Jurgen Klopp has defended his comments about the Africa Cup of Nations.
Klopp referred to the competition as a ‘little tournament’ when asked about international breaks ahead of Liverpool’s Champions League win over Porto.
However the German’s turn of phrase was met with anger from an African journalist, who claimed it was ‘deliberate’ and described it as ‘an insult’.
Following his side’s victory, Klopp responded to the accusations and insisted there was no intention to disrespect either the tournament or Afrca itself.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” said the Liverpool manager.
“I was not even close to it being the idea in my mind that I want to talk about the AFCON as a ‘little tournament’ or about the continent of Africa as a little continent, not at all.
“What I meant was, if you watch the full press conference, then you might have understood it the right way if you wanted to because I said there are no international breaks until March now.
“I said ‘oh there’s a little tournament in January’ and I didn’t mean a little tournament, I was just saying it’s still a tournament, it’s ironic.
“It’s still a tournament, a big one. We [will] lose our best players to that tournament.
“I am not a native speaker but if you want to understand me wrong, you can do that all the time. I know that I would never think like this.
“I don’t understand why you thought this to be honest, but that’s really not OK as I would never do that. But that is it now.
“It was not my intention but you made something [more] of it, so that is not so cool to be 100 per cent honest.”
Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Naby Keita are all set to feature at AFCON, ruling them out of involvement with Liverpool for potentially four weeks.