Jurgen Klopp was right to send Mamadou Sakho home from Liverpool's tour - and this is why
Jurgen Klopp was right to send Mamadou Sakho home from Liverpool's tour - and this is why
Mamadou Sakho has been on something of a roller-coaster since he was added to Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool squad on deadline day three years ago and having just been on something of a high after UEFA charges were dropped it now seems Jürgen Klopp has brought him down to earth at breakneck speed. According to reports, the boss has sent the defender home from the club’s US tour due to questions marks over his attitude.
Sakho with an attitude problem?
Fans and pundits alike might disagree on Sakho’s abilities as a player – he is often described as clumsy-looking and more often than not this is an unfair slight on him – but few would call his attitude into question. Debate his abilities as a defender if you want to, but don’t question his attitude.
Now, it seems, Jürgen Klopp has questioned Sakho’s attitude.
Was that a sensible path for Klopp to go down? Should Klopp be treating a fans favourite like this?
The answer is yes, of course he should, if he feels it appropriate.
None of us know exactly what Sakho did to earn this ‘punishment’, was it the Alcatraz video and the late arrival for the flight to the US or was it something else that happened off camera at a later date? Looking at the video now, in the light of this story, Klopp has the look of a parent acting all casual and unconcerned in front of the neighbours as his bored, attention-seeking, little terror kicks him repeatedly in the shins. Behind closed doors the little terror is on his way to a long lecture and an early night without any tea.
Sakho might not be a little terror but he probably is extremely bored. He’s not played since April and, regardless of the fall-out from his expulsion back to Melwood, he knows he won’t be playing for a while.
He is only on the tour because Klopp decided he wanted all his squad to travel because he values the importance of team bonding and squad morale. He transformed Liverpool last season, two cup finals making up for that poor league position in what was only a partial campaign for him, and he did so without making any notable new signings. The difference wasn’t just in the pressing game or the noticeable improvements to the overall fitness of his players.
The team played as a team. Players worked hard but they worked hard together, fighting together and giving everything they could, perhaps not in every game but certainly on the road to Basel and a good few times in the League. If Sakho’s misbehaviour – whatever it was – now threatens that harmony then Klopp is absolutely right to send him home.
Klopp doesn’t mess about and has the players up earlier for training than they were before he arrived, they work far harder on the pitch than under his predecessor. He gets every single ounce of use he can out of his players.
He isn’t a Graeme Souness style disciplinarian who might fine anyone caught with a smile on their faces but he’s not a pushover like Roy Evans was often perceived to be when the likes of Neil Ruddock and Dominic Matteo were playing ‘the pound coin game’.
Liverpool continue pre-season training
Players should be under no illusions about when it is time to relax and when it is time to get serious. No matter how much a pre-season trip to warmer climes might feel like a holiday Klopp will certainly not be thinking of it as one. The trip to Alcatraz wasn’t for fun, it was for a bit of PR and publicity, a duty that comes with playing for a huge club like Liverpool FC.
Sakho was signed for £18m, tagged a “marquee signing” by CEO Ian Ayre, then played out of position on his Anfield debut. For some that was a sign that ‘proved’ he was a transfer committee signing, a player the manager didn’t really want, and that perception would eventually strengthen his credentials to be a cult hero for the club.
This alleged run-in with Klopp isn’t his first as a Liverpool player, the French centre-back walking out of Anfield in a strop in his second season after finding he had been dropped for the derby. A year after Sakho arrived, the club had bought their most expensive defensive signing ever, Dejan Lovren, another left-footed centre-back and portrayed as 100 percent a Brendan Rodgers signing. The inference was that Lovren was the player Rodgers really wanted when Ayre came back from the shops with Sakho.
Sakho was regularly left out – and often injured to be fair – whilst Skrtel and Lovren did their best to portray the art of defending through the medium of pantomime. Even when he didn’t play, the love for Sakho was growing.
That love was definitely at its strongest back in April, by which time Klopp had not only turned Sakho into a regular but had also turned Dejan Lovren back into a player. Liverpool were using two left-footed centre-backs at the same time and were well on the road to a second cup final.
Klopp’s men had just beaten his old club Borussia Dortmund in spectacular if heart-stopping style and Sakho, who scored one of the Reds’ goals, was as jubilant as anyone standing on the Kop. “The most important thing was the team played with heart and the fans never leave us,” he said, adding: “It’s a win for the Liverpool country!”
A week later he scored again, this time in Liverpool’s 4-0 win over Everton, another win for the ‘Liverpool country’, or at least one half of it and his stock couldn’t get much higher than it was at that moment in time. But it was soon to take a massive blow.
Sakho had urged his teammates to concentrate on the tasks ahead: “We need to enjoy tonight but then we need to stay focused because in football every game is different and we need a positive result in the next game.”
He got a positive result before the next game – but it wasn’t a football result. UEFA had him up on a charge because of a positive sample they said they had found. Liverpool fans heard the news just before the League game at Newcastle kicked off at Anfield and the reaction from most was one of muted surprise.
As a fan it is difficult to know how to react to news like that.
By now Sakho was seen as an essential component of a rapidly improving Liverpool side, but now he was being taken away.
It was only an accusation at this stage and he still had another sample he could request a test on and none of us really knew what the substance was anyway. He’d probably messed up, read a label wrong, made a dangerous assumption, forgotten to ask the club’s medical staff if it was safe to have some herbal remedy or other.
Cheat? No. Stupid? Maybe. Sympathy for him? Quite a lot actually – he would remain a cult hero until proved otherwise, although fans were starting to prepare themselves for the worst because even when UEFA get it wrong they never actually admit they got it wrong.
Sakho even got a new song – “ Everton are tragic, Sakho’s on the magic!” – and it got plenty of airings ahead of the Europa League final, not necessarily downplaying the seriousness of the charges but showing some solidarity towards him in the hope that one way or other it would all turn out to be a big mistake.
It did turn out to be a big mistake.
UEFA dropped the case but not until he’d missed the biggest game of Liverpool’s season and Euro 2016 with his country. All the ingredients were there for the downtrodden hero to make a glorious return to the first team fold, welcomed back into the loving arms of the Kop.
Then he went and got himself in trouble with Jürgen Klopp.
We can only speculate on the reasons, whether it was one prank too far or something far more serious, but we all know that Klopp would not do something like this lightly. He’s been sent to his room without any tea and needs to go away and think about it.
Klopp is known to be ruthless, despite that smile, and it might well spell the end for Sakho but it somehow doesn’t feel like it. Klopp has decided to get him in line now, at a point when it won’t have a massive negative impact on the club or the rest of the squad, and that sends a message not only to Sakho but also to his team mates.
It isn’t all that long ago that Rodgers was motivating his team with the infamous three envelopes routine and threatening Raheem Sterling with a seat on the next plane home. In time those players stopped believing in him and once that happened the slide was impossible to stop.
Klopp has got to stamp his authority on his squad, especially if any of them feel the improvements of last season give them any excuse to relax. This season ahead is vital for Liverpool and those players must not be in any doubt about that.
Klopp is the boss - now everybody knows it.
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