'Where are these tickets?' – Klopp questions UEFA's Champions League final plans

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has questioned UEFA for the way the governing body has distributed tickets for their Champions League final against Real Madrid, with the clubs receiving fewer than 20,000 seats each in the 75,000 capacity Stade de France in Paris.

With this allocation allowed for both teams, it means that almost half of the crowd will be made up of people who are not supporters of the clubs in the final.

Speaking about the situation, Klopp was puzzled, saying: “Is it right that we only get 20,000, they get 20,000 and there’s 75,000 in? That makes 35,000 left over. Where are these tickets?”

Soime 12,000 of the remaining tickets were available for fans worldwide to buy, but the deadline to get hold of those was 28 April – nearly a week before the second leg matches of the semi-finals had taken place.

National associations, commercial partners and broadcasters are among those who will snatch up the final batch of 23,000 tickets.

The Premier League club have advised fans to avoid travelling to France on May 28 without a ticket, and Klopp knows he must be careful what he says after getting in trouble in 2016.

He urged Liverpool supporters to follow his team to Basel – even if they had no match day ticket – for the Europa League final in his first season in charge, and was swiftly told that was the wrong thing to say.

“If you don’t get a ticket, I don’t want to invite people to Paris but this time it’s big enough and I did this last time for Basel in Switzerland and it was ‘oops’,” he remembers.

“I hope they all can make it somehow and can create – of course they will – an incredible atmosphere,” Klopp went on to say.

Despite his previous misdemeanours on the subject, Klopp could not help himself.

“But I think Paris is big enough to go there without a ticket and have a good time, behave yourself but be in the best possible mood,” he said.