Jurgen Klopp has publicly backed Jarell Quansah to ‘learn from’ a costly error in Liverpool’s 2-2 draw at Manchester United on Sunday and urged him not to let social media trolls get to him.
An errant sideways pass from the 21-year-old gifted Bruno Fernandes the chance to equalise from long range early in the second half, and he reportedly modified his Instagram settings afterwards to restrict who can comment on his posts.
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Speaking to the media after the match, the Reds boss said of the young defender (via The Mirror): “As a football player in the Premier League and playing for Liverpool, I have the bad news – it will not be the last mistake in his life, unfortunately.
“I thought he dealt extremely well with it, we dealt well with it. But when our idols in the past made these kinds of mistakes there was no social media so I hope he’s smart enough to switch that off.
“It’s not a great situation but there are bigger mistakes in football. Absolutely no blame or criticism, not at all, it just happened. He will learn from it and that’s the best thing that can happen.”
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It’s a sad indictment of modern society that Quansah felt obligated to take action to try and block out the toxic negativity from some social media users over a genuine mistake.
He’s a young man who’s been excellent throughout his first season as a senior Liverpool player, and even the best footballers in the world have been culpable of horror moments. The unfortunate thing for him is that, when it happens to a defender, it’s likely to prove costlier than a striker missing a gilt-edged chance, for example.
Klopp is honest in recognising that errors come with the territory of playing at the highest level, where they’re likelier to be punished, as was the case yesterday. He’s also right to implore the 21-year-old to shut out any online abuse which was directed at him afterwards.
Quansah will learn from that incident and can hopefully put in another strong performance when he next plays for Liverpool. On the evidence of what he’s shown throughout the campaign, he seems to have the character and quality to swiftly put Sunday’s faux pas behind him.