Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was right to call UEFA out over their dreadful handling of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier in the season.
Klopp has already shown how he’s redefining leadership across the sporting realm – and political – with his thoughts on the crisis so far.
And now Carlo Ancelotti has told journalists that the German was deeply unhappy about the way the Champions League was prioritized over human health just before football was cancelled.
He’s right.
Jurgen Klopp has got every right to call out UEFA over how they’ve handled COVID-19. It’s been an absolute shambles.
We’ve seen countries like New Zealand shut their borders, then lockdown society, at the faintest hint of community infection. And their coronavirus rate has jumped massively in recent weeks.
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The whole world saw how quickly this spread around the world, let UEFA had no worries in allowing a massive, cross-continent competition continue without any protections in place for players, staff or fans.
Atletico Madrid flew from Spain, which has been horribly hit by COVID-19, along with their whole backroom staff and all the journalists that report on Diego Simeone‘s team, to Liverpool.
They then interacted with everyone, as did all sides who moved around Europe to play football, and put countless more individuals at risk.
UEFA were slow to act, far too slow.
Just to be clear, Klopp telling Ancelotti that it was ‘criminal’ for the game to proceed isn’t an excuse for the loss. He doesn’t want the result overturned, he didn’t blame the illness on Adrian kicking the ball to the right person, or for Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah missing a host of chances.
Klopp doesn’t think Liverpool should still be in the Champions League. They lost, and they didn’t really deserve to win.
He just wants to governing bodies for a sport that means so much to so people, a sport that crosses borders and has an incredible amount of financial clout, to act in the best interest of the people who love it.