Jurgen Klopp may have seen Philippe Coutinho slip the net, but he intends to make Liverpool a club nobody wants to leave.
The Reds reluctantly sanctioned the €160 million sale of a key playmaker to Barcelona after seeing him express a desire to complete a “dream” transfer .
Coutinho is not the first to have left Anfield in pursuit of major honours elsewhere, with Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling having taken similar decisions in recent years.
Klopp, though, is determined to restore former glories to the red half of Merseyside and make Liverpool a team everybody wants to be a part of.
The German coach told reporters on the desire to retain top talent: “There are other places with football clubs. Players can want to leave. That can and probably will still happen in the future.
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“It is not a big problem, but we can’t let it happen too often. Let me say it like this. We have to make it difficult for them to leave here.
“We have to create a situation where players want to stay.”
While Klopp is eager to keep his squad together and build on it, he could be about to lose another senior star.
Emre Can is continuing to run down his contract, amid much talk of interest from Serie A champions Juventus , but the German will remain part of the Liverpool set-up until a decision on his future is taken.
Klopp said of his fellow countryman: “If Emre plays like he is in the moment – especially with the injury of Hendo [Jordan Henderson] – playing pretty much all the time, which is really difficult.
“For 60, 70 minutes he was outstanding against City. Impressive and stuff like that. We will see what happens. In this age group maybe not all of them are one-club players.”