Jürgen Klopp has insisted he is not preparing to claim any Premier League titles after Manchester City were found guilty of breaching the league’s financial rules, saying his respect for Pep Guardiola is too great for him to comment.
An independent commission hasfound City guilty on all serious charges, with the Premier League confirming the news in an official statement this week.
The financial breaches relate to a period between 2009 and 2018, which overlaps with Klopp’sLiverpool tenure that began in 2015. City deny all of the charges and are set to appeal.
In the following seasons, Klopp’s Liverpool twice missed out on the title by a single point to Guardiola’s City, after narrow runners-up finishes in 2019 and 2022. Liverpool also lost the 2016 League Cup final to the Cityzens.
In 2024, he joked that he would attend any bus parade if those trophies were ever awarded retrospectively. Speaking on Wednesday ahead of Germany’s Nations League match against Serbia, he made clear that his view has changed.
“I haven’t given it much thought, even though I’ve seen it of course,” Klopp said.
“I also know what I said about it in the past and how if there’s ever a parade, I’ll be there. But it doesn’t feel like that anymore.
“My respect for Pep Guardiola and the football played at City during the time we played against each other, in the way they played back then and how they brought football to life on the pitch is far too great for me to be able to say anything now.”
Klopp also refused to offer any view on what sanctions City should face, pointing out that the legal process is far from finished.
“Should any sanctions be imposed, I naturally have nothing to do with it anyway, and that’s why I’m waiting to see how things pan out,” he said.
“But when you’re talking about legal proceedings that have been going on for so long now, I assume there will be an appeal or something like that? That will take ages again of course.
“So I’m a long way from preparing myself for it in any way and I don’t have any feelings about it. It’s not as if I need that right now, just so I can say ‘I’ve been English champion more times’. I’m completely fine with what’s happened and what we’ve achieved.
“We battled it out on the pitch, and I can’t say anything about the rest of it because I don’t know exactly what it’s all about. To be honest, I’m not particularly interested in it either.”
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