‘Will you shut the f*ck up!’ – Jurgen Klopp’s sweary Liverpool rant explained by former Reds star James Milner

The former Reds star, who spent eight years at Anfield before linking up with Brighton in the summer of 2023, was a favourite of Klopp and saw his versatility put to good use across 332 appearances for the Merseyside giants. He claimed Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup honours along the way, but was not always given special treatment by his boss.

Milner has told the High Performance podcast of incurring Klopp’s wrath: “He was pretty good most of the time, he was open. Maybe not at half time, we had one occasion where he was sharing his thoughts and I was sharing mine and I remember him smashing his hands down on the table like ‘will you shut the f*ck up?!’ But Jurgen was brilliant. I had a great relationship with him, off the field as well, he supported our charity (the James Milner Foundation) as well so much.”

Milner went on to say of what makes Klopp such a great manager, with the German tactician earning legend status at Anfield: “An amazing manager but I always felt like most of the time he was open and even if he didn’t feel like the conversation, he gave you stuff back so you felt like he’d thought about it afterwards. Even if he didn’t tell you that, you’d see it with things he did after and I felt like he was good at taking things on board. He’s a leader, he makes the decisions, but if you’ve put something in his head and it’s helped, he was pretty good at listening to things like that, I saw him change a lot in the time I was there.”

Klopp is tied to a contract at Liverpool through to 2026. He has suggested that he will walk away at that stage, as he will have spent over a decade on Merseyside by then and will be ready for a well-earned break from the stresses of Premier League coaching.