Liverpool’s triumph in the League Cup final has increased talk of a historic quadruple, but Jurgen Klopp has played this down as he insisted “even City” couldn’t do it.
Klopp became the sixth Liverpool manager to win the League Cup with Sunday’s 11-10 penalty shootout win over Chelsea, following Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, Roy Evans, Gerard Houllier and Sir Kenny Dalglish.
It is an English-record ninth success in the tournament, and with the Reds still in the hunt for the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup, anticipation over a quadruple has heightened.
Never before has a club won the English top flight along with the European Cup, the FA Cup and the League Cup, and speaking ahead of the clash with Norwich on Wednesday night, Klopp was eager to play down suggestions his side could be the first.
“OK, the only team who could win the quadruple is us, because we won the first competition. That’s easy,” he admitted.
“But even City, with all the quality they have in the last few years, couldn’t win the quadruple. That says pretty much everything.”
He added: “The quadruple, this wonderful story, no team yet in the history of English football ever won the quadruple. Because it’s really difficult.
“We won the Carabao Cup, we are behind City in the Premier League, we play Norwich tomorrow night after playing 120 minutes on Sunday, then we play West Ham!
“The fun part of your job is you count the points before we play the games, but we have to play them still.
“So it’s not that we are even close to thinking about any crazy stuff like that.
“We just want to try to make sure the boys are fit enough to face Norwich in a proper way.”
That Liverpool are in the position to even be considered quadruple candidates – second in the league, holding a 2-0 lead over Inter Milan in the Champions League last 16 and facing Norwich in the FA Cup fifth round – is a testament to Klopp’s work.
But true to form, the German has stressed the importance of focusing solely on the next game, with no indication he is confident of more silverware just yet.
“That they think we have the chance to do so, you could see it as a compliment. But I don’t need these kinds of compliments, to be honest, because it doesn’t feel like that!” he added.
“It’s not that we think ‘oh, we are close to winning the quadruple’.
“We are close to nothing in the moment, we are just now in three competitions, that’s all, like some other teams as well.
“It’s better that people think we can do good things than thinking we are useless, but it’s not very important or even helpful.
“We face a lot of really good football teams between now and the end of May.”
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