SOCCER:THE BORUSSIA Dortmund manager, Jurgen Klopp, has played down speculation linking him with the Liverpool job. "There has been no approach and there's no point talking about it," the 43-year-old said.

Dortmund, runaway leaders in the Bundesliga with 14 wins from 17 games, started a six-day training camp in Jerez, Andalucia yesterday afternoon amid reports that their coach has been sounded out as a possible candidate to succeed Roy Hodgson at Anfield.

Their chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke, said there was no possibility Klopp might be persuaded to leave the Signal Iduna Park by the Liverpool owners, New England Sports Ventures.

“There’s been no official approach because it would be a waste of time,” Watzke said. “Everybody knows there’s no chance we’d let him go. We can but laugh (about this story). Jurgen is a friend of mine and he has a contract until 2014. He would never break it.”

Klopp has been in charge of Dortmund since May 2008 and carefully rebuilt the club to emerge as the surprise package of this season. After sixth- and fifth-placed finishes in 2009 and 2010 respectively, the team are 10 points clear of Mainz 05 and Bayer Leverkusen. Dortmund will travel to Bayer on January 14th when the league resumes.

Klopp’s excellent results and attractive football saw his initial deal with the 1997 Champions League winners extended by two years at the end of November, at a time when newspaper reports in Germany linked him with Bayern Munich and the national team.

The Germany manager, Joachim Low, is convinced that Klopp would be up to that task, too. “(He) would be able to lead the national team in his own way, of course,” Low told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last week.

Liverpool have also been linked with Didier Deschamps, the Marseille coach, though the French club were not returning calls yesterday. Liverpool had made an initial approach for Deschamps in June, when Marseille’s chairman, Jean-Claude Dassier, was quoted as saying: “Liverpool’s managing director, Christian Purslow, called me. He asked me if I would allow him to meet Didier. I told him I wouldn’t stand in the way of anyone meeting whomever they want. But . . . I politely told him there was not the slightest chance he could nick our coach.”