Jurgen Klopp vents anger against Paris Saint-Germain for making Liverpool look like ‘butchers’

Klopp could barely hide his frustration in his post-match press conference following Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat

Jurgen Klopp vents his frustration on the touchline (Getty)

Jurgen Klopp accused Paris Saint-Germain of so much play-acting in the Champions League game at Parc des Princes that they made Liverpool look like “butchers”.

Klopp could barely hide his frustration in his post-match press conference in Paris following Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat, and he said that it was “not cool” how many stoppages there when PSG players were apparently injured. He even called for the officials to be stronger on this in future, showing yellow cards for players who looked injured but turned out not to be, to cut out this behaviour in future.

“The number of interruptions in that game was just not cool,” Klopp said. “Two times in a row we won the Fair Play table in the Premier League. But tonight we looked like butchers, when you look at the yellow cards we had. It was clever of PSG, especially of Neymar. A lot of the others went down, like there was really something serious. And obviously we were not that calm any more. It makes you aggressive, and negative aggression doesn’t help in football.”

Klopp said that he did not want to be seen as a “bad loser” who complained about decisions, such as Marco Verratti not being sent off for a bad first-half foul on Joe Gomez. “It was for sure not the same colour as those 500 other yellow cards,” he said. But after saying at first he did not want to see his complaints quoted in newspapers, he then spelled out what he wanted to see happen instead.”

“There are a lot of things you could do,” he added. “You can give yellow cards for anything. If you act like you die and the next moment you get up again, you can give a yellow card, for not sportsmanlike behaviour. You can do that. It’s acting, all the time. It’s not football anymore.”

PSG manager Thomas Tuchel, however, said that Liverpool did not need to make so many fouls, and suggested Klopp was trying to change topic. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “For me it’s not a subject. When I lose big games sometimes I talk about stuff to take attention away from my team to something else. It’s fine. I’m talking about the game.”