Ann Arbor, Michigan: Jurgen Klopp has branded Sergio Ramos “ruthless” and “brutal” in a withering attack on the Real Madrid defender for his controversial performance in the Champions League final.
Two months after Liverpool’s painful defeat by Real Madrid in Kiev, Klopp has finally broken his silence on the Spain international, who was widely condemned for allegedly injuring Mohammad Salah and Loris Karius in the showpiece.
In a wide-ranging interview at Liverpool’s team hotel in Ann Arbor, near Detroit, Klopp insists Liverpool have recovered from the 3-1 defeat, but his frustrations were clear as he reflected on the conduct of Ramos, and how he escaped punishment.
Salah, the PFA player of the year, was escorted from the field in tears after half an hour with a shoulder injury after a tangle with the Madrid defender. Karius, the goalkeeper, was later caught by the centre-half’s elbow, with medical reports later confirming he had suffered with concussion.
Klopp has previously refused to comment on Ramos but finally revealed his thoughts yesterday during the club’s American tour. “If you watch it back and you are not with Real Madrid, then you think it is ruthless and brutal,” said Klopp. “If you put all of the situations of Ramos together, and I have watched football since I was five years old, then you will see a lot of situations with Ramos.
“[With Salah] you don’t think, ‘Wow, good challenge’. The thing is, I saw the ref taking charge of big games at the World Cup afterwards [Mazic officiated in the Brazil v Belgium quarter-final] and nobody really thinks about that later.
“But I think in a situation like that, somebody needs to judge it better. If VAR is coming then it is a situation where you have to look again. Not to give a red card or whatever but to look again and say ‘What is that?’
“It was ruthless. I don’t think Mo would have always got injured in that situation, this time it was unlucky. I’m not sure if it is an experience we will have again — go there and put an elbow to the goalkeeper, put their goalscorer down like a wrestler in midfield and then you win the game.”
Ramos has consistently dismissed suggestions that he was responsible for injuring Salah and Karius since the final. The 32-year-old even mocked Liverpool by claiming he would have been blamed if striker Roberto Firmino had caught a cold after the game “because a drop of my sweat landed on him”.
Klopp said: “Ramos said a lot of things that I didn’t like. As a person, I didn’t like the reactions of him. He was like, ‘Whatever, what do they want? It’s normal’. In the final the year before against Juventus, he was responsible for the red card for [Juan] Cuadrado. He touched him like that [presses a finger against flesh] and he makes a big act of it. Nobody talks about that afterwards.
“It doesn’t feel right but we cannot change it. In life you always need help from somewhere. Obviously in this situation we didn’t get it and people will say I am weak or a bad loser or a whiner. I am not. I accept it. You ask me about it. It’s not like I wake up in the morning and think, ‘Ramos!’”
Karius’s performance was the other huge talking point from the final, after two game-changing errors swung the momentum towards Madrid. Shortly after the collision with Ramos, Karius gifted Karim Benzema the opening goal, before later fumbling a speculative shot from Gareth Bale.
Klopp has revealed it was Beckenbauer, the legendary German defender, who alerted him to the goalkeeper’s condition after the final. Liverpool then reviewed the footage and Karius was advised to visit specialists Dr Ross Zafonte and Dr Lenore Herget at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was then diagnosed with concussion.
“You feel a big disappointment after the game, it’s a sad situation, and we had one or two days off after the game,” he said. “Then Franz Beckenbauer called me and he started with, ‘your goalkeeper had concussion’. I said ‘what?’ He said, ‘I’ve spoken with [renowned Bayern Munich doctor] Dr Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfart and he said, I knew immediately in the situation that he had concussion when Ramos hit him’.
“How can we imagine that a player who didn’t show any signs, not in that game or before, that he will do these things when it’s not influenced by the knock? I spoke to Loris and he flew to Boston and they said it was likely Loris was influenced. Then people said we made the medical report public because it’s policy. It’s not, and we didn’t use it one second as an excuse, but how can we not put it out as an explanation? It’s our job as well, not only to use the player but to protect him as well.”
Karius, however, is now facing an uncertain future under Klopp following the pounds 65 million capture of Alisson from Roma, the most expensive deal for a goalkeeper. Klopp has insisted Alisson was always going to be a summer target, regardless of Karius’s difficult evening against Madrid.
“If Alisson was on the market and we’d won the final, we would have gone for him, because we think he’s the goalkeeper we want,” he said. “The other goalkeepers are really good, like all our other players, but that doesn’t mean we don’t bring in another one. We bring in another one because we think we can make the next step with new players, like Naby [Keita] and all the others.”
