Klopp has praised the 25-year-old, who can operate as an attacking midfielder or as a winger, for the work that he has put in during the lockdown period.
The Japan international moved to Liverpool from RB Salzburg in the January transfer window, but he struggled to make an immediate impact on the team.
According to WhoScored, the attacker has played 77 minutes in the Premier League and seven minutes in the Champions League, and has scored played thrice in the FA Cup for the Reds.
Klopp told Liverpool’s official website about Minamino: “Yes, it helped. It helped him [Minamino], it helped the young kids a lot. Neco, Curtis, Harvey, it helped them really [and] brought even more young kids up – Jake Cain and Leighton Clarkson, that’s so nice to see them and how much they get the benefit from the way we train and the way the other players treat them.
“So yes it helped and Taki, 100 per cent. He looks really different in the moment to the first three weeks when he tried to please everybody and do everything that we say, and that’s in a language he is not 100 per cent comfortable with.
“That’s how it is so now we had much more time, he had much more time to settle and he settled. That’s good and yeah, that helped.”
Exciting for Liverpool fans
It is not easy for any player to integrate into a new team in the middle of the season, and Minamino did find it tricky.
However, it seems that the Japan international is now fully integrated into the Liverpool team, and it can only be positive and exciting for the Reds’ fans.
If the attacker gets a run of games between now and the end of the season, then he will be in very good shape for next season.
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