Arm around the shoulder from understanding journalists in footballer’s native country has long been the tinderstick to domestic trouble.
Christian Benteke is the latest footballer to open up to a local scribe about his club woes away from home.
The striker’s comments, to Belgium’s Voetbalmagazine, are likely to get him a 9am meeting with Jurgen Klopp upon his return from international duty.
Benteke, who has eight goals in 35 games for the Reds since is £32m transfer from Aston Villa, said:
“Some team-mates have said that I was lucky with the arrival of Klopp, because I certainly would play.
“When your coach says he wanted to take you to Dortmund and a little later you sit at the same club and he ignores you it is hard to understand.”
Benteke has railed against suggestions that he does not fit in with Klopp’s high-tempo, high-pressing style of play. He remarked:
“I find it bizarre, I do not understand why people say that. I can play pressing and moving a lot. It is not that we play in the Barcelona style.”
That summer move to West Ham might well be green-lit after all.
