Michail Antonio Says Klopp-Salah Spat Was Over Unreciprocated Hug
Does this mean we get to call the brief spat between Jürgen Klopp and Mohamed Salah huggate?
Liverpool’s season has rather fallen apart over the past month, with the chance to end Jürgen Klopp’s nine-year tenure as manager with a glorious, silverware-laden sendoff having disappeared with the Reds knocked out of the FA Cup, Europa League, and out of the Premier League title race.
The disappointment and tension inherent in that collapse was perhaps always likely to result in a few public moments of discontent. Against West Ham, we were given one as Klopp and star Mohamed Salah engaged in a brief, heated exchange before the latter’s second half introduction off the bench.
According to West Ham striker Michail Antonio, speaking about the incident on his podcast, though, it was more much ado about nothing than any kind of an earth shaking conflict as some wanted to spin the short pitchside spat between one of the Liverpool’s greatest ever managers and players.
“Basically—and this is not inside information—but what I have heard is what the boys have been talking about on the training ground,” Antonio said. “As the players come on, Klopp always gives them a big hug and says good luck but then when Mo came on he walked in a different direction.
“He was doing his shinpads and stuff like that and Klopp put his hand out to him and his hand was there for a bit and as Mo stopped doing what he was doing he just slapped it as a high five. Klopp didn’t like that and he was like, do you want to sit back down? Basically, do you want to go on?”
If true—and as Antonio says, this is only on chatter around the West Ham camp based on things their players may have heard during the incident—it truly seems like a nothing of an incident born of a frustrating end to the season. But also, if Jürgen Klopp ever offers a hug, you’d better reciprocate.
“Nobody has told me what Mo said back,” Antonio added. “It’s one of those things because they are not performing it’s going to be amplified. Basically the title could be drifting away, tensions are going to be high, there’s going to be a lot of frustration. They’re only human, things are bound to happen.”
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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