday saw Liverpool seal a 6-3 aggregate victory and spot in the group stage of Europe’s top club competition in 2017-18.
Klopp revealed the impact the Champions League had, even when it came to trying to re-sign players.
Even if you want to extend the contract of a player in the squad they say, ‘We want to play Champions League’,” the German said.
“And I always think — ‘WTF [what the f***]? It’s your job to do it with us together. Don’t ask to do the job so you can play Champions League’.
We do it together and that’s what this team did. That’s why I’m so happy about this — 14 months of hard work and we did it — nice.”
Liverpool added Mohamed Salah, Dominic Solanke and Andrew Robertson to their squad in the close-season, while being linked to numerous others.
Klopp said reaching the group stage of the Champions League would likely help with potential additions to his squad.
“It’s a big influence on the transfer market, especially if you do it more often,” he said.
I said before the game that if you talk to players — and players better than ours are difficult to find, I know a lot of people think differently but we do the work and it’s not easy to find 20 top players in each position — they say: ‘Oh, if you play Champions League, it would be really great because the club is good, the manager is not too bad’ and all this stuff.”
Subscribe to The42 podcasts here:
Typical Beckham soaking up the limelight and giving us tears, Scholes gets subbed last week in his final game after a greater career and just jogs off, no fuss
I like Beckham as much as the next fella but this is way OTT!
It shows how popular he is and how well he is respected by his peers. He won leagues wherever he went, no coincidence. A great professional.
In fairness, while not the most gifted player, he made the most of what he had both on and off the field. Not the first footballer to use his image well, but brought the marketing of footballers and their clubs to a whole new level. Football is a business whether we like it or not, ad this guy is good for business.
Send off a bit OTT, but he helped pave the way for making his teammates a lot of money from endorsements, put more emphasis on Ligue 1 and PSG. Crowd appreciate that too.
I hear he says he is still available for England if they need him , in his high pitched voice “I can never retire from England I love my country “