Jurgen Klopp has wasted little time in pouring scorn on Todd Boehly's fanciful plan of a Premier League all-star game - by joking the Harlem Globetrotters should make an appearance too.
Chelsea co-owner Boehly - who also owns Major League Baseball side L.A Dodgers - proposed his ambitious idea for English football to follow the lead of sports in his native America whilst speaking at the Salt conference on Tuesday.
“People are talking about why don’t we have more money for the pyramid? MLB did their all star game this year," he said. "They made $200m from a Monday and a Tuesday, you could do a North vs South all-star game from the Premier League to fund the pyramid very easily.”
Boehly went on to suggest the match could be an exhibition of the division's top players from the north vs the best from the south. Such a fixture would see the likes of rivals Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool face off against players from Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham - an almost unfathomable concept for supporters of those clubs.
While it's hard to fault Boehly's enthusiasm or his consideration for the lower leagues, it's clear he would run into immediate difficulties in getting a match of this nature off the ground - least of all from Klopp. The Liverpool boss has been incredibly vocal on how elite players are already being run into the ground by the hectic schedule and, along with his fellow top flight managers, would almost certainly be up in arms about lending his star men for a friendly fixture, regardless of its plans to do good.
Klopp practically said as much when he instantly shot down Boehly's idea in the aftermath of Liverpool's 2-1 victory over Ajax in the Champions League on Tuesday. “He [Boehly] doesn’t wait long," Klopp told reporters. "Great. When he finds a date for that, he can call me... Does he want to bring the Harlem Globetrotters as well and let them play against a football team?"
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Boehly's grand plans didn;t end there, with the businessman also proposing the Premier League stage a relegation playoff tournament between the bottom four teams in the division at the end of each season. “Ultimately, I hope the Premier League takes a little bit of a lesson out of the American sports teams and really start to think about why don’t we do a tournament with the bottom four teams," he said.
Despite his yearning for changes to the current status quo, Boehly stopped short of getting on the bandwagon for a European Super League, stating he doubts such a competition will ever come to fruition. “I never say hard nos, I like to keep options alive but it is not something that we are talking about at all," he added.
“I think the Champions League has a big component of that already. You have the best clubs playing each other every season. There’s already a lot of that. If you win the Champions League, you win over 100m euros. You win the Masters and make a couple of million bucks.
“I think you can do that in the summer [play Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich] more often in the summer and there’s other ways to do that. I think that the passion the fans have for the sport as it is, is so strong then I can’t envisage that changing.”
