Klopp: I told my players about Rocky and Ivan Drago and I ended up embarrassed

Liverpool are performing sensationally under Jurgen Klopp, and after lifting the Champions League in Madrid, the German coach was voted as the coach of the year on Monday, yet Klopp is not immune from embarrassment like the rest of us, as he made clear when recalling a time he told his Borussia Dortmund players about Rocky and Ivan Drago.

Klopp's career with Dortmund was full of successes, mainly against the might of Bayern Munich, and this was exactly the message he was trying to convey ahead of one particular clash with the Bavarian giants.

"My Borussia Dortmund team were playing Bayern Munich, it was a huge match in the league, we hadn't won in Munich for something like 20 years," he explained in The Players' Tribune.

"I needed to motivate the boys and I would always think of Rocky Balboa, so the night before we played Bayern, I gathered all of the players and I told them the truth of the situation, I then started playing some scenes from Rocky IV.

"I told the boys that Bayern Munich were Ivan Drago, unstoppable and that we were Rocky, yet I looked out for the reaction and everyone was staring at me with dead eyes, I asked who was born when the film came out and only two raised their hands, my entire speech was nonsense, sometimes as human beings, we embarrass ourselves, that's how it is."