Mo Salah has recounted his disbelief when Jurgen Klopp told the Liverpool squad that he’d be leaving at the end of this season.
The 56-year-old sent shockwaves through the world of football in late January when he announced his decision to move on from Anfield once the current campaign ends, and he clearly did the same to the players of whom he’s in charge.
In an interview with Jamie Carragher for Sky Sports, the Egyptian remembered seeing the manager’s agent at the AXA Training Centre that morning, but he thought it was for a different reason to what ultimately materialised.
Salah revealed: “Usually we don’t do meetings at 10:30am, as 10:30 is the report time. It’s normally a 10:30 meet time and then 12 noon training. Then they said there was a meeting at 10:30am. I was like: ‘What?’
“The manager’s agent was there at the training ground and I thought: ‘Oh, he’s renewing his contract’. Five minutes before the meeting, Virgil [van Dijk] said: ‘Do you know what the meeting is about?’. I said no.
“He said: ‘The manager is leaving’. I said: ‘Really, the manager is leaving? You serious? Why?’ He said: ‘No idea’.
“Then the manager came in and he just said it and it was weird because no-one knew before. There was nothing in the media. He didn’t even prepare us for that, he just said it. That was a weird day for us and for the club.”
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Salah’s recollection of hearing about Klopp’s departure would resonate with how every Liverpool fan must’ve felt on the morning of Friday 26 January when that enormous bombshell dropped.
The exits of players and managers in modern football are usually preceded by mounting speculation before the news is officially confirmed, but there was no public indication whatsoever that the German could depart at the end of the season.
It seems from the Egyptian’s account of events that the 56-year-old even caught the players majorly off-guard, something which wouldn’t be easily done in such a close-knit environment.
Even when Klopp’s pre-match press conference ahead of that weekend’s fixture (the FA Cup tie v Norwich) was brought forward to Thursday from its usual Friday slot, nobody could’ve anticipated the shattering news which came on 26 January.
More than six weeks on, it still seems hard to imagine that the German won’t be in the Anfield dugout from the start of next season, but at least his team have the opportunity to send him out on the highest of highs in May.
The post ‘What?’ – Mo Salah recounts the moment Klopp told Liverpool players he’d be leaving in summer appeared first on The Empire of The Kop.
