After nearly a week of Super League drama, Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp lashed out against UEFA over their new format.
Nobody is happy with either new tournament format, especially Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp. They are managers of two of the clubs that currently play the highest number of matches throughout the year. None of them like either the Champions League new format or the European Super League tournament proposal. This is what Pep said about it: “Deja vu – every time it’s the same. All the managers and players ask for better quality and the football world goes for quantity.
“But we are not in charge of that. We have to ask UEFA and FIFA to extend the year, maybe have 400 days a year. Maybe then they can find a solution on that! Listen, I’m not an expert about the format of the Champions League. But always (when) we demand, all the managers, to reduce the calendar, have more time to recover the players to enjoy our profession, they do the opposite. Of course there will be more injuries. At the end of the day the players play because they love to play, but the injuries come. UEFA knows that, of course they know it. Do they care? Absolutely not.”
Klopp thinks it’s a joke.
Jurgen Klopp’s complaints were similar, but he also shed light to the fact that UEFA and the club owners never ask the opinion of the ones who matter the most. On one side you have supporters, and on the other the players with their respective managers. For Klopp, ignoring those elements during a decision making process is a gross mistake. This is what the German boss said via Goal: “The most positive thing [about the ESL] is that it didn’t happen! But it’s not over yet, and I don’t mean the Super League. Everybody knows my view on more games. You cannot just introduce more games and more competitions.
Yes the Super League is off the table. Good. Very good. Great. But the new Champions League is not ‘oh great, let’s do that!’ They showed it to me, they called me and I had one hour with UEFA to see the whole idea, and I said ‘I don’t like it’. There are 10 games instead of six, and I have no idea where we shall put them in. We will see what happens. Maybe UEFA will ask for the cup competitions in England to be cancelled, or that we have 18 teams only in the league, stuff like this. Tell that to the Premier League and the EFL and they say ‘no way’. It’s a joke!”
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