Liverpool defender Joel Matip will join Jurgen Klopp in leaving Anfield this summer, the club have confirmed.
Cameroon international Matip, 32, arrived at the club in Klopp's first summer transfer window back in 2016. He has made 201 appearances across eight seasons on Merseyside, though an ACL injury means he hasn't featured since the turn of the year.
Klopp, the manager who brought the centre-back to the club from Schalke, confirmed in January he would be leaving at the end of the season. There had been less certainty over Matip, with his contract expiring in June, but Liverpooll have now confirmed he will move on.
Matip leaves Liverpool having won a multitude of trophies. He played the full 90 minutes in the 2019 Champions League final victory over Tottenham, and made nine appearances in the 2019-20 Premier League title-winning campaign.
“In all the years that I have been involved in football, I am not sure I have come across too many players who are more loved than Joel Matip," Klopp said of the 32-year-old. "I’m not even sure it would be possible to say anything bad about him.
“A wonderful professional, a wonderful footballer and a wonderful human being – we have been blessed to have him with us for as long as we have and now all we can do is wish him well as he heads off in a new direction. Joel’s qualities as a player are there for all to see and as a club we have benefited from them since the first moment that he joined. I don’t think he has had too many headlines over the years but he has only ever been a very famous figure within our group.
“I have said before that if there was one person who wouldn’t care if he was underrated it would be Joel, but the truth is we could not have rated him more highly. Not only has he set the standards for himself, he has set them for others and this is one of the main reasons why his time here has been so successful.”
In early April, Klopp all but confirmed Matip's season was over. “Joel is running. He hates that, but he is able to run again. He’s now pain-free, but it all takes time. I don’t think the season is long enough for him.”
Earlier, the manager had urged Liverpool to show their class when it came to the out-of-contract defender. However, he admitted he could not be the one to "sign the paper".
“I’m pretty sure the club will show their class, just how they should do," he said in a press conference shortly after Matip's season-ending injury. “I’m pretty sure the club told Joel already that whatever happens so long as he is injured. Now we have to make decisions together with Joel, how it looks after that. That’s a normal thing to do. But yes he deserves all the support from us and he will get it."
Klopp himself has known for some time that Sunday's match against Wolves will be his last in charge. He admitted he was "running out of energy" when confirming his decision to move on after nearly nine years as Liverpool boss.
"I love absolutely everything about this club, I love everything about the city, I love everything about our supporters, I love the team, I love the staff. I love everything," he said at the time. "But that I still take this decision shows you that I am convinced it is the one I have to take.
"It is that I am, how can I say it, running out of energy. I have no problem now, obviously, I knew it already for longer that I will have to announce it at one point, but I am absolutely fine now. I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again.
"After the years we had together and after all the time we spent together and after all the things we went through together, the respect grew for you, the love grew for you and the least I owe you is the truth – and that is the truth."