Spalletti: My admiration for Jurgen Klopp

For the Giallorossi, it will be the first real test of a pre-season campaign that has taken in training camps in Pinzolo and Harvard but it’s one that Spalletti is relishing.

“Liverpool is the first top Premier League team that we are playing this season,” Spalletti told asroma.com today. “They are a top class team, a team coached by a top level manager. He is one of the other managers I admire most - both as a coach and as a person.

“We’ve met before. I lost against him in the Champions League when I coached at Zenit. We were knocked out of the competition by Borussia Dortmund when Klopp was the coach.

“It will be an interesting game. He’s a coach that can impart his personality onto his team and English football has this advantage of physical, strong players with good character. So first of all you have to compete with them from a physical standpoint, then you can put in some tactical things typical of Italians but first you have to compete on a physical level with them.

“I’m not sure what type of team he will play tactics-wise, as I don’t know what players he has available at the moment.

“It will be a nice game and then we’ll wish all the best to Liverpool because of what they represent, their coach and for a number of reasons.”

While tonight’s match comes on the back of recent high-tempo games for Liverpool against Chelsea and AC Milan, Spalletti is adamant that Roma will be ready for the challenge despite not having tested themselves against top-flight opposition so far this summer.

“We don’t have any excuses,” insisted Spalletti. “We have to be up to their level. I can’t have any of my players thinking that, ‘Oh, we can lose because they’ve already played games and they are a very good team’. No. We will never look at things from this perspective because I don’t want to give any excuses to my players.

“I will never say that Juventus are a better team than Roma because then maybe we think we can lose every game. If I say this to my players, they’ll feel as if they are smaller. That is not how we do things.”