Jurgen Klopp insists England boss Gareth Southgate shouldn’t be questioned about Qatar’s human rights issues during the World Cup.
The Liverpool manager claims the matter has nothing to do with footballers or managers, and blamed FIFA for awarding the tournament to the Middle Eastern country.
But he is adamant it should not be Southgate and his players who have to stand up and take questions on the matter over the next six weeks. Klopp said: “I will watch it from a football point of view but I don’t like the fact that players now have to send a message.
“Now, we are telling players they have to wear an armband and if they don’t do it then they are not on their side. No, no, no; these are footballers, it is a tournament and the players must go there and play and do the best for their countries.
“They are wonderful people there and it is not at all that everything is bad over there but how it happened was not right in the first place. But now it is there, let them play the game as players and managers.
“Don’t put Gareth Southgate constantly in a situation where he has to talk about everything. He has an opinion but he’s not a politician, I’m not a politician, he’s a manager of England so let him do that.
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“If you want to write about something else then do it, but by yourself without asking us so that it’s ‘Klopp said’ or ‘Southgate said’. As if that would change anything. You more than I let it happen 12 years ago.”
Klopp is angry that the World Cup is being staged in the middle of the club season and he was further enraged watching a documentary about how the tournament ended up in the hands of the country which has issues with migrant workers, LGBT and free speech.
He added: “We all know how it happened and that we can still let it happen, with no legal thing afterwards, led to a real… what can I say? Now it is open, now everybody knows, but still it was hidden and you think; ‘How can that all happen?’”
