IAN HERBERT: Jurgen Klopp is sounding like a man losing his grip on reality. What a breathtaking sense of entitlement and extraordinary lack of perspective to demand a replay

• Liverpool saw Luis Diaz have a goal ruled out against Tottenham after a VAR error
• Reds boss Jurgen Klopp called for the game to be replayed due to the mistake
• Click HERE to listen to the latest episode of Mail Sport’s ‘It’s All Kicking Off’ 

Jurgen Klopp is one of those rare individuals who has taken us beyond the beige, self-serving propaganda of football press conferences, these past five years or more.

He is the individual who offered the opinion that anti-vaxxers putting lives at risk were ‘no better than drunk drivers’. Who said of the European Super League, at a time when his own club’s owners were pursuing it: ‘I don’t like it and I don’t want it to happen.’

Unfortunately, his assertion that Liverpool’s match at Tottenham should be replayed because Luis Diaz was denied a goal — presaging the latest moral outrage to sweep football — does not enhance his reputation as a sage.

Quite the opposite, in fact, given that the preposterous suggestion descended deeper and deeper into the realms of fantasy as he extended his case.

The main objection to his proposition of a replayed fixture — the precedent that such a decision would set — was as clear as the nose on his face. It would be just another weapon for managers to go armed with, each fulminating that their case was more deserving than the last.

Jurgen Klopp called for Liverpool’s match with Tottenham to be replayed after a VAR farce

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But there’s something more fundamental to it all than that. For as long as 22 individuals have been kicking a ball around with competitive intent on patches of grass, football matches have been settled by the beautiful, unpredictable, messy sequence of variables which occur across the span of 90 minutes or more. Including officials’ errors.

And now, having been robbed of that spontaneity of the game by the joyless, soul-deadening impact of VAR, we are being asked to agree that an entire match might need to be replayed?

What a breathtaking sense of entitlement. And what an extraordinary lack of perspective.

Klopp extemporised on Diazgate extremely calmly, and yet it was as he elaborated on the consequences of Darren England’s catastrophe in the VAR booth that he really did sound like a man lacking a grip on reality.

The goal Tottenham scored, two minutes after the Liverpool injustice, has also been bugging him, he disclosed. If the Diaz goal had counted, Klopp reasoned, then Tottenham would have kicked off from the centre circle, not from a position in their own half… and then Liverpool might not have conceded in the way they did.

‘All things depend on each other,’ Klopp reckoned. ‘If Liverpool had scored and the game would have started in the centre of the pitch and not where it started, and all these kinds of things…’

VAR audio showed the officials were aware of their mistake shortly after the match restarted

Excuse me? And where, precisely, does this calculation of cause and effect actually end? How far can a sense of injustice actually stretch?

It would be one thing if Klopp’s myopia existed in isolation — the utterances of an uber-competitive manager who is a serial winner because he pursues every grievance to the end of the earth.

But the call for a replayed match — and the inevitable refusal to grant him one — will only serve to fuel the hysteria and conspiracy theories about Liverpool’s injustice which have been circulating since Saturday. This story has been ablaze for five days now and still shows no sign of dying down.

Of course, that does serve a useful purpose for Klopp. Had he observed on Wednesday that mistakes happen, expressed a hope that those responsible might learn, and asked that the world now move on, the sense of a Liverpool injustice would recede. By maintaining the narrative, he keeps the pressure on officials.

Those who run Liverpool’s games — next week, next month, next year — will know full well that they are encountering a manager whose requested form of justice has been declined.

Klopp wanted to make it clear that no one should be going after Saturday’s VAR booth unfortunates.

‘They made a mistake and felt hurt that night, I’m sure. That’s enough for me,’ he said.

But heaven help the ones who err in his presence next time.

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