Klopp confused by ticket allocation for Champions League final

Jurgen Klopp has questioned UEFA’s allocation of tickets for the Champions League final, where Liverpool will face Real Madrid.

The game at the Stade de France on the outskirts of Paris will be played on May 28, and both participating clubs have been allocated fewer than 20,000 tickets each to sell to fans, despite the capacity of the stadium being 75,000.

Speaking at a media conference ahead of Liverpool’s Premier League clash with Tottenham, Klopp was asked about the impact of the travelling Reds support this season, and he was keen to point out the ticket issue.

“When you see the ticket prices and all this kind of stuff, the amount of tickets you get only… did I read, is it right that we only get 20,000, they get 20,000, [but] 75,000 in? That makes 35,000, what? Where are these tickets?,” he asked.

“I cannot be more appreciative, more thankful for what [the fans] are doing. Unbelievable… It is the only bad thing about the journey [fans struggling to obtain tickets]. I really hope they all can make it somehow and can create an incredible atmosphere.

“That is what I love about this game, really. The world will be red or white, but everybody will be either or, so that’s really cool.”

Liverpool  Real Madrid…

The 2022 #UCLfinal is set! #UCL pic.twitter.com/GYFrvIHsUh

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) May 4, 2022

The game will be a repeat of the 2018 Champions League final, in which Madrid ran out 3-1 winners in Kyiv thanks to Gareth Bale’s brace and a Karim Benzema goal.

Mohamed Salah was forced off injured following a crude Sergio Ramos challenge early in the contest, and the Egyptian has not held back in his assertions that the Reds want revenge this time around.

Salah posted: “We have a score to settle” on social media on Wednesday, before also saying when he received his Football Writers’ Player of the Year award on Thursday: “We lost in the (2018) final, it was a sad day for all of us and I think it is revenge time.”

Klopp was not quite as forthright, though he did pay tribute to Madrid’s astonishing semi-final win against Manchester City, when Los Blancos came from 5-3 down on aggregate heading into the 90th minute of the second leg to win 6-5 after extra time at the Santiago Bernabeu.

“When we lost that final actually my favourite solution would have been to play the final the next year against Real Madrid, to be honest,” Klopp admitted. “But we faced Tottenham [in 2019, winning 2-0], which was absolutely fine, in Madrid, so Madrid seems to be our destiny.

“It was strange and unlucky for City, but what Madrid did was outstanding. They got through against Paris Saint-Germain, against Chelsea, and against City, when we said before when we played Villarreal that if you knock out Bayern, you deserve to be in the semi-final, if you knock out these three [teams], you definitely deserve to be in the final.

“It will be great. That we were not happy that night, that’s clear, but it was a while ago. I’m happy to go there and give it a try. Until then, we have a lot of games to play and you will ask a lot of questions about Real Madrid until then.

“What Carlo [Ancelotti] did there is absolutely incredible. If you go to a final the idea is you want to win it and that is what we’ll work on the week before.”