Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has hit out at the government for their dealing of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK, claiming the situation in his home country of Germany looks like an entirely different planet.
The UK has suffered over 42,000 deaths as a result of the virus, with only Brazil (47,869) and USA (120,688) having worse death tolls. Germany, however, has endured just shy of 9,000 fatalities.
Klopp has pointed the finger at Johnson and the Tory government for the significantly high number of deaths in the UK, admitting he was frustrated as the PM's handling of the crisis after seeing the efficient ways in which decision-makers went about dealing with the virus in his homeland.
“I was not worried for one second that the Government could cost us the title because I was worried about the numbers who were dying – and I’m still worried," the German said, as quoted by The Mirror.
“I didn’t vote for this Government. This Government was the choice of other people. And the problem I had was that I got the news from England and the news from Germany. If aliens looked at us both from the outside, they would think we came from two different planets.
“From a personal point of view, I don’t understand why we started wearing face masks in closed areas on 15 June when five or six weeks ago all the other countries were doing it.
“You can argue about whether it makes sense to wear them, but all countries who started wearing face masks earlier have smaller casualty numbers than here in England. That’s the truth," Klopp added.
Despite the Liverpool boss once describing football 'the most important thing of the least important things' following the sport's universal suspension in March and continuously insisting public health concerns must be at the front and centre of everyone’s thoughts, Klopp admitted it would've been incredibly tough to see Liverpool's inevitable title-winning season declared null and void.
“There were moments when null and void came up – and I thought, ‘Wow!’
“That would have been really hard to take for me. I always thought we had to finish the season, I didn’t know when, but then I saw that other people felt the same as me – that for 500 million reasons we had to finish this.
"None of those reasons was selfish. All of them were because of football and because of the circumstances we were in. We had to have it back and the truth is that the environment we have created inside the clubs now makes football safe."
Source : 90min