Ahead of this Tuesday’s Champions League match, Jürgen Klopp paid proper respect to their next rival in line with a brilliant rant.
Jürgen Klopp will always pay respect to any rival his squad faces, especially one who is playing the UEFA Champions League. Tuesday will bring us an exciting match between Liverpool and Midtjylland, a Danish club that earned their spot in the tournament. However, all journalists from that country tend to consider their club an unworthy contender against the Reds.
Klopp felt the need to remind them how difficult it is to reach the Champions League for clubs like this. Apart from the usual analysis of the upcoming rivals, Klopp admitted he’s been watching several games in order to prepare for them. In his view, Midtjylland shouldn’t be underestimated and his player will make sure of it.
But the most curious moment came when a Danish journalist asked about the way in which Liverpool sees the club. Klopp urged him to be more confident of Midtjylland’s possibilities to win the match.
There’s no weak rival for Klopp.
“We don’t see you as a small club, we see you really as a team, a proper challenger in this group,” said Klopp on Liverpool’s website.
“Nobody is part of the group because they are nice cities or whatever. They are just there because they are good football teams and because they earned the right to be in the Champions League the season before. And Midtjylland, they had an impressive comeback against Brondby. It means they are good again, not only last year.
“I don’t know exactly how many players they lost because I didn’t watch games from last year, only from this year. But it is just a football team and in football that’s the thing we probably all love most about it, pretty much everything is possible. We use that from time to time for us – maybe from another perspective. But I’m sure Midtjylland sees it exactly the same way.
“They won’t wave already with the white flag. They will be here and try to do everything they can. It was always the case and never not. We respect that. There’s no smaller team in the Champions League, there are only teams. How small and big you are, you show on the pitch in the game and not in any press conferences before.”
Be sure not to miss out on the latest news about Champions League
Download our brand new App and follow your favorite players, clubs, and much more
