Jurgen Klopp has revealed the particular reason he ‘doesn’t like’ James Maddison, admitting he was “angry” with Brendan Rodgers for the same incident.
Just as he was left to rue “that f***er Courtois” after the 2022 Champions League final, Klopp had to contend with the collapse of the 2018/19 title challenge being out of his hands.
Days before Liverpool won the Champions League in Madrid in 2019, Vincent Kompany scored a 70th-minute rocket to earn Man City a 1-0 win over Leicester which all but sealed the title.
Reflecting on his time in charge at Anfield, Klopp looked back at that moment and revealed he still can’t look at Maddison the same way.
“The moment when Vinny Kompany fires the ball there. I’m really happy I didn’t get a stroke in that moment! That’s how it must feel,” he told The Redmen TV.
“I know exactly how I was, lying on the sofa watching and thinking ‘Maddison, Maddison block him! Close him down!’.
“And since then, I don’t like Maddison. And I was angry with Brendan that day, he should have taken him off, he was tired.
“Leicester played a really good first half, should have scored, after that [goal] they should have scored.
“So it’s just a personal thing. I have no problem with the club, but when I see him it’s always ‘mmhmm’. We saw him again last weekend!”
Maddison, of course, now plays for Tottenham, coming on for the final half-hour in Liverpool’s recent 4-2 victory over Ange Postecoglou’s side.
Klopp gave a similar retelling of his night watching Man City vs. Leicester back in 2019 when speaking to journalists this week, while in an interview with The Anfield Wrap he revealed that the Liverpool team bus screamed for Rodri’s handball against Everton in 2022.
“From time to time I see Vinny’s screamer and think: ‘Are you kidding me?’,” the manager reflected.
“That ball goes 999 of 1,000 everywhere in the stadium and for that night it looks like for them it is meant to be.
“Seconds before that goal I was thinking: ‘Come on Brendan, take Maddison off, he’s tired’. He was five yards away and just had to move to block the shot.
“I was lying on my sofa with my hands in my pockets and a second later I felt like I’d had a stroke. What can you do when that happens?”
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