It has taken a couple of months, but Jurgen Klopp has finally snapped at Real Madrid's Prince of Darkness, Sergio Ramos.
Ramos' first-half tangle with Mo Salah led to the Liverpool player departing through injury, while in the second half the defender slyly elbowed Loris Karius in the head causing him to sustain a concussion. Within minutes, Karius made the bewildering error which led to Madrid's opening goal.
Ramos was in typically unapologetic mood afterwards:
Bloody hell, they've given this a lot of attention, the Salah thing ... I didn't want to speak because everything is magnified. I see the play well, he grabs my arm first and I fell to the other side, the injury happened to the other arm and they said that I gave him a judo hold. After the goalkeeper said that I dazed him with a clash with me I am only missing Firmino saying that he got a cold because a drop of my sweat.
Jurgen Klopp had kept shtum on Ramos up to now, but finally snapped when asked about him ahead of tonight's pre-season friendly with Manchester United in Michigan.
The Liverpool manager said Ramos' actions were "ruthless and brutal", and also hit out at his post-game comments. Klopp also accentuated Ramos' role in getting Juan Cuadrado sent off in the 2017 final against Juventus.
If you watch it back and you are not with Real Madrid – then you think it is ruthless and brutal.
I’m not sure it is an experience we will have again – go there and put an elbow to the goalkeeper, put their goalscorer down like a wrestler in midfield and then you win the game.
That was the story of the game. Ramos said a lot of things afterwards that I didn’t like. As a person I didn’t like the reactions of him. He was like: ‘Whatever, what do they want? It’s normal.’ No, it is not normal. If you put all of the situations of Ramos together then you will see a lot of situations with Ramos. The year before against Juve he was responsible for the red card for [Juan] Cuadrado.
Nobody talks about that afterwards. It is like we, the world out there, accepts that you use each weapon to win the game. People probably expect that I am the same. I am not.
