Before Peter Moore was CEO of a Liverpool who were able to boast being the champions of England, Europe and the world at one point in 2020, he was simply a fortunate fan, making the most of a stroke of good luck.
As late winter turned to early autumn in 2015, Moore took a call from the Reds’ then chief commercial officer Billy Hogan asking if he could fly in to use his expertise in business to help moderate a partners’ meeting and by the time the 5,000-mile journey was undertaken from the west coast of the United States a few weeks later, Brendan Rodgers had been sacked and Jurgen Klopp was on the eve of his first match in charge.
As a result, the first meeting between manager and future CEO came in a London hotel, the night before the Klopp era began with a creditable, if unspectacular goalless draw at Tottenham. It was the beginning of a relationship that endures close to four years on from Moore’s departure back to the United States.
And in a tribute to the outgoing Liverpool boss, whose final match comes on Sunday at Anfield against Wolves, Moore tells the ECHO of his personal and professional debt of gratitude to Klopp for his achievements during a glittering tenure that spanned nearly nine years.
“I had been invited when I was at EA by Billy Hogan to come over and moderate a partners’ meeting,” Moore says, as he picks up the story of his first meeting with Klopp. “So I flew over from LA. I got to know Billy way before anyone asked me to be CEO.
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“We were in a hotel in London and I was moderating all of these partners and that evening, in Canary Wharf, Jurgen showed up. Again it was typical Jurgen, we were playing Spurs the next day and I ended up in the away end. I spoke to Jurgen that night and the squad was so thin and the only striking option we had that time was Divock [Origi]. He spoke so well about Divock that night.
“This was Jurgen’s first game and it was so fortuitous, as when I agreed to come over a few weeks earlier, Jurgen wasn’t even on the radar and it just happened to be when we came over Jurgen had signed. I got a great picture of me shaking hands with him. He didn’t know who I was but I clearly knew who he was and right there and then I saw he was a big physical presence but also he knew he wanted to put the club back where it belonged.”
The next eight years would see Klopp do exactly that as the greatest manager of the 21st century at Anfield secured a sixth European Cup for the club in Madrid just weeks after a gut-wrenching acceptance that 97 Premier League points would only yield a runners-up medal to Manchester City.
The trophy Liverpool had waited three long decades for arrived the following year as the Reds tore away from the competition to win their 19th title with seven games to spare. Ninety-nine points in total saw them win it by 18 and is their highest-ever tally across a campaign.
In between those triumphs was a first-ever Club World Cup success in Qatar while Klopp has since added two League Cups and an FA Cup to the haul while also beating Chelsea in the 2019 UEFA Super Cup in Istanbul. It’s quite the collection but one that does scant justice to the transformational impact Klopp has had on the football club and the city of Liverpool itself these past nine years.
“Being a manager of Liverpool is more than just winning games,” Moore says. “You’ve got to understand the city, you’ve got to ingratiate yourself with the fans and the club because we take our manager seriously, much more so than just about any other club. It’s always remarkable to me, you look at the Kop and you see just as many banners and flags for managers as you do players.
“You’ve got the banners in honour of Shankly, Paisley, Sir Kenny, Houllier, Benitez, Joe Fagan, so football means more to us, I don’t care what anyone says. And it is the role of the manager to win games and do it in a certain way and it is, ultimately, to make the people happy, to use the Shankly phrase. I think Jurgen has done that in bucket loads.
