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Jurgen Klopp says his team will play “the most difficult game in the world of football” at Manchester City on Sunday.
And the Liverpool manager has played down claims that his rival Pep Guardiola has become “obsessed” with trying to stop the Reds this season.
Premier League leaders can open an eight-point gap to their title rivals with victory, but travel the M62 without a national victory at Etihad for five years.
However, Klopp says he is not getting carried away with how his team has fared against Guardiola’s men overall, despite finishing 18 points ahead of City last season.
The Liverpool manager believes that the game at Etihad should be considered the most difficult for his team, as he spoke about the pleasure he derives from preparing his players for such high-profile encounters.
“This is the toughest game in the world of football to play against Manchester City,” Klopp said.
“I really don’t want to talk about us, but it’s obvious that it’s not very easy to play against us, but the challenge with City is always the way they play with the players they have. That makes it really complicated.
“There are other teams that are really good. If we now face Bayern Munich, they are already in a pretty good time for a while, I wouldn’t say it’s a Sunday afternoon walk in the park.
“It’s a huge and tough game and there are other games too. It’s only in England with all the quality of the other teams, a huge quality.
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“If you think about it, all the challenges of the game, what you have to take into account and think and what you have to do, is City because they have a good plan, a clear plan and in each position a player who has the physical and the technique to make a difference.
“They play in a specific way, they are quite dominant, but if they have to counterattack they are quite strong, so they have speed and creativity and that’s not so good when the other team has that and makes it quite difficult.
“And that’s why I said it, it’s 100 percent like that, I don’t think anyone else would see it differently apart from a few journalists who always react in a moment ‘ah, but in a moment they are this or that’ ‘.
“But actually they are in very good shape. If you don’t use all of your opportunities, that can cause you a problem in terms of results, but it is important to me that they had all these opportunities.”
“That’s what I have to think about and not if they finish them off or not because I know they will finish them off from a specific point and we just have to make sure that Sunday doesn’t happen and they won’t have that.” Many.”
When asked whether or not he enjoys the tactical battle in the same ‘obsessive’ way that Guardiola seems to do, judging by the 2018 Manchester City documentary ‘All or nothing’, Klopp said he cannot compare to him. Catalan because he has not seen it.
He added, “Are you obsessed?”
“I didn’t see the documentary, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.
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“Very often when you play against an opponent you realize that practically all the preparation is really difficult because when they play against us they change everything and that makes it really difficult because you don’t know what to expect.
“In this case, yes, City does what it always does and it is that they always do it well because if it weren’t so good they would change it from time to time.
“That makes it challenging to prepare, but also interesting because you don’t play a lot of games against a team with such high quality as City in specific areas where they play and all these kinds of things.
“Yes, I enjoy the preparation, but unfortunately we still lost a few games against them.
“Just because I like to prepare for a game against them doesn’t mean we win it later, but every now and then it’s good that I also have fun.”
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