Liverpool’s manager on feeling tense before cup finals, the hardest bit of his job and why he would rather wear swim shorts than a suit
“Why is it ‘Wem-ber-lee’, by the way? I saw it written down that way,” asks Jürgen Klopp from the far end of a table inside Liverpool’s plush new training centre in Kirkby. After a mumbled and aborted attempt to sing him the answer, Klopp’s curiosity is satisfied, but he is clearly a little rusty on matters relating to what his fans once dubbed “Anfield South”. As are his team. Together they have lifted trophies in Madrid, Doha, Istanbul and behind closed doors at Anfield. But nothing at Wembley. There is a lasting need, explains the Liverpool manager, to correct that in the Carabao Cup final on Sunday.
“We will try with everything to have a Wembley moment,” Klopp says. “We all know that in this moment the people are really happy with this team. But in 20 years if you talk about this team, I would not be surprised if people would say, if we don’t win anything any more: ‘Yes they were good but they should have won more.’ That’s why we should try to win a few things now. The next chance, the best chance, is this weekend against Chelsea when it is really tricky. We can’t sit here and talk about it like it’s already ours. Chelsea just won the Club World Cup and we know how great that feels. They are desperate to put another in the trophy room.”
