The Champions League final was not an easy night to endure for Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp.
His poor record in finals had been repeatedly highlighted in the build up to the biggest game in European football and he was not helped by two catastrophic goalkeeping errors and the loss of his best player in the first-half against Real Madrid, the two-time defending champions.
Loris Karius’ calamitous howlers ultimately cost Liverpool a shot at their first Champions League title since 2005 and the backlash was swift and immediate.
The criticism was particularly strong online, which, it has to be said, was not helped by the player’s self-promotional video a few weeks later.
Klopp has defended Karius throughout the summer but it’s the culture of anonymous abuse, and the proposition of death threats, that got him particularly animated during a recent interview with German broadcaster Sport1.
“I do not think such threats are serious. We live in Central Europe. Threats that are pronounced because of a lost football game can be explained quite well with the emotion of disappointment.
“What I find much worse is how people in the anonymity of the internet are wallowing and wallowing in their malice for other people who have failed. That’s 99.9 percent of people who would never get into such a situation because they can not. Because they sit in their room, instead of going out to a place where performance is needed.
“I long for the time when people had to write letters to the editor. Where to write a letter and stick a stamp on it, close the letter and throw it into the mailbox. Until all this has happened, one has long forgotten his anger. Today, anyone under a pseudonym may just publish his mental garbage. I find that despicable.”
The Liverpool manager admitted that he could not find the right words to say to Karius after the Champions League final defeat but that they have talked since the loss as he looks to rebuild the goalkeeper following his torturous night in Kyiv.
“Loris is absolutely fine. But you have to imagine this evening as a human being. I’m a big believer in the thesis, “If you do not have the right word to say, just shut up.”
“I had nothing proper to say that night except a few comforting words and I had no idea what to say. I was not mad at him, nor disappointed, I just saw his situation.
“Everybody would like to have the right words in such a situation, but I did not have them. Except for a few words, we left it in the evening. Of course we have talked, but not only about it.”
