With Jurgen Klopp agreeing to become the new Liverpool manager, Greg Lea looks at what fans of the Anfield club can expect from the new man.
High-tempo football
“I think he likes having the ball, playing football, passes ... it’s like an orchestra,” Jurgen Klopp said when discussing Arsene Wenger’s philosophy ahead of a Uefa Champions League meeting between Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund in 2013. “But it’s a silent song. I like heavy metal more.”
That quote above all others best demonstrates Klopp’s approach to the game. His Dortmund side routinely played football at a ferocious pace, pressing high up the pitch as soon as they lost possession and going for the opponent’s throat once the ball had been won back.
It was thrilling and exhilarating, and, cynics may add, at times exhausting and unsustainable, and is a style he is likely to employ at Anfield, too.
Excellent man-management
Klopp is an expert motivator, someone who is capable of fostering a real sense of togetherness within a dressing room.
His confidence and charisma will help to get Liverpool’s players on side immediately, while his ability to cultivate an underdog spirit and never-say-die attitude is likely to suit a team that has not won a league championship in a quarter of a century and is now ranked behind Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United in English football’s modern-day elite.
“It’s a difficult job now at Liverpool, getting back into the top four,” the club’s former long-serving defender Jamie Carragher said on Sunday. “Forget talking about the title. I think it needs someone with that energy and drive to get the club back to where it wants to be, and I think Jurgen Klopp is that man.”
Faith in young players
The way Klopp likes to play the game lends itself to the use of youngsters: as well as generally being fitter, younger players are more likely to fully buy into a manager’s way of playing, and show the hunger and commitment that is needed to carry out a high-tempo, hard-pressing approach.
There are several examples from Klopp’s time at Dortmund: Mats Hummels was plucked from Bayern Munich’s reserve team as a teenager; Robert Lewandoswki joined as a relatively unknown 21-year-old striker from Lech Poznan and Ilkay Gundogan signed from Nurnberg at the age of 20.
Klopp’s stance on young players also suits Liverpool’s current economic predicament. Unable to compete with the likes of United, City, Chelsea and Arsenal for players that are the finished article, Liverpool need to be creative and look for unpolished gems that others may have missed. A manager who has a natural tendency towards blooding youngsters should be a good fit.
Direction and unity
During the last two years of Brendan Rodgers’s Liverpool reign, there always seemed to be a degree of tension and division at Anfield.
Liverpool’s poor record of recruitment, for example, led to questions about whether Rodgers was responsible for or hamstrung by the club’s activity in the transfer market, with the infamous “transfer committee” often perceived to be working in divergent directions to the manager.
The existing structure looks set to remain, so it is vital that everyone at Liverpool avoids any unnecessary infighting and instead rallies around a common cause.
Judging by his time at Dortmund, Klopp looks like just the man to ensure that is the case. It was notable that, even in a disappointing final campaign that saw Dortmund languishing in the relegation zone for much of the first half of the 2014/15 campaign, the club’s supporters never once turned on their manager.
The togetherness and unity that the 48-year-old German fostered at all levels was vital to his success. Klopp is likely to bring together the Liverpool boardroom, players and fan base through his sheer force of personality.
A long-term stay
Klopp spent seven years in charge at Dortmund and previous to that was also at the helm of Mainz, where he spent his entire playing career, for the same length of time.
He could easily have walked away from Dortmund long before he did in the summer. After leading the club to back-to-back Bundesliga titles, in 2011 and 2012, and the Uefa Champions League final, in 2013, Klopp would not have been short of offers from elsewhere, but instead opted to remain at Signal Iduna Park, stating that he could not easily walk away from a club he had fallen “a bit in love with”.
It is therefore difficult to imagine Klopp ever becoming the type of manager who hops between different jobs every couple of years. The former striker is the type of coach who invests everything he has into his current side, forging a deep connection with its history, identity, culture and way of doing things.
Football is highly unpredictable and circumstances can change extremely quickly – who would have thought that Jose Mourinho would be under pressure eight games after winning his third Premier League title at Chelsea? – but it would be a slight surprise if Klopp did not surpass Rodgers’s three years at Anfield.
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