Jurgen Klopp has ‘mixed emotions’ about Liverpool’s impending Melwood exit.
Saturday will see the Reds complete their final full training session at the West Derby base that has served them for over the past seven decades.
The Premier League champions are set to officially move into their new state-of-the-art AXA Training Centre in Kirkby following the international break.
But while Klopp is relishing the new chapter in the club’s history, he admits that the leaving of Melwood means the move to Kirkby will be bittersweet.
He said: “It’s mixed emotions, 100 per cent, because Melwood is just a wonderful place and is a big part of my life.
“I was here for five years, and it’s a really special place.
“The good thing is a place is always only as good as the people in it, and we will take them all to Kirkby. So Kirkby will immediately be a really special place as well.
“That’s good, but of course, it would be strange if we would be happy to leave here, because too much happened here, in a good way, for us.
“We had a really good time here, but that’s life. Things changed, and you have to adapt to the changes.
“Sometimes you are a step ahead of the changes, and sometimes you have to follow up. This time, Melwood would still be good, but would not be good enough in the future.
“So we try to prepare the future now, and that means we leave a really good place and go to an even better one.”
The £50 million complex in Kirkby is set to become an all-encompassing facility for Liverpool’s array of teams, from junior level through to first-team.
Klopp and his players were consulted on facilities during the design process but the German insists he had no overriding input on the overall building.
“For a good reason, I hope I would not be involved with design questions. [At home] that’s all Ulla’s, and she was not involved with Kirkby!” he added.
“I was involved in all the useful stuff, let me say it like this: pitches, where and how, gyms and indoor [areas], all this kind of stuff. All these things we really need.
“Not in the rest; I had nothing to do with that, because it’s not for me, that building. It’s for Liverpool Football Club for the next 500 years if you want.
“So it’s much more important not that I’m pleased, but it must be right for all the other people as well.
“For me, the most important stuff I was involved, and in the other stuff, no.”