Ozan Kabak had a swift introduction to the Liverpool team after joining on loan from Schalke 04 in January.
Kabak was not given much time to settle in and started playing first-team football almost immediately after making the move.
The Turkey international has had a few teething problems as is common with new players, especially such young footballers – he is aged just 20.
Additionally, Kabak has played alongside three different centre-back partners, Fabinho, Nathaniel Phillips and Jordan Henderson, which has made acclimatizing even more challenging.
Despite this the young defender starred in two clean sheets in the Champions League Last 16 against RB Leipzig, the Reds ended up winning the tie 4-0 on aggregate.
Jurgen Klopp defender Kabak and slammed critics for not giving the young defender a chance to even settle in before judging him.
“I didn’t see it as a problem yet, to be honest,” Klopp told reporters [As reported by Liverpool Echo].
“I heard, I didn’t read it, that there was some criticism when Ozan came and started playing.
“This is the world we’re living in. You bring in a 20-year-old boy and everyone wants him to sort all of our problems in one second and you don’t give him time at all.
“We didn’t see it that way and we are quite critical with ourselves and with the boys as well.
“Ozan played really good from the first moment. Did he play as good as he can or his best performance ever? Probably not.
“We spoke about Ben [Davies] and how difficult these kinds of things [settling in] are, but Ozan played pretty much immediately. That makes it really tricky.
“He tried to adapt and when you try to adapt in these moments you cannot be yourself naturally because you try to adapt to other people.
“It takes a while until you can do both: adapting to others and being yourself.
“But I’m completely happy with the performances so far and, of course, everybody knew he was 20 years old and an amazing talent. So, I don’t think it’s a problem that we cannot start him next to Virgil or Joel or Joe.”
Kabak is likely to feature tonight for the Reds against Wolves in the Premier League.
The Reds are currently missing Virgil Van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip who are out injured.
