Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp called opposite number Zinedine Zidane "a fighter" before the Champions League final against Real Madrid and praised the Frenchman for his supreme record in Europe`s elite competition despite his short coaching career.


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Zidane took the leap from coaching Madrid`s reserve team to the top job at the Spanish giants in January 2016 and so far has won nine trophies, including back-to-back Champions League wins.


"Zidane has been a fighter his entire life, when you grow up where he did in Marseille and had the career you have, you need to be," Klopp told a news conference on Friday.


"He was one of the best five players ever, he was such a good player that it looked like he didn`t need to fight but he did.


"I`ve been at Liverpool longer than he has been a coach and he could win the Champions League three times in a row, that`s never happened before so either he`s lucky or he`s brilliant, I prefer to think he`s brilliant, like he was as a player."


Madrid have had an enthralling run to the final, squeezing through their quarter-final tie with Juventus 4-3 on aggregate with a last-gasp penalty from Cristiano Ronaldo. They also survived attacking onslaughts in both legs of their semi-final against Bayern Munich.


"I`ve seen his team playing, I think it`s fantastic football, it`s organised when it needs to be, it`s chaos when it needs to be and when you have all those world class players I think that`s a good idea," Klopp said of Zidane`s Madrid.


The ever-jovial German coach`s news conference was peppered with outbursts of laughter and he smiled at the suggestion that Zidane lacks tactical nous.


"If a lot of people think Zidane doesn`t have much knowledge of tactics - because people think that about me - that would be really funny," Klopp added.


"Two coaches in the final who know nothing about tactics. What would that say about the game?"