“You have to defend” – Jurgen Klopp’s latest video reveals why Lionel Messi is the G.O.A.T
Jurgen Klopp on Lionel Messi
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp recently has his saying about the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner, Lionel Messi. Klopp said that Messi was the only player who is not obliged to defend on the pitch.
A video posted by Roy Nemer, a reporter with a specialisation of Argentinian national team, showing Klopp talking to someone about Messi. Klopp points out that Messi dictates the team’s ball flow during the game.
“If you’re not Lionel Messi, you have to defend,” said Kloppon Messi. “Lionel is the only one who ‘wait until we have the ball, I’ll give it to you and now you can do what you want’. Everybody else has to defend and they are all one hundred percent into it.”
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Lionel Messi is not an alien to Jurgen Klopp
Watching Messi from the opposite side is not new for Klopp. The first one was in the summer of 2016 in a pre-season game. Liverpool crushed Blaugrana with four goals to nil at Wembley. Three years later, both sides came face to face again in the first leg of the Champions League semi final at Camp Nou.
Messi scored a brace in a 3-0 victory, putting Barcelona in a more advantageous position prior to the second leg. The second leg at Anfield was going down as one of the most memorable European nights of comeback in Champions League history. The Reds stunned both Barca and the world after coming back from the death, securing a 4-0 win to seal another final in two years.
Jurgen Klopp talks about Messi
In an interview with Arsene Wenge eight months after that night at Anfield, Klopp pointed out the more contextual meaning regarding his opinion about Messi. It was about how he convinced the Liverpool players to believe in his way.
Still speaking with the same tone about Messi as he was saying in Nemer’s X post. But this time, the German gaffer added Cristiano Ronaldo into the discussion.
“You have to show respect to the team,” Klopp said via Tribuna. “The moment you show me you think you are more important than the team is anyway a problem.
“For football, it’s really important that you express yourself on the pitch. Sometimes you need to be selfish, no problem. Especially strikers – go for it, try to score! That’s completely fine but at the moment you misunderstand the situation [if you think] that you are more important than the team.
“These are kinds of things everybody knows in our team, we have a lot of talks before we work together, so that’s all clear. As long as you are not Cristiano or Messi, you have to defend. That’s how it is. Are you Cristiano? Messi? No? Then defend!”