"It has been brought to our attention that it was discussed a bit. I have been dealing with people in a leadership position for 25 years in my life. And it is important what you say, but much more important is what the person you are saying it to understands," Jurgen Klopp told viewers on Magenta TV, pushing back after a punditry exercise about Germany's starting XI produced an unexpected row over Jamal Musiala.
Klopp, working alongside Thomas Muller as a 2026 World Cup pundit, had been asked to sketch a possible line‑up for Germany’s opening match against Curacao. In that scenario he suggested Deniz Undav as one alternative to occupy the number 10 role — a suggestion he says was simply one option in a broader list. "And obviously there were a few misunderstandings - we just have to clear that up. We were asked to make a line‑up. We just wanted to show that there are other possibilities, which there must be," Klopp said.
The remark landed on raw nerves. Lothar Matthaus publicly questioned Klopp’s judgment, arguing that benching Musiala would weaken Germany’s prospects. "[Klopp] should know better. To play a successful World Cup, Germany needs the quality of a Musiala. His comments don't exactly make Nagelsmann's job any easier. I'd like to see what Klopp would have said if an expert had advised him to bench one of his regular starters before an important Champions League match. Such interference isn't well received, especially among fellow coaches," Matthaus said, invoking Musiala’s established value to the national side.
Klopp responded not by retracting the possibility of Undav, but by stressing intent and context. "That was zero point zero meant as criticism. Who should we criticise? They haven't played yet. Neither the coach nor the team. And certainly not Musiala, whom everyone loves, ourselves included," he said, while also pointing to the practical reason alternatives were discussed: Musiala suffered a serious injury during the Club World Cup in the summer of 2025 and last season was limited to 24 appearances and five goals across all competitions.
Matthaus highlighted the counterweight to Klopp’s factual frame: Musiala has 42 international caps and nine goals, and has featured in three World Cup matches and seven European Championship matches — a record that argues for a conservative selection approach in a tournament opener. Klopp, for his part, moved to protect the player as much as to defend the exercise: "We want the boy to get the feeling for himself again very quickly, that he trusts himself. And of course, that is not the case at the moment. He has had too few games for that."
The public spat reduced a routine pundit task into a debate over influence. One side treated the line‑up as hypothetical and necessary; the other saw it as unwelcome interference that could unsettle a manager and a squad on the eve of a tournament. Klopp framed his input as a prompt, not a prescription; Matthaus framed it as an avoidable distraction from preserving a proven creative presence.
Klopp's clarification has calmed one round of criticism but it does not settle the central question: will Germany’s manager start Jamal Musiala in the Curacao opener or hand the number 10 role to Deniz Undav? The decision now falls to the coach and to how Musiala appears in training before kickoff — a choice that will determine whether Klopp’s suggestion remains a footnote or a selection controversy.
