• Liverpool’s Klopp calls new Manchester City manager ‘really smart’ • ‘I don’t think it will be the same as with Barcelona and Bayern’

Jürgen Klopp has hailed Manchester City’s appointment of “one of the best managers in the world” but warned Pep Guardiola he will find supremacy harder to achieve in the Premier League than in Germany or Spain.

The former Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich coaches will renew their rivalry next season when Guardiola replaces Manuel Pellegrini as the City manager. Klopp was fulsome in his praise of the Catalan following Monday’s announcement, describing him as a “really nice guy, really smart” and one of the game’s elite managers.

Guardiola is on course to lift a third consecutive Bundesliga title with Bayern, having achieved the same feat at Barcelona between 2009 and 2011, but the Liverpool manager believes stronger competition will prevent him achieving such dominance in England.

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Asked whether Guardiola will bring success to City, Klopp said: “I really wish all the people around the world the best of luck but we plan to avoid that! Manchester City is a club with not-too-bad possibilities on the financial side, shall we say, and Pep Guardiola is a really smart person.

“He won’t have chosen Man City because of his friendship with a few people there. They won’t have the worst team in the world next year but I love football because that doesn’t mean everything. As we have shown once or twice you can beat these teams.

“We will see what happens but I cannot be interested in this now like everyone else is. I will see him for the first time maybe in July or August, that’s a long time from now. He will enjoy the league because it is a great league and a real competition and he is a real competitor. That is what he wants. I don’t think it will be the same situation as he had in Spain, with Barcelona on the top level, or in Germany with Bayern on the top level, but of course Man City has good possibilities. We will try to beat them.”

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Liverpool visit Leicester City on Tuesdaywith the hosts’ position at the Premier League summit underlining Klopp’s argument. His first transfer window as the Liverpool manager closed without a deal for Alex Teixeira after Shakhtar Donetsk placed a €70m (£53m) price on the Brazilian forward and refused to consider a sale in January. Klopp claimed he was not disheartened by the club’s relative inactivity and urged supporters to trust his decision not to pay more than €32m for Teixeira.

“It’s very important that you can trust us,” he said. “It was a common decision on Teixeira. We said we can’t play this game until the end. We made offers, I won’t say too much about that, but they were realistic with the plusses of it being January, the Premier League, all the plusses you have when you make negotiations. But it was a case of: ‘If you don’t want it, OK, we can’t change the situation, both for now and the future’.

“It’s not that we haven’t got money but you have to work respectfully and responsibly. That’s what we do.

“It is not like you should buy and sell, buy and sell. In my opinion, usually I make a one-year contract with the players. I know they have longer contracts, but I say: ’Yes, if you don’t play the biggest rubbish in your life, I will trust you, you have to trust me.’ And after a year, maybe he wants somewhere else, maybe I want him to go somewhere else. That’s football. Now in the middle of the season, I have been here for four months and nothing has happened on transfers. I am fine with that and we can go on working.”