Liverpool News: Jurgen Klopp comes to Mohamed Salah's defense amidst diving criticism

What's the story?

While maintaining that a player should not try to deceive officials on the field, Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has come out in defence of his star forward, Mohamed Salah, amid the diving controversy surrounding the Egyptian in recent weeks.

In case you didn't know...

Salah appears to have silenced all critics who deemed him to be a one-season wonder, by continuing his goal-scoring exploits for Liverpool in the new campaign.

Last season, the 26-year-old was named the PFA Player of the Year, and was also awarded the Premier League Golden Boot, with 44 goals to his name in all competitions.

His recent goals against Crystal Palace took him to the top of the Premier League goal-scoring charts, with 16 goals to his name so far.

A number of these goals were taken from the penalty spot, and many have observed that the Egyptian has been involved in a number of challenges inside the box lately. Pundits were quick to slam Salah for deceiving the referees with his diving antics in a number of games, including those against Newcastle United and Crystal Palace.

The heart of the matter

Klopp has now weighed in on the controversy on Tuesday, stating that he did not feel the need to talk to the Egyptian ace about the incidents.

According to the Daily Mail, Klopp said,

"If this is the first situation where he went down without (penalty), you speak about all the other situations as well"

"The other situations (Newcastle, Arsenal, Brighton) there is nothing to talk about - it is a penalty, done"

"If (Palace) is the first then why we talk then? Did anyone talk to Jamie Vardy when, I forget the opponent (Southampton), everybody saw."

Klopp added that he did not speak to Salah about the situation because he is aware that the forward knows he is not supposed to go down like that.

"Is Jamie a bad person because of that? I don’t say now he is a diver. That is another situation. You have (defenders) in the back, you are there, you feel something, do you have to go down? Probably not. I don’t have to speak to players about obvious things. He (Salah) knows that. Don’t go down in situations like that."

"There are other situations that are much more obvious that we don’t talk about and nobody is talking about because it’s not City, it’s not United, it’s not Liverpool, it’s not Arsenal or it’s not Chelsea. All the others can do it from time to time and nobody really talks about it. That’s all fine."