Klopp explains Salah captaincy snub at Liverpool

The Reds boss’ decision to pick Alexander-Arnold as captain over Salah in a recent match left the Egyptian forward disappointed.

Jurgen Klopp has explained he elects his captain based on Liverpool’s longest-serving players after overlooking Mohamed Salah for a Champions League trip to FC Midtjylland on December 9.

Trent Alexander-Arnold took the skipper’s armband instead after Klopp’s first four choices in Jordan Henderson, James Milner, Virgil van Dijk, and Georginio Wijnaldum were either unavailable or hadn’t made the line-up in Denmark.

Salah later confessed in an interview last week with Spanish outlet Diario AS that Klopp’s decision left him ‘very disappointed’.

Mohamed Salah says he was 'very disappointed' to not be captain for Liverpool against Midtjylland 😠

Trent Alexander-Arnold was picked instead ⓒ pic.twitter.com/zhxmjOVmwr

— Goal India (@Goal_India) December 19, 2020

But Klopp has dismissed those comments and made a startling revelation – he made a mistake!

Turns out Divock Origi, who joined Liverpool in 2014 at least two years before Alexander-Arnold or Salah emerged in the first-team, should have been captain.

“In this world, we make a big fuss about everything, and I didn’t realize it was that much a story for Trent or whatever,” said Klopp as quoted on The Telegraph.

“The rule here is, we have a players’ committee. Hendo [Henderson] wears the armband, and if he’s not playing then it’s Milly [James Milner]. If those two are not playing then it’s Virgil [van Dijk] and if all three are not playing, it’s Gini [Wijnaldum].

“If they all cannot play, then it’s usually the player who is longest at the club. And that was how I saw it in my understanding. Trent [Alexander-Arnold] got it because he was longest at the club – professionally, not just his youth career.”

The Liverpool boss added: “Somebody afterward told me it would have been Divock Origi, but Div was on loan and stuff like that.

“That was my fault. I didn’t make it that complicated. It was just, ‘Trent is longest at the club, so he has the armband’.

“Of course I spoke to Mo [Salah] about it afterward. When I realized it didn’t work out that well [for him], I clarified it, and then he spoke about it again in the interview, which is not a problem for me.

“Yes, he was disappointed, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I just did what I did, and if I made a mistake, then it was that Divock Origi was not the captain that day!”