Ben Foster and James Tarkowski have admitted they find Jurgen Klopp's pre-match ritual of standing on the halfway line and staring at the opposition 'intimidating',
Klopp insists that is not why he does it.
Klopp is regularly seen intensely watching rival players in action before Liverpool's games,
When asked if he is aware of Klopp's presence while he is warming up, Tarkowski replied:
"Always, because I always warm up right near the halfway line. I like to be that end of the warm ups so I'm always quite high and can see him gleaming at me from the side.
"I'm thinking 'I better make sure this pass is right', or he's going to walk into the dressing room and say 'that Tarkowski's having one in the warm-up, go and play on him'."
Foster then added that he also found the pre-match ritual intimidating and that Klopp had explained to him the reason why he does it.
Klopp
"That's not the reason,"
"I just want to see, I want to understand. Sometimes you see a player limping a little bit, you see a player doing this or that and I just try to understand what they are doing.
"It's not so interesting when they are doing pure physical stuff, but when they start passing I have a look. Only one time I used it to intimidate an opponent, it's not nice to say that, but it was against my old club when we played Dortmund.
"I knew it would be strange for them so I thought 'come on, let's do it', but besides that if somebody said that I do that on purpose (to intimidate) it's not true. I just watch."
Tarkowski Responded
"It feels like he's attempting to do it even if he's not. It feels like he's attempting to intimidate players because he stands there with a very stern look on his face as well."
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