Jurgen Klopp Extremely Smug About Beating Mohamed Salah at Padel

Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

OK Dad, we get it.

WIkipedia describes padel as “a racket sport typically played in doubles on an enclosed court slightly smaller than a doubles tennis court”. So it’s not tennis but looks just like it.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way (mostly for me), Liverpool coach a.k.a. our Sports Dad Jurgen Klopp and assistant coach Pep Lijnders recently played against Thiago Alcantara and Mohamed Salah in a “competitive game of padel”.

The game took place in the training camp in Dubai where the Reds are preparing for their real “competitive games” in the Premier League and other domestic tournaments which will resume soon after the World Cup concludes.

Klopp has been described as a “regular player of the sport”, and the other coaches engage in it as well. Lijnders and Klopp beat Thiago and Mo, leading to some extreme Dad energy in Klopp’s post-victory comments.

“Mo saw us from time to time playing and wanted to play against us desperately, so we now gave him the chance to play. But I’m not sure he’ll want to play again!”, said Klopp.

“We are all sportspeople, we are all competitive and if we play something, we want to win.”

Da...sorry Klopp also wanted to make sure that everyone knew that they won the game.

“For the outside world, we won”, he said.

“It’s good to get that message across because I told the LFCTV guys already, I didn’t watch the video until the end in the first place but then I thought it looks like we lost. But then I saw it again and I saw that they showed we shook hands after we won the game, so it’s all fine.”

Oh my god.

Somewhere, elite athletes Thiago and Mo are doing an eye-roll, but of course it’s all in good fun and very sweet and all that. We love you Dad, and yes you did win!