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The Liverpool manager isn’t happy about the demands being placed on the game’s top players.
Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp hadn’t been expected at the UEFA’s Elite Club Coaches Forum in Switzerland this week. The German hadn’t attended last year’s summit and had signalled he wasn’t likely to attend this year’s, either.
Now, he’s heading to Nyon. And UEFA probably have Liverpool’s whole two games in two days in December situation to thank—or curse—for it, as according to the Daily Mail he’s been motivated to attend in order to complain.
Accoring to the report, it wasn’t until late last week that UEFA were told Klopp would be attending—and that he would be doing so to voice his frustrations and concerns over the demands placed on the games top international players.
Between club commitments and an ever-expanding international slate, more often than not the game’s best have little more than a 2-3 week break each year—in stark contrast to the long offseasons other major sports tend to allow.
That along with a schedule that allows for little in-season downtime puts a strain on the players that Klopp has long considered a problem, and now he will at the very least attempt to ensure that UEFA know that he isn’t happy.
Other attendees from England are Pep Guardiola, Unai Emery, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer—and one imagines Guardiola, who has often talked of his unhappiness with the overloaded fixture list, will be a sympathetic ear despite the weekend’s result.
Continental managers like Carlo Ancelotti, Maurizio Sarri, Thomas Tuchel, Erik ten Hag, and Zinedine Zidane will also be in attendance.
