Liverpool are selfish for blocking Mohamed Salah from competing at the Olympics in Japan
That's the verdict of former Great Britain coach Stuart Pearce who claims the Games are bigger than the World Cup.
Pearce told talkSPORT: "Of course Jurgen Klopp doesn’t want Salah at the Olympics because he’s supposed to look after the interests of Liverpool Football Club.
"You want Mo Salah to stay, but if I was a manager of a club or a coach I would never, ever stop a player representing his country, whatever level that might be.
"If I was a manager at any club and a player came to me and said to me, ‘I want to represent my country’, I would not be selfish enough to turn around and say, ‘no’.
"All the international experiences I’ve had as a footballer, the biggest achievement of my football career is captaining my country.
"For me to then step into the world of management and have a total sea change, which managers do by the way, all of a sudden international managers ring me up and say ‘release this player, release that player’ then they become club managers and try to block their players.
"It blows your mind how big the Olympics are.
"They are bigger than the World Cup. As a global event, the Olympics are bigger than the World Cup.
"The World Cup is just football, by the way, the Olympics is every sport. You don’t understand how big the Olympics are until you’re on the inside of it, the vastness of it, the kitting out of it.
"The lead up to it, clubs were telling me they didn’t want their players to play in it. People were telling me in the press that football shouldn’t be in the Olympics for Great Britain.
"We faced Uruguay in our second game and in the Uruguay front line is Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani. We play against Brazil, who have Neymar. The holy grail for Brazil is to win an Olympic gold.
"It was the biggest thing I’ve ever been involved in in management, definitely. It was just enormous."
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