Klopp Talk: The Futures of Emre Can and Philippe Coutinho

Ever since Jürgen Klopp’s first days with Liverpool, he always seems baffled by the English obsession with transfers. Who is coming? Who is going? Please tell us what rumors are true!

Klopp often chooses not to feed into these stories (which naturally become stories in and of themselves). However, his frustration at the media boils over from time to time, and this was the case at yesterday’s press conference when asked (for the one millionth time) about the futures of Philippe Coutinho and Emre Can.

Whereas Coutinho’s summer transfer saga with Barcelona was a major source news, Emre Can’s stalled contract negotiations remains an unresolved issue on the back burner.

“What I can say, in general as a club, and how I understand it, we have to still create a situation where players want to be part of it with all they have,” Klopp said. “In this moment, we have this. Nobody thinks about January, nobody thinks about June or July.

“We have to do as a club everything until the players give me signs that they are somewhere else or whatever.

“I don’t think about it. If I start now asking Emre every day: ‘How is it going then?....’ So far there is not a shadow of a doubt that he’s 100% here.”

When pressed about rumors that Klopp and the club had reached an agreement with Coutinho to leave, either in January or next summer, Klopp gave a rather long, rambling, and confusing response.

“I’ve no clue. We will see. We don’t talk about things like this. Can you imagine what it would be like if it was like this and I said: ‘Yes, we have an agreement’?

“In this moment the 100% truth is that nobody thinks about this. We don’t talk about it, why should we?

“In both cases it would not make sense – no there is no agreement, yes there is an agreement. It is not important in the moment.

“We have other moments when we have to talk about these things but not in October.”

That’s far from a flat-out denial that many would hope for, but he doesn’t really confirm anything either. Perhaps he’s just as frustrated as the rest of us about these perpetual rumors from Catalan news outlets.

Basically, no news from our end, until their is news. Hopefully Klopp can successfully convince both players to remain on Merseyside for the foreseeable future, though I wouldn’t bet on it.