The Liverpool icon will bring his Aston Villa side to Anfield for an interesting Premier League clash on Saturday.
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Steven Gerrard’s return to Anfield was the main talking point during Jurgen Klopp’s pre-match press conference on Friday. The Liverpool icon will bring his Aston Villa side to Anfield for an interesting Premier League clash on Saturday. Gerrard enjoyed several successful years as the captain of the Reds. He was an influential figure on and off the pitch, with fans and players looking up to him during his playing days. On Saturday, however, he will be in the opposition dugout, where he will be the manager of the visiting team. Ahead of the match against Villa, Klopp was – inevitably – asked numerous questions about the man who will be in the away dugout.
Klopp was asked how it feels to have seen Gerrard develop from Liverpool’s U18s coach to a Premier League manager. He was quoted as saying by their club’s website, “Wonderful story, to be honest, a wonderful story. I can imagine a little bit how he’s feeling. I know he said already, ‘No sentiments’ and all these kind of things and Stevie is meanwhile already an experienced coach, manager. He is doing the job already for a while and he knows exactly how to approach games, but he has probably no idea how it will feel when he steps into the stadium or out of the dugout or whatever.”
Klopp then went into memory lane, opening up about his experiences of playing his former teams. He added: “I had that in a similar way; I cannot really compare it but when I came for the first time back to Mainz or I came first and last time back with Liverpool to Dortmund. It’s strange, it’s strange. You like or love pretty much all the people you meet when you arrive in the stadium and that’s pretty much not often the case when you go somewhere – it’s easy to be very competitive usually. But I could handle it, Stevie will handle it.”
“I think Stevie is friends with 99.9 per cent of the people working for Liverpool FC and the 0.1 per cent never met him because they arrived after him. I never heard a negative word about Steven Gerrard since I am here. I met him, he’s a great guy and he will come here and want to win the football game. Before, nice handshake, after nice handshake, and in between they will go full throttle and he will go full throttle. I remember when we scored with Dortmund at Mainz, I forgot everything about my story at Mainz, I was celebrating like a crazy devil! So he is allowed to do that as well, I just hope he has no reason for it.”
Klopp was then asked about the advice he has given Gerrard. “‘Advice’? It was long ago, really long ago. We spoke a couple of times of course, but since he is at Rangers and especially since he is at Villa we had some messages, sending each other. But that’s it, pretty much. I am not silly, not because I wouldn’t give him advice but there’s no need for it, obviously. I watched now Aston Villa often enough since he is there: quite an impact, to be honest,” he explained.
“Similar style to Rangers, but obviously with different players, really good players. It feels like everybody plays in exactly the position he is made for and it looks good, honestly. It will be a tough challenge but that’s how Premier League football is. There is no difference to other games and we try to figure out how we can cause them more problems than they had so far in the games they played – and hopefully we can do that.”
