Klopp Talk: Wear Your Mask and Gloves

At the risk of jinxing things in this living hell year that is 2020, if everything continues going to plan, Premier League football will kick off again in exactly 2 weeks. I’m getting some serious The Martian vibes here.

Anyway, the players are back in full training, and Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp believes that the players have been safe in their personal lives, and that the club has made the training sessions a safe place to come to work.

“It feels 100% like a secure environment,” Kloppo told BBC Radio 5 Live in an interview, “but we can never be sure there will be nil infections because we still have a normal life. The boys are massively disciplined. It has been nearly 11 weeks already which for people in this age is a true challenge. It is for all of us a challenge, but for them especially.

“We go to petrol stations, we need fuel, we need food; stuff like this. We wear face masks and I do not understand why everyone in England, especially in close areas, is not wearing a face mask and gloves. It helped in Germany a lot. I am not an expert but it helped there a lot.

“We told the boys wherever they went, I wanted them to wear face masks and gloves so just from that point of view, nothing can happen.”

The world really could use more people with Jurgen’s “I’m not an expert, but I’m trusting the experts” attitude these days.

Obviously, there’s no way to make any work place 100% secure these days. All measures of health or safety can only be in relative terms. But if Klopp and the players feel safe, and the players and their families remain free from illness, then Project Restart will be considered a success.

“Humans are [at] the most risk from humans,” Klopp added. “That is how it always was. We are all our biggest enemies sometimes, so we have stay disciplined and we will.”

Klopp is smart enough to know that this last statement could be and would be interpreted beyond “just” the COVID-19 crisis.