Ojora Babatunde, a Nigerian journalist, has taken up Juergen Klopp, manager of Liverpool FC, over unfair comments on the African Cup Of Nations (AFCON).
During the pre-match presser on Saturday, Klopp had described AFCON as a little tournament.
“In January, there’s a little tournament in Africa, I just want to say, and I think Asia is playing games, too – South America as well, great, can’t wait,” he had said.
Reacting to the comment at another briefing, Babatunde said, “Hi Jurgen, during your last pre-match presser, you deliberately called the Africa Cup of Nations a ‘little tournament’.
“I think it’s an insult to the players, an insult to the fans, an insult to the people on the continent and I think you owe the continent an apology.”
Responding, Klopp said, “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know why you understand it like that. It’s not even close to the idea in my mind that I want to talk about AFCON as a little tournament, or the continent of Africa like a little continent, not at all.
“What I meant is, because people said, and if you watch the full press conference, if you wanted to understand it in the right way you could have understood it in the right way. I said ‘there’s no international break anymore until March’ and I said: ‘Oh and there’s a little tournament in January,’ and I didn’t mean a little tournament, just like you say it when there’s still a tournament. It’s ironic. There’s still a tournament. A big one. We lose our best players to the Africa Cup of Nations.
“I’m not a native speaker, but if you want to understand me wrong you can do that all the time. I know that I would never think like this. I never understand why you thought like this to be honest, but that’s really not OK, because I would never do that, but that’s it now.”
