Jürgen Klopp once again sees Manchester City as the “big favourite” of the Premier League defending champions before the coming season. This said the 52-year-old in the context of the US tour of FC Liverpool, with which he meets in the night to Saturday (2.00 o’clock live on DAZN) in the stadium of the Notre-Dame-Uni in South Bend/Indiana on his former club Borussia Dortmund.
In the past season City had secured the championship by one point ahead of the Reds. Klopp does not expect a similar clear distance to the other persecutors for the time being. “All teams start over again, there’s no duel between City and us, and the rest watch. That’s not how the Premier League works, all games are so hard,” he said. Liverpool opens the season on August 9 with a duel against the promoted Norwich City for the German team manager Daniel Farke.
Klopp is satisfied with the current state of preparation, even though there is still a lot of work to do. “So far, so good,” he said, “We reached a special level last season and that should be the basis of what we expect from ourselves next season.”
The situation on the way there is somewhat different compared to last year. “The players are getting back in late, we had a shorter holiday than pretty much all the other teams because the Champions League final was three weeks after the end of the season,” Klopp said.
He also stressed that he wanted to remain a team manager in Liverpool at least until 2022 – that’s how long his contract runs. Whether it continues afterwards for the former BVB coach in Anfield, he wants or cannot yet answer. “We’ll see. Why should we think about it now?” asked the john.
Since the triumph over Tottenham Hotspur in the premier class final on 1 June (2:0), a possible contract extension for Klopp has been under discussion. Most recently, ESPN reported that the German success coach could take a break after the end of his current working paper.
