Jurgen Klopp has escalated his war of words with UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin after being told to stop complaining about the increasingly demanding workload on top-level footballers.
The Liverpool manager has been a constant critic of congested fixtures within both the club and international calendars alongside Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola, but Ceferin recently advised the pair of Premier League gaffers to zip it. UEFA's head honcho claimed that both Klopp and Guardiola's salaries would go down if there were fewer matches, adding that "those who should complain are the workers with a thousand euros a month in the factories."
But after Liverpool suffered a raft of injuries just weeks into the new season, Klopp has now fired back at Ceferin's stern comments. "I know what work means," the Reds boss declared in an interview with Kicker, via Goal. "I don't want to offend anyone, just to point out again that this game doesn't work without the players and is only really nice when the best are on the field.
"Aleksander Ceferin comes out of the corner and makes a polemical statement that other people have to work a lot more. I know that, Mr. Ceferin doesn't have to tell me that."
Klopp then insisted that football has too many stakeholders working to create extra tournaments and adding more teams to existing competitions without caring about the players' physical and mental wellbeing, such as the much maligned Nations League held by UEFA every two years. "Everyone pulls [new tournaments], nobody thinks about the players. Not one," the German affirmed.
"New tournaments are always being invented. Now we're making the World Cup bigger so that other teams can also take part. We're also making the European Championship bigger, amazing! A reasonable solution must be found. It does not consist of constantly inventing new competitions and extending them. It's madness.
"I'm well aware that I'm making an extremely good living from the whole story. I have enough vacation time. The players don't have it. We have to change that at some point."
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Klopp recently compared hectic fixture scheduling to climate change, claiming that while plenty of people talk enough about the dangers of both subjects, rarely do they take any tangible action towards resolving the issue. "When we start talking about it I really get angry," he admitted when asked about this year's World Cup taking place in the middle of the Premier League season.
"It is like with the climate. We all know we have to change but people are like 'what do we have to do?'. I'm in that as well, no doubt about that. "The problem is the players that play the World Cup. It's just not okay. If you reach the semi-final then you are already quite busy and then the rest starts a week later.
"My problem is that as much as everyone knows that it is not right, nobody talks often enough about it that it will be changed. Something has to change."
