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LONDON – Jurgen Klopp insists he does not need a break from management as he looks to put Liverpool back on track after their troubled season.
Klopp’s side missed out on Champions League qualification after finishing outside the top four for the first time in a full season under his leadership.
A 4-4 draw at Southampton on the last day of the season stretched Liverpool’s unbeaten top-flight run to 11 games, but they had to settle for a fifth-place finish in the Premier League.
Klopp is the Premier League’s longest-serving manager and there had been claims the intense German might be willing to walk away from Liverpool due to burnout.
But, asked if he needs time off from football, Klopp said: “No, no, no, not at all. Honestly, I’m completely fine.
“If you’d asked me 11 games ago, ‘do you want to have a break?’, I would have thought about it, to be honest.
“But I’m absolutely fine, full of energy. I have a break – I don’t have training and these kind of things.
“I will find time to re-energise and then we start again in July.”
Liverpool’s fifth-placed finish was their lowest since they finished eighth in 2015-16, during which Klopp replaced Brendan Rodgers at Anfield.
Despite their difficulties, Klopp takes heart from how his squad stuck together through difficult moments.
“There is not a lot to learn (from the season) but a lot of clubs when the expectations are as high as ours when things don’t go well pretty quickly you start blaming each other,” he said.
“That didn’t happen here. The better you behave in a crisis, the better you get out of it – and I really thought that was the case for us.
“We’re really, really not happy about it and for a club like us, it’s massive not to qualify for the Champions League.
“If we improve, we are all of a sudden again a team nobody wants to play against and that’s what we have to become again.” – AFP, May 30, 2023
