The list of players that will miss the tournament in Qatar – which begins in just over two weeks’ time – seems to grow after each round of fixtures, with the likes of Timo Werner, N’Golo Kante, Paul Pogba and Ben Chilwell all recently ruled out.
Liverpool’s own Diogo Jota will not be part of Portugal’s squad due to a calf problem, while even relatively minor injuries are throwing players’ participation into doubt due to the quick turnaround between domestic campaigns ending and the World Cup starting.
Klopp has been critical of the scheduling in the past and became seriously irked when the subject was raised at his pre-match press conference on Friday before facing Tottenham at the weekend.
The question seemed innocent enough, with the reporter beginning: ‘Obviously it’s two weeks until the start of the World Cup and there’s a growing number of players now either out of the World Cup or a doubt…’
But Klopp did not want to engage with the question, shaking his head and interrupting: ‘I don’t like [this question], I hate this subject.’
Changing the question slightly, the reporter then asked if there was anything Klopp can do to balance the demands on his players, to which the German said ‘no’ three times before begrudgingly expanding on his answer.
‘These problems were so clear,’ said the Liverpool boss. ‘They were so clear and nobody mentioned it for one time until three or four weeks before the World Cup.
‘Now all of a sudden a player gets injured and you say, “Oh, they cannot play the World Cup”.
‘So this specific problem, that players who were late injured in a season cannot play the World Cup, is not new. So after a long season it happens everywhere in the world.
‘But now, starting the World Cup a week after the last game, “Oh, that’s a bigger risk”. Crazy. Nobody cares about us, how we deal with it.
‘And you, you ask me now the question and if I give you all the answers and these kind of things. What do you think I should do? Ask the players before Southampton – or before Derby [in the Carabao Cup] – “Wanna play?”
‘What’s the situation? Asking a question is one, but we are all guilty – and you more than I am guilty – for letting it happen. Letting it happen in the first place.
‘And now it’s happened, and now we have the situation and that’s it and we have to go along with it. And for the players who get injured and cannot play it is a disaster, but how can we change that now?’
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