Former manager Gerardo Pelusso has launched a bizarre attack on Jurgen Klopp, describing him as an “actor” rather than a top manager.
The Liverpool boss has done a sensational job since arriving in October 2015, winning both the Premier League and Champions League, as well as being crowned Club World Cup champions.
Klopp is rightly regarded as one of the best managers in the world right now, but someone who doesn’t rate him is Pelusso, who once ironically took charge of Uruguayan side Liverpool.
Speaking to Info TNU [via Sport Witness], the 66-year-old showed a lack of respect to the German, downplaying his abilities in the process:
Klopp is a good manager, but what happens is that he sells himself very well. Liverpool’s success is not Klopp’s; Liverpool’s success is the success of those who put the squad together before he arrived.
Because when Klopp was managing Dortmund, they offered him Sadio Mane, who was at Salzburg in Austria, and he said ‘no, that’s a black rapper, I don’t want him’. Then he goes to Liverpool and Sadio is a monster as a footballer and as a person and he won them all the championships.
So Klopp is a good coach, but he’s an actor who sells himself very well… He really understood the key to the football business, Klopp is an actor.
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Quite where this outburst has come from is unknown, but it is almost impossible to criticise the job Klopp has done and the managerial career he has forged.
The 53-year-old has had great respective success at Mainz, Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool, and he has transformed the Reds as a club, both on and off the pitch.
Perhaps Pelusso is just bitter that Klopp has achieved far more in the game, but his words only come across as deluded.
