Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has opposed the suggestion from new US owner Chelsea that the Premier League could introduce an American-style All-Star Game among top players from the north and south.
Even some former top players weren’t impressed with Todd Boehly’s idea.
Speaking at the SALT conference in New York on Tuesday, Boehly said he hoped the Premier League could “take a little lesson from American sport” and organize an All-Star Game that would raise funds for clubs further down the English football pyramid. .
The idea was given to Klopp and the German coach didn’t care.
“What can I say? He also wants to bring the Harlem Globetrotters and have them play against a football team?” Klopp said.
Klopp’s main problem was that there was no room in an already hectic football schedule to host such a match.
“When he finds a date for that, he can call me,” she said.
“Forget that in major American sports these players have four months off, so they’re pretty happy to be able to play some sport during those breaks. It’s completely different in football. “
The MLB, NBA, and NHL all hold a mid-season all-star game. The NFL equivalent – the Pro Bowl – now takes place on the Sunday before the Super Bowl.
Boehly, who is co-owner of the MLB Los Angeles Dodgers team and owns stock in the NBA’s LA Lakers, has made his presence felt since he took on the consortium of businessmen that bought Chelsea for $ 3.2 billion. dollars (4.7 billion Australian dollars) in May.
With just seven Chelsea games of the season, he sacked Champions League winning coach Thomas Tuchel and replaced him with Brighton’s Graham Potter.
With Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and now American-owned Chelsea, it was perhaps inevitable that ideas with a nod to American sports would slip into English football.
But Gary Lineker was just one of many former players to speak out against Boehly’s ideas.
“Hey Todd,” Lineker, a former England captain, wrote on Twitter Wednesday, “we already have some star games. They call themselves international.”
Former Liverpool captain Jamie Carragher, who worked as CBS Sports expert for Wednesday’s Champions League games, said Boehly was “incredibly arrogant in talking about a league you don’t know.”
“I just think about how American audiences would feel,” said Carragher, “if an English Premier League football owner walked into the NFL and said, ‘We’re doing this in the Premier League.’ I think it’s incredibly arrogant to talk like that. “.
The great Frenchman Thierry Henry, working alongside Carragher, rejected the suggestion.
“This is Europe and it doesn’t work that way,” Henry said.
Klopp has been a vocal critic of the demands placed on players due to the increasing number of club and national matches throughout the year.
This season the World Cup takes place for the first time in the midst of an English league campaign.
Klopp also wondered if “people want to see” combined the northern and southern teams, essentially pitting rival clubs against each other.
“Imagine that – (Manchester) United players, Liverpool players, Everton players, all together in one team,” he said.
“So all the guys in London together?” Klopp added. “Arsenal and Tottenham. Great. Did he really say that? Interesting.”