Klopp admits he used to watch Friends to learn English

Joey Tribbiani is a smooth talker, but the Liverpool boss insists he is smarter than the iconic comedy character who helped teach him English

Who knew Joey Tribbiani and the rest of the cast of Friends were teaching people all along?

As it turns out, the popular American sitcom helped Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp learn English, with the “easy conversation” from the show, based on a group of friends living in New York, helping the German learn the language.

"[It was] watching Friends, because it's easy to understand," he told BBC 5 Live.

Klopp added: "You try to watch movies, because that's next, because in movies they speak dialect, stuff like that, and it's not really well pronounced.

"Trash talk and all this stuff and you have to follow.

"The easiest to follow for Germans in English is Friends. It's an easy conversation. You can understand pretty much each word pretty early, so that's why we use that."

The Reds boss struggled to work out which character he relates to, though, and was compared to Joey.

Klopp did acknowledge Matt LeBlanc's character made up for his lack of brains with his smooth-talking and memorable catchphrase, though he said he liked the female characters on the show more than the male characters.

“No, no, no, no. I like the girls more than the boys, but I cannot play a girl,” he said.

And while the Liverpool boss drew comparisons to LeBlanc’s Joey, he says he thinks he’s a bit smarter but doesn’t have quite the way with women that the character was famous for.

"Joey? Yeah... Unfortunately, I'm a bit smarter than the Joey role but my talk with the girls was never as good as his.

"'How you doing?' It was obviously not that easy in my life!"