Jurgen Klopp has revealed in a recent interview with Sky Sports that not a single Liverpool player tried to convince him to stay beyond this season.
In the interview, he was asked if any player – perhaps those with their contracts expiring in 2025 (Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk etc) – ever told him that they’d leave with him if he walked out of Anfield.
He simply answered it by saying: “No we didn’t speak about that. Nobody said that! Imagine that! We didn’t leave school when our best teacher retired, we didn’t leave school after that! I didn’t have the same teachers my whole life, I had different influences from different people.
“If you’re smart enough, it can pay off from what you learn from different people you meet in your journey. So, it’s not like that! We really love each other, we have a really good relationship – with little bumps here and there (completely normal) – but a general respect between each other.
“But that doesn’t mean the boys love football love football just because I’m not here anymore. By the way, they know as well that’s good enough to know what you can get.
"I read how Trent said ‘yeah the boss is not going to be there anymore and you don’t know what you can expect – but when he’s here you know there’s a three-week holiday and you come back to training.’ And I thought ‘Wow’, maybe I was too late! It’s good that they don’t know what to expect, it’s good that they have to prove themselves – not just that they have to prove themselves but also to give them the chance to do that again.
“To get new influences is always good in life. When you go for vacation and you go to the same place on holiday, to the same hotel and the same beach as well – but actually it makes sense to go to another beach as well!”
It’s clear that Klopp is confident that the Liverpool squad can thrive and succeed under a new manager who succeeds him and is at peace with his decision to walk out at the end of the season.
What the players can now do is to give him a grand hurrah and at least win the final three matches of the season in dominant fashion – starting with the one against Tottenham Hotspur.
