JURGEN KLOPP is acting like a petulant child by refusing to take charge of Liverpool’s FA Cup replay with Shrewsbury.
Here is a man on a £15million salary refusing to work a little overtime.
Jurgen Klopp will shun the Reds’ FA Cup replay with ShrewsburyCredit: AFP or licensors
A man with a bee in his bonnet, desperate to make a point about fixture congestion and burn-out.
A man who has become accustomed to everything going his way, throwing a strop because his second string could not overcome a League One team.
Klopp could have turned up to the replay himself, with the same starting line-up that played at New Meadow on Sunday – minus Fabinho – and all of those senior players who needed a proper week’s holiday during the Premier League’s winter break could still have had one.
Others, such as Dejan Lovren, Joel Matip, Divock Origi, keeper Adrian and struggling Japanese new-boy Takumi Minamino, would probably all have appreciated and benefited from another run-out.
But before we accuse the German of showing disrespect to the dear old FA Cup, let’s get one thing straight.
It is not Klopp, nor Pep Guardiola, who have inflicted a thousand cuts on the world’s oldest knockout competition. It is the English football establishment – the Premier League and the FA themselves.
As a result, next week we are likely to have a fourth- round replay on prime-time BBC One featuring 22 players, and a Liverpool boss, that few people have ever heard of. A Liverpool XI of youth players against League One Shrewsbury is the cast list for a pre-season friendly, not a fourth-round Cup replay.
But the winter-break fiasco which has allowed Klopp to go on strike – leaving reserve-team boss Neil Critchley in charge for the rematch with the Shrews — is just the latest slur on a competition allowed to slowly die of neglect.
Sunday’s encounter at New Meadow was a vintage Cup tie. Complacent European champions upset by a thrilling comeback from a vibrant lower-league team who fully deserved their 2-2 draw.
Firmino was summoned in the place of MinaminoCredit: EPA
After the final whistle, we were treated to the best pitch invasion in England-Wales border country since a parka-clad army greeted Ronnie Radford’s howitzer for Hereford against Newcastle in 1972.
The depth and breadth of support for lower-league, and even non-league, clubs is what makes English football truly unique – and the Cup has always been the great showcase for that phenomenon.
The vast majority of us support clubs from outside the Big Six elite and we cherish the Cup in a way Klopp is unable to grasp.
Yet there is a reason for that. Klopp arrived in England in 2015, when the Cup was already thoroughly tarnished.
And as he pointed out, last year Liverpool received a letter from the Premier League demanding that they respect the competition’s winter break rather than staging an overseas friendly.
It is not Klopp’s job to preserve the FA Cup. It is the English football establishment’s responsibility to revive it.
We’re all familiar with the milestones on the competition’s road to oblivion. First, the FA’s decision to allow Manchester United not to defend the trophy in 2000 so that they could attend the Club World Championship in Brazil as part of an always-doomed bid to host the 2006 World Cup.
Then the practice of staging FA Cup semi-finals at Wembley, for a quick buck, thus lessening the showpiece nature of the final.
Jason Cummings was the hero as Shrewsbury salvaged a drawCredit: PA:Press Association
After that, the decision to play league fixtures on Cup final weekend — most notably in 2011, when Manchester City won their first major trophy in 35 years only for Manchester United to claim the title on the same afternoon.
And then the pig-headed refusal from both the FA and Premier League to create proper space for the Cup in an increasingly busy fixture list.
This reached a new low in 2016 when Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini selected five teenage debutants for a 5-1 fifth-round defeat at Chelsea, because his team were flying to Kiev the following day for a Champions League fixture 72 hours later.
Four years on, Klopp chose a team on Sunday similar in make-up to the one which earned Pellegrini a heap of flak, and it had become par for the course.
Now his side for the replay will be far weaker still — similar to the fresh-faced line-up hammered 5-0 at Aston Villa in last month’s Carabao Cup quarter-final, which clashed with Liverpool playing in the Club World Cup.
With their England team hats on, the FA wanted a winter break to help burnt-out players in the build-up to this summer’s Euros.
Yet they were unwilling to scrap fourth-round replays to ensure every top-flight side had a fortnight off.
Klopp’s tantrum is giving them their just deserts.
Replays should have been scrapped long ago. They make Cup upsets less likely, not more likely, than a penalty shootout at the end of the initial tie.
Klopp resorted to throwing on Mo SalahCredit: EPA
The counter-argument is about wealth distribution — Shrewsbury will earn a significant fortune from visiting Anfield, whatever the make-up of the Liverpool team.
Yet this can be achieved by other means. The Premier League is swimming in money but has contempt for the well-supported pyramid system which props it up.
As a result, a grand old smalltown club such as Bury — a former FA Cup winner — is allowed to go to the wall, when a modest levy from the top-flight clubs could have saved it.
Guardiola, whose City side are closing in on a fifth League Cup in seven seasons, is also correct to float the idea that English football’s second knockout competition has had its day.
The Villa-Liverpool tie suggested there is no proper room for it. Its demise would be one way of allowing the FA Cup space to breathe.
So, yes, Klopp is throwing his toys out of the pram.
But quite frankly the manager of the European champions and runaway Premier League leaders doesn’t care much for the FA Cup.
And it is English football’s rulers who have encouraged him to take such a dim view.
Liverpool can afford to lose SIX games and still win title… but the idea makes Jurgen Klopp want to vomit
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
