After Luis Diaz, Jurgen Klopp now can’t believe what happened to £45m Liverpool player vs Tottenham

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Jurgen Klopp has claimed that Simon Hooper’s decision to send Diogo Jota off against Tottenham Hotspur was ‘unprecedented.’

Jota was given two yellow cards within minutes of each other to put Liverpool down to 10-men during Saturday’s game. Both yellows were soft, but each constituted a professional foul in the eyes of Hooper.

Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped Klopp from giving his, rather different view of the incidents. Speaking in his pre-Union Saint-Gilloise press conference today, the Reds boss claimed Jota had received two yellow cards without ever touching a Tottenham player.

“Diogo Jota got two yellow cards for not touching a player once,” Klopp said. “That’s unprecedented as well, I would say.”

Some will argue, but when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, this is exactly what happened. You tell them, Jurgen!

Klopp rails against Jota red card

Whatever you think about Jota’s red card on Saturday, Klopp is telling no lies here. The £45m man has been dismissed without committing any kind of serious offence.

Of course, these things need context though, and in the context of both offences, the decision could be argued as being justified.

Obviously, the first booking is never a booking. Jota does bring Destiny Udogie down, but it isn’t a foul, it’s an accidental collision.

Nevertheless, if the referee thinks it is a foul, then he by extension believes that the Liverpool man has committed it intentionally. Therefore, in his mind, the booking is the right decision. VAR can’t intervene on yellow cards, so in this case quite literally could do nothing. Fine.

The second one is disappointing because it happened so quickly after the first. Disappointing for Jota, yes, he should have known better. But disappointing from Hooper, too.

Having already made some awful decisions in the game – and one inexplicable one involving Luis Diaz – he could have simply told Jota he was on a final warning.

The challenge was not a malicious one, and happened not far from the halfway line. A bit of common sense and the Portugal international would have stayed on the pitch. Unfortunately, common sense really was not all that common at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this weekend.