Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has hit back at criticism of his new job as Red Bull’s head of global soccer.
Klopp left Liverpool after almost nine years at the helm last summer and he officially started his new job with Red Bull on January 1. As part of his role, Klopp will oversee the multiple clubs owned by Red Bull, including RB Leipzig, Red Bull Salzburg and New York Red Bulls.
They also own Brazilian club Red Bull Bragantino and have stakes in Leeds United and Paris FC. Multi-club ownership is a source of major controversy within football and Klopp’s decision to join Red Bull resulted in plenty of criticism, most notably from his former clubs Mainz and Borussia Dortmund.
Dortmund fans accused him of being a ‘sell-out’, while Mainz fans unveiled banners during their Bundesliga clash with Leipzig in October that criticised the move. One read: “Have you forgotten everything we have made you become?,” while another questioned if Klopp was ‘crazy’.
However, Klopp has hit back at his critics, asking whether the fans of clubs owned by Red Bull “deserve good football”. Speaking at his first press conference, Klopp said: “I was at Leipzig Stadium for the first time this weekend and saw 47,000 people there, 5,000 were from Bremen, but 42,000 supporters for Leipzig.
“I sat there and asked myself and I know what everyone else is saying about it when they see me there, at my former clubs, and I think ‘do they not deserve good football?’. All the people in Leipzig, all the people in the region, all the people who want to see them win.
“I was around about 10 years not in Germany and they were not in the Bundesliga so I never had the games against them. And for me it’s completely natural, I know how the start was but I think they deserve it and I think it’s worth giving. And not only there, in Salzburg, the football fans in New York, in Japan, in Brazil. They deserve support and improvement and that’s why I want to do it.”
Klopp also opened up about his decision to leave Liverpool, adding: “When you are in the job for 25 years, it’s super intense. The only thing is that I am a very curious person and I couldn’t feed that anymore.
“It was just game after game after game after game. You keep a specific level and I wasn’t extremely happy with that to be honest. I always want to try to learn new stuff and I felt when I heard about the role that’s what I would do.
“I no longer have to improve the game in individual places, but I want to make football better all over the world. No longer prepare a new game every week, but work on the bigger picture.”
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