Christian Benteke Says He’s Not Happy With His Situation At Liverpool

It’s becoming a regular feature of a Liverpool season— an international break comes along and a player waits until he’s away from the club to tell the whole world why he’s unhappy.

This time we have Christian Benteke, who spoke to Belgian media to bemoan his lack of playing time.

Benteke, brought in last summer from Aston Villa for £32.5m, has scored eight goals in just 35 appearances. Since the start of 2016 he’s made 16 appearances, mostly as a substitute, and scored but two goals. One of them was a penalty.

He’s also come under fire for being wasteful in front of goal and often losing one-on-one battles with opposing goalkeepers. He missed a huge scoring opportunity in Liverpool’s 3-2 loss to Southampton last weekend, leading to a somewhat heated exchange between Benteke and manager Jürgen Klopp.

Apparently Benteke has all but had enough. While on national team duty, he gave an interview to Sport/Voetbalmagazine saying he felt “ignored” by the manager.

Some team-mates have said that I was lucky with the arrival of Klopp, because I certainly would play. When your coach says he wanted to take you to Dortmund and a little later you sit at the same club and he ignores you it is hard to understand.

Dortmund had been keeping an eye on Benteke in recent years.

Benteke admits that he hasn’t been as productive for Liverpool as he would’ve liked, but was confident that life under Klopp— who replaced Brendan Rodgers in October— would see a renewed sense of purpose. That hasn’t quite happened.

I am the first to say that I have not shown enough my worth for club like Liverpool but on the other hand, when I arrived under Brendan Rodgers, I knew I would have the opportunity to show my qualities, I was worth all that money, I deserved to wear the Liverpool shirt. But now … I knew that the new coach might have a different opinion on me. And that’s what happened.

So does he have any hope for turning things around?

Even my father was annoyed at first by my status as a reservist and told me that I can do nothing. I spoke with Eden [Hazard] and with Marouane [Fellaini], they all gave me the same answer – when a coach does not count on you, you cannot change anything. I never would have signed if I had not been the priority of the coach.

It should be noted that this is all happening while West Ham are sniffing around. Hammers co-chairman David Sullivan said they are keeping a close eye on Benteke and would love to sign him but that his wages are a potential dealbreaker.

And thus we have one of spring’s annual rituals— the vernal equinox, the start of the MLS season, the blooming of the cherry blossoms in Washington DC, and a PR crisis at Liverpool Football Club.