Jurgen Klopp reveals his anger when Liverpool were beaten to Dusan Tadic by Ajax
Liverpool gaffer Jurgen Klopp wanted to sign Serbian winger Dusan Tadic before his move from the South coast of England to Amsterdam. In 2018, Tadic moved from Southampton to Ajax for a fee of merely £10m. The only attacker to join the Reds that summer was Xherdan Shaqiri.
At that point in time, Tadic was already 30 but had immense talent, which one could say, did not fully blossom during his time at St. Mary’s Park. His skills though have certainly not gone down with age, and recently, in 2021, the Serbian broke Lionel Messi’s decade-old record of most assists in a calendar year, providing 37 assists.
Since his move to the Dutch outfit, Tadic has scored 94 goals and 98 assists in 209 games. Klopp recently revealed that he is a big fan of the Serbian and would have liked him at the Merseyside club.
Here is what Klopp told Dutch broadcaster RTL (via Ajax Showtime ) [h/t The Mirror]:
“I was very angry with myself when he went to Ajax , because I was also interested in him. I love him as a player.”
Klopp ‘loves’ Tadic as a player
The Reds had only two natural wingers back then in Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah, with Shaqiri as Salah’s backup when the situation arose. On the left side though, Mane did not have a player backing his position up and Tadic could have proved to be effective in that role.
That particular season was extremely successful for Liverpool, winning the UEFA Champions League and securing a close second-place finish in the league. The Reds lost out to Manchester City by a tiny margin of just one point.
In hindsight, everything tends to seem merrier than usual, but the fact is Tadic was ageing and even admitted that the Premier League was too physical for him on Andy van der Meijde’s Youtube channel.
Liverpool now has Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota to play on the left flank and the irony of the matter is, the Reds still do not have enough depth in that position to compete for all four trophies.
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We take on the Dutch giants tonight (October 26) and we will be without both Jota and Diaz. Tadic, meanwhile, is fit and in line to captain his side once again. Hopefully, he doesn’t showcase the abilities that made Klopp swoon over him as we need to confirm qualification so that the home game against Napoli becomes a dead rubber for us.
