Senegal coach, Aliou Cisse, has slammed Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, over his comments on the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).<\/p>\n
Cisse suggested that Klopp is nothing without Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah in his Liverpool squad, adding that the German owed his success to players from Africa.<\/p>\n
Last month, Klopp caused a stir as he described the AFCON as a \u2018small tournament\u2019 after Liverpool\u2019s Premier League 4-0 victory against Arsenal.<\/p>\n
Asked if he was relieved there was no international break until March next year, Klopp replied: \u201cI have heard that so often that there is no international break until March.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn January, there Is a little tournament in Africa, I just want to say, and I think Asia is playing games too, South America as well, great, can\u2019t wait.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool are set to lose some of their players, including Salah, Mane and Naby Keita for the AFCON 2021 tournament, which runs from January 9 to February 6, 2022.<\/p>\n
While Klopp subsequently backtracked, Cisse, who played in the Premier League with Birmingham City and Portsmouth, felt the Reds boss had shown a lack of respect for the AFCON, adding that he doesn\u2019t respect him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho does he [Jurgen Klopp] think he\u2019s? I manage Senegal and my players play for Klopp at Liverpool,\u201d Cisse told broadcaster iTV Senegal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI respect Liverpool but not Klopp who undermines African football events. He\u2019s where he is today because of African footballers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was losing every final until Salah, Mane, Matip came to his rescue to win his first-ever major European final.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Speaking after Liverpool\u2019s 2-0 win over Porto in the Champions League last week, Klopp clarified his comments had been misinterpreted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t mean it like that. I don\u2019t know why you understand it like that,\u201d Klopp told a journalist, who had suggested his comments had offended African players and fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not even close to the idea in my mind that I want to talk about AFCON as a little tournament, or the continent of Africa like a little continent, not at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I meant is, because people said, and if you watch the full press conference, if you wanted to understand it in the right way you could have understood it in the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cThere is still a tournament. A big one. We lose our best players to the Africa Cup of Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a native speaker, but if you want to understand me wrong you can do that all the time. I know that I would never think like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senegal coach, Aliou Cisse, has slammed Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, over his comments on the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). Cisse suggested that Klopp is nothing without Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah in his Liverpool squad, adding that the German owed his success to players from Africa. Last month, Klopp caused a stir as he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[2658,7414],"class_list":["post-419991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-a","tag-jurgen-klopp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=419991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=419991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=419991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=419991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}