Furious Klopp "eats" horrified journalist
After the 2:0 win at Sheffield United, Jürgen Klopp is in anything but a joking mood. Defender Joel Matip is out injured for a long time and a TV presenter is also annoying with "jokes". That's when he gets angry. His outburst is also a consequence of the entertainment machine that is soccer, which is perfected in England.
Jürgen Klopp has once again had a row with a TV reporter and put his finger in the money-dripping wound of English soccer. Liverpool FC's iconic coach also benefits from this. But first things first. Everything was actually fine on Wednesday evening after the 2-0 win at Sheffield United.
The Reds had once again stalked league leaders Arsenal and were able to rejoice again shortly afterwards: Manchester City's 1-0 draw at Aston Villa manifested the results crisis of long-term rival Pep Guardiola, who has now gone four games without a win with his Sky Blues and has lost touch with the leaders for the time being.
But Klopp was in no mood for jokes as he stood at the Amazon table after the game and engaged in conversation with presenter Marcus Buckland. They chatted, Buckland talked about all the competitions Liverpool are still involved in and touched on the upcoming game against Crystal Palace. That will take place on Saturday at 13:30 CET, 12:30 local time.
"Jürgen, please accept my apologies"
The lunchtime game is at the bottom of Klopp's popularity scale. He has often complained about it in the past and so it made him cringe, because the conversation was going in an unpleasant direction. That was Klopp's "favorite kick-off time", joked Buckland, striking the completely wrong note for the former Mainz player. "It's really brave of you to make a joke about it," he scolded: "I realize you don't understand it that well and you work in soccer, so why should I explain it again? If you make a joke out of it, you're ignorant."
Buckland's attempts to appease Klopp also came to nothing. "I meant no disrespect," said the presenter. "You already were," Klopp yelped back. "Jürgen, I apologize," it echoed back, but the answer was hardly conciliatory: "But it's all good. You can say what you want. I can't say what I want - because that would really be something else."
Why are England playing at 12:30 at all?
So far, so Klopp. At times, the 56-year-old has no interest in holding back his incomprehension. Then his counterpart feels it. This has happened time and again in Germany, just remember his interview with ZDF's Jochen Breyer after a BVB defeat at Real Madrid in the spring of 2014. And it's nothing new in England either: Klopp can be just as thin-skinned as he is successful. This time it was probably also due to the injury to former Schalke player Joel Matip, who tore his cruciate ligament in the game at Sheffield United and may be out for the rest of the season.
The Saturday date, which Klopp has vehemently criticized for years, is one of the selling points for the Premier League TV rights. On the one hand, it exists to avoid the Saturday TV blackout for soccer between 2:45 pm and 5:15 pm local time. But it also exists to make the league more attractive for key Asian TV markets such as China, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The price the clubs pay
The Premier League has many different slots for different markets. It generates international and national revenues that other leagues can no longer dream of. Just this week, it celebrated a new national record deal. The most lucrative TV contract ever signed in Europe will bring the league almost eight billion euros over a period of four years from 2025/2026, or around two billion euros per year. In addition, there will be roughly the same sum of around two billion euros annually from foreign marketing. This is another reason why the English league is ahead of the other leagues in Europe.
The price the clubs pay for this is the fragmentation of match days for the different TV markets. In return, they give up some of their self-determination. Who plays when is decided - within certain limits - by the TV providers and not the clubs. The clubs' price for this is also the sell-off of old traditions. Even the TV blackout, which is supposed to drive spectators into the stadiums, is no longer set in stone, but rather just another hidden reserve for the next rights poker.
In the end, all these gigantic sums benefit the players in the game of soccer, which Klopp quite rightly classified as "entertainment" in his angry conversation with Buckland. But sometimes the Liverpool icon tears himself apart and overdoes it with his entertainment. Then there's something to report again. The machine must be running.
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Jürgen Klopp's anger towards the TV presenter was not only due to the lunchtime kick-off, a topic he has criticized frequently, but also because of the injury to defender Joel Matip. Klopp's current team, Liverpool FC, is currently benefiting from the coach's outspokenness in the Premier League, a league known for its high revenues from international and national TV deals, including a new record deal worth almost eight billion euros over four years.
Source: www.ntv.de
