Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said on Friday he will leave at the end of the season, in a surprise decision.
“I can understand that it’s a shock for a lot of people in this moment when you hear it for the first time,” Klopp said in an interview on the website of the Premier League leaders.
The news comes after eight-and-a-half years at the helm – and with four trophies still to contest before the campaign is up
Klopp wants everyone to pull together in an attempt to write another successful chapter in his team’s story.
”I love everything. But that I still take this decision shows you that I am convinced it is the one I have to take. It is that I am, how can I say it, running out of energy. I have no problem now, obviously, I knew it already for longer that I would have to announce it at one point, but I am absolutely fine now. I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again,” he said
On the reason he is leaving, the German said ”But in the end, I have to because one thing I am really convinced of [is] if you have to make a decision like that, it is better you do it slightly early than slightly too late. Too late would have been absolutely the worst thing to happen [if], I don’t know, next season in September I realised, ‘Oh my God, that’s it – I cannot do it anymore’ and then we are in the middle of a season and everything.”
Liverpool are five points clear at the top of the Premier League and the 56-year-old will be hoping to go out on a high by winning the title again.