Jurgen Klopp was called “a soft German” by Sunderland Manager Sam Allardyce after Liverpool’s 1-0 victory at the Stadium of Light. That was rather bizarre. There are many widely held negative stereotypes about Germans out there, but “soft” is probably the last pejorative association that would come to mind.
Klopp and his club visit West Ham this weekend, and the Reds boss had this to say in his preview news conference:
“The Hammers: maybe it’s more my second name than ‘soft’. It’s absolutely not a problem. A lot of people have said worse things about me, so it’s not a problem. ‘Soft German’ — I think that’s the first time it’s said about me, so it’s cool.”
“I think if you see the situation again, then you know I was not too wrong in judging this.”
“Mama is still alive and everything is OK. But in my opinion, situations like this have to be judged differently to other things. So if you compare yellow cards in the game and think: ‘OK, this is yellow — then what’s this?’
“That’s all I want to say. But I have no arguments with the bench of Sunderland.”
The situation Klopp is referring to involved Sunderland’s Jeremain Lens, who the Reds boss thinks should have been sent off rather than booked for his altercation with defender Mamadou Sakho.
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