James Milner has shared an anecdote about a time he found himself on the wrong side of Jurgen Klopp, resulting in the Liverpool manager instructing him to “shut the f*ck up.”
The former Reds player, who spent eight years at Anfield before joining Brighton in the summer of 2023, was a favourite figure under Klopp.
Throughout his 332 appearances for Liverpool, Milner’s versatility proved invaluable as he secured honours in the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, and Carabao Cup.
Despite his success, Milner acknowledges that special treatment from Klopp was not always guaranteed.
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.”
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 the 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.”
Jurgen Klopp is currently under contract with Liverpool until 2026.
He has indicated that he plans to step down at the conclusion of that contract.
By then, he will have devoted more than a decade to the club, and the stresses of coaching in the Premier League will likely prompt him to take a well-deserved break.