Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has finally broken his silence on the Champions League final. Speaking for the first time in detail about the pain Liverpool suffered 63 days ago, Klopp claimed Sergio Ramos put Mohamed Salah ‘down like a wrestler’ and that goalkeeper Loris Karius suffered a concussion during the match.
He said ‘I’m not sure if it is an experience we will have again. Go there and put an elbow to the goalkeeper, put their goalscorer down like a wrestler in midfield and then you win.’ ‘I watched that back, of course,’ said Klopp. ‘Someone showed it to me immediately after the game. But if you watch it back and you are not with Real Madrid then you think it is ruthless and brutal. You don’t think, “Wow! Good challenge”. It was ruthless.
‘I don’t think Mo would have always got injured in that situation, this time it was unlucky. But it is an experience we cannot have. I’m not sure if it is an experience we will have again. Go there and put an elbow to the goalkeeper, put their goalscorer down like a wrestler in midfield and then you win.
‘That was the story. Ramos said a lot of things I didn’t like. As a person, I didn’t like his reactions. He was like, “Whatever! What do they want? It’s normal!” No. It isn’t normal. If VAR is coming this is a situation where you have to look again, not to give a red card, but to say, “What is that?” ‘If you put all of the situations of Ramos together — and I’ve watched football since I was five years old — then you will see a lot of situations with Ramos. In the final the year before, against Juve, he was responsible for the red card for Juan Cuadrado. The world out there accepts that you use each weapon to win the game. People probably expect that I am the same. I am not.’
Now he has found his rhythm. ‘If you write this people will say I’m weak, a bad loser or a whiner,’ Klopp continues. ‘I’m not. I accept it. You have asked me about it. It’s not like I wake up in the morning and think “RAMOS!” (he jumps out his chair for effect) I’m fine with it. We were a competitor. But in a final you need to have a bit of luck and we didn’t have it. Then there was the situation with Loris.’
‘What did you think in the moment when (that story) came out?’ Klopp asks. ‘Come on. Be honest.’ The honest answer is that many saw it as an excuse, a story designed to offer protection for a goalkeeper whose errors led to Madrid’s first and third goals. Klopp takes it all on board before putting forward the reality of the situation.
‘Franz Beckenbauer called me,’ Klopp explains. ‘He started with, “Your goalkeeper had concussion”. I said, “What?”. He said “I’ve come from (Bayern Munich doctor) Hans Muller-Wohlfahrt and he said he knew immediately in the situation that Loris had concussion when Ramos hit him.” ‘People said we made the medical report public because it’s policy. It’s not. We didn’t use it one second as an excuse. But how can we not put it out as an explanation? The problem is that people still don’t believe it. Then we bring in a new goalkeeper and people think we don’t believe it as well.’
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