Jurgen Klopp said what we were all thinking when it came to Liverpool’s former training ground, and he laughed at the owners’ expense as he touched on their “dumbest idea.”
Melwood had been part of the fabric of Liverpool Football Club since the 1950s, with Bill Shankly helping to transform it from a “sorry wilderness” to a legendary facility.
In 2020, though, the men’s team relocated to the new state-of-the-art AXA Training Centre in Kirkby, linking the academy with the first team.
The club sold Melwood to a housing developer, worth in the region of £10 million, only to later buy back the premises for £13 million for the women’s team last year.
In his Q&A with Liverpool fans during his farewell event, Klopp laughed at the decision to sell Melwood in the first place after being prompted to discuss the club’s owners.
Klopp started: “We built two new stands, we built a new training ground that’s state-of-the-art, it’s outstanding – not too big, not too fancy, but a proper training ground, believe me.
“We bought Melwood back – which is the dumbest thing I ever heard that we sold it in the first place,” he said with a big laugh. “We bought it back for the ladies.”
It has proved an inspired move for the women’s side, with Matt Beard guiding his team to a fourth-place finish in the Women’s Super League after nearly doubling their points tally from 2022/23.
That Liverpool had to buy Melwood back remains a baffling move, it should never have been sold in the first place when the women’s side did not have their own place to call home.
But at least FSG made up for their “dumbest idea ever!”
With plenty of conspiracies over FSG playing a role in Klopp’s decision to leave the club, the 56-year-old spoke highly of the owners and insisted everything has been done in the “Liverpool way.”
Klopp continued: “We did it the Liverpool way, that’s how I see it. That means this city, where the city came from over the last decades, where the club came from maybe since the ’90s where we didn’t win anything anymore for a while, it’s so impressive what we did together.
“And I mean together with our owners as well, because I know them, they’re good people. It’s not that they are not bothered about what we think, ‘you always ask for money’ and stuff like that.
“The owners do what owners do. Surprise! Owners want to earn money. Sorry to tell you that, but it’s not that they earn money now on a daily basis.
“But we should be really happy that we have these owners and not guys who bought London clubs and stuff like this. I wouldn’t have survived a year at Liverpool!”
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