The Reds’ first assignment of 2020-21 sees newly-promoted Leeds United visit Anfield on Saturday evening, just under seven weeks on from the conclusion of the previous campaign.
Klopp insists his team’s status as title-holders will have no bearing on the forthcoming season, but underscored his desire to see Liverpool give all they’ve got in pursuit of retaining the crown.
The manager addressed journalists at his pre-match press conference on Friday – read on for a summary of his key points…
On the competition Liverpool face to retain the title and the biggest threat…
From all the other opponents, probably! It starts with Leeds, carries on with Chelsea, Arsenal and so on. There are plenty of challenges and they are similar to all the other years, but there are some other ones as well. So, it’s about we compress a normal season in a shorter period, which will be a proper challenge, especially with the wonderful rule we set up with 18 [players in the squad] and three [substitutes to make] pretty much. It’s only about player welfare, by the way – I wanted to say that, nothing else, but I don’t know why we have to discuss this at all. Like the whole world is doing, at the least the whole of Europe, but that’s how it is. It will just be difficult, but it is always difficult so that’s not new. We don’t have to think in this moment about the whole season, we have to think about Leeds – and that is enough to think about. It’s a Premier League team – new in the Premier League, [but] really a Premier League team quality-wise with a world-class manager and an incredibly intense idea of football. We have to be ready for that, so that’s what I am thinking about and not too much about the rest of the season.
On how he and his players are feeling after the summer break…
I’m completely recovered from whatever on a professional basis – and my boys [are] as well. Altogether, it was obviously a challenge for all of us. The break we had was not a break because it was very intense, mentally and all these kind of things. We played a lot of games in a pretty short period and then we had a short break and came back. We are now pretty much in our normal rhythm, for the moment at least. That will change in the next few weeks obviously because we play it feels like more often than we will have the opportunity to train. That’s OK because pretty much everybody has to do it, at least the teams who are in Europe as well and the teams who have international players, for them it’s all the same. Being champions, winning the league last year, is actually the best problem you can have, to be honest. If it is a problem even, I don’t know, but everybody gives me the feeling that it should be a problem. Everybody else wants to become champions as well, that’s not news to me and I knew that before. We just give it a try again and we know we will face incredibly strong teams and it is all about us and how we can put all these intense performances on the pitch again and again and again. That’s it, pretty much. That’s the job we have to do. It is important information in which league we play, it is the Premier League and the Premier League is the strongest league in the world, so that means we have competitors more than we need. We should be ready in all the different games and that’s what we tried to make sure with the pre-season, nothing else.
On ‘attacking the title’…
First of all, it was my response when somebody told me we have to defend the title. I don’t understand that; maybe I am not smart enough, but I didn’t understand it. If there is a title out there, we obviously have shown that last year we were able to go for it. We did it. The year before as well. That doesn’t mean we will this year because we don’t take these things for granted, but the titles out there we attack them. Not only the one, because that’s how I understand it – we are all in the same position, we all start from the same position: nil games, nil points, now let’s go for it. That’s how I understand it and how I’ve understood it always. That’s what we did in the last years, so why should we change it now just because we want it? We didn’t go out of the Champions League last season because we won it the year before, we went out because we faced a really good opponent and were unlucky in the game. It was not about performance, it was not about desire, it was not about these things – it was about football because it can happen, especially against these strong opponents. We will go again with all we have, that’s the idea. The other one is only kind of the headline of the idea, but the idea is based on different things.