Speaking at a recent press conference, Jurgen Klopp argued that opposition players were trying to provoke and antagonise Sadio Mane for much longer than just the recent games.
"It has been a thing for much longer," Klopp said, as per The Guardian. "Even when it was not obvious to the outside. You can see it in games that they go for him because they want to wind him up.
"But it is two different things. One is to make Sadio really aggressive during the game. We saw that against Flamengo in the Club World Cup final. Rafinha wanted to go for him after he caused them some problems when we played Bayern in the Champions League. It was obvious from the first second when he went in really hard.
"Sadio is now of an age where he is much better at [dealing with] that; not that emotional any more. We all need emotions, obviously, and sometimes we control them better and sometimes less and yes, we’ve had these talks, but I really don’t think it had anything to do with the situation against Arsenal. That was pretty much nothing, a normal challenge.
"With Real Madrid it was obvious and against Atletico Madrid it was pretty much obvious – they had the red card and directly after a player went down and made more [of a challenge] just to make sure they get our player sent off or yellow card.
"That is what I was talking about. The headline [from their discussions] is: 'We pay back with football. Whatever we do, we pay them back with football.'"
Klopp's instinct to protect Mane from being targeted was the reason for his touchline row with Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta who angrily demanded a card for the Senegalese after a foul.
As the boss reminds us, he had to sub off Sadio at half-time against Atletico before the opponents provoked him into getting a second booking. Mane might've become more in control of his emotions, but it's still clearly a concern for the manager.
