'They just don't care' - Liverpool boss Klopp hits out at World Cup plans

Arsene Wenger, the former Arsenal manager, has been tasked with examining whether shortening the gap between the finals from four years to two is possible, after a request from the Saudi Arabian football association to FIFA Congress in May.

The president of European football's governing body UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin, said the plans would 'kill football' and said countries from the continent could boycott the tournament.

And Klopp, a consistently vocal opponent of the congested global football calendar, has now joined him in speaking out against the proposals.

In his press conference ahead of a trip to Leeds on Sunday, the Liverpool boss said: "There is no other sport in the world with such a relentless calendar. No physical sport. There are more demanding sports like athletics and marathons but they don't run 20 or 30 or 40 a year.

"We all know why it's happening. Whatever people say that it's about giving different countries opportunities, in the end it's all about money, that's how it is.

"That's fine. But in the end, at one point somebody has to start understanding that without the players - the most important ingredients of this wonderful game - we cannot play it. Nobody is more important than the players.

"Imagine if every two years there is a World Cup and there will be a European Championship every two years. That means for top class players they play every year a big tournament.

"That means they have a three week break every year. All things which came up in the last few years as new ideas were always about more games. That's not right in the long term.

"It's absolutely not important what I say obviously, but nobody thought about the players when they decided the last game is Friday morning at 1:30 our time. And the next game could have been Saturday.

"But they don't care, they just don't care. It's always one main interest, and all the rest is not interesting.

"There must be a point when all the confederations sit together and start thinking about the game and not only about their benefit. I'm already 54, I'm not sure if I'll be alive when that happens."

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