Jurgen Klopp slams European Super League idea and calls for fewer games in football

Jurgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, has expressed his opposition to the European Super League concept that some authorities are still trying to bring back, and has called for fewer games in football to protect the quality and the health of the players.

The European Super League was a proposed breakaway competition that would have involved 12 of the richest clubs in Europe, including Liverpool, but it collapsed in April 2021 after a massive backlash from fans, players, managers, governing bodies, and governments.

However, some of the clubs involved, such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Juventus, have not given up on the idea and are still pursuing legal action against UEFA, the European football governing body, to revive the project.

Speaking about his current feelings on the European Super League concept, Klopp said: “I’m not a supporter of the Super League, but I am almost trying to understand it more where they are coming from.

“There is no perfect solution and the Super League is for sure not the perfect solution. I love that Luton are playing in the Premier League, absolutely, that’s fantastic.

“But all the things we have to and want to change in football for the future, if they always depend on there being room for a way through for one club, that hinders development rather than helps.

“But we have spoken about it before. The main issue in football is to have quality and not teams playing somehow against each other when they can barely move their legs. We have to cut off games. Nobody thinks about it, but that’s the problem.

“There are too many games, of course. And it’s getting more and more and more, bigger World Cups and bigger European Championships and all these kind of things. That’s the problem in football.

"Not about stopping teams from coming up. These stories are always possible and they always will be possible as long as we don’t change things drastically, let me say it like this. There are other things we have to sort.”

The Super League’s introduction would probably further increase the workload on the players, something which Klopp definitely doesn’t want for his Liverpool squad. Fortunately, for the time being, no Premier League club is showing interest in reviving that competition after attracting a lot of criticism a few years ago.

Klopp, who has won the Premier League and the Champions League with Liverpool, has been a vocal critic of the congested fixture schedule and the lack of adequate rest and recovery time for the players. He has also advocated for the introduction of five substitutions per game to reduce the risk of injuries.