Liverpool defender Ibrahima Konaté has revealed the warning Jurgen Klopp sent him before he joined the Reds last summer.
The French defender moved to Anfield from RB Leipzig in a €40m deal last summer, having established himself as one of the best up and coming defenders in Europe during a four-year spell with the German side.
After a slow period of adaptation, he established himself in the heart of Liverpool’s defence, making 29 appearances in all competitions.
He was a key player in the Champions League in particular, coming into the team for the clash with Porto in November and only missing one game between that and the defeat to Real Madrid in the final.
Playing for such a global side like Liverpool has only helped to increase the defender’s profile, with him now a fully-fledged member of the French national team too after making his debut against Austria earlier this year.
That’s something Konaté is more than aware of, having been warned about it by Klopp before his move to Merseyside.
“Liverpool is an amazing place and a mythical club,” he told Onze Mondial.
“I remember, before I signed, I had the coach on the phone. He said to me: ‘The day you sign for Liverpool, it will not be the same for you, your life will change.
“Wherever you travel in the world, you will see for yourself what I am telling you. In my head I was thinking: ‘OK, fine, it’s an incredible club with a great history, but chill’.
“I travelled, I went to Zanzibar this summer, and I was taking at least 50 photos a day. And then his sentence came back into my head. I thought: ‘This is insane’.
“As a kid, I knew Liverpool was a big club, but I didn’t imagine it like this. It’s way above my expectations in every way.”
