Mamadou Sakho’s Liverpool future was thrown into doubt after he was sent home from the club’s pre-season tour of the United States, but did an impromptu interview with Jürgen Klopp, on the club’s in-house LFC TV channel, hasten his exit?
Klopp is understood to have been concerned with Sakho’s attitude around the squad. The defender, signed from Paris Saint-Germain in 2013, was armed with a GoPro camera during Liverpool’s visit to Alcatraz on Sunday. During the video, Sakho intrudes on an interview Klopp is giving to the club’s media team at the former high-security prison.
“We could have left Mama Sakho here because he is filming me while I give the interview here,” says Klopp, who laughs off the defender interrupting his interview, before Sakho asks how long the Liverpool manager could live on Alcatraz.
“I don’t have to think about it, you should think about it, because only one of us came late last night for departure in Liverpool,” says Klopp. “Ah, it was not me, it was you by the way.”
After, Sakho is filmed joking with team-mates Dejan Lovren, James Milner and Nathaniel Clyne. The France international was booked on the same flight to Heathrow from San Francisco on Monday as the defender Brad Smith, who is England to undergo a medical on Wednesday, before a proposed move to Bournemouth.
Sakho, who is recovering from an achilles injury, has been ordered to continue his rehabilitation at Liverpool’s Melwood training ground after arriving back in England on Tuesday.
Sakho, who was pictured with a Californian dog on Monday, was due to answer questions alongside Simon Mignolet later that day on Liverpool’s social channel, LFCXtra, but only the Belgium goalkeeper took part. The France international, who was left out of Didier Deschamps’s squad for Euro 2016, had a doping case against him dismissed by Uefa earlier this month. The 26-year-old served a provisional 30-day suspension after testing positive for a ‘fat burner’ in March.
