As one of the most emotional managers around, the origins of Jurgen Klopp’s decision to leave Liverpool can perhaps be traced back to 2016
As one of the most intense and outwardly emotional managers of the elite-level, the origins of Jurgen Klopp’s decision to leave Liverpool after nine years can perhaps be traced as far back as 2016.
It’s probably now forgotten by many who have witnessed much of the last decade at Anfield but Klopp’s first chance of silverware arrived before the light fixtures in his Melwood office had even had time to gather dust. He was barely four months into his new job when the Reds were beaten on penalties by Manchester City in the League Cup final.
“We feel down but now we have to stand up,” Klopp said after that game. “Only silly idiots stay on the floor and wait for the next defeat. We will strike back. We have to work really hard, carry on and there is light at the end of the tunnel. This is important.”
The stock response for any manager on the wrong end of a cup final result is to insist it will make the team stronger, but while Liverpool’s Europa League showpiece defeat to Sevilla, less than three months later, led to similar platitudes from Klopp, history has since shown those post-match claims to be prophetic.
“Tomorrow, in a week or whatever we will see it a little bit more clearly and then we will use this experience,” Klopp said in the immediate aftermath in Switzerland. “That’s what we have to do. Then someday everybody will say Basel was a very decisive moment for the wonderful future of Liverpool FC.”
It was an assessment that, in the fullness of time, has proven to be one of the most astute observations from quite a lengthy list for Klopp as he and his players missed out on an early trophy and qualification to the lucrative Champions League.
The successive cup defeats with a patched-up and unfancied squad not of his own making hinted that brighter days lay in wait at Anfield and that was something both the manager and the fans subscribed to as they ended the German’s first term with a pang or two of disappointment but plenty of optimism for what was to follow.
“That night always sticks out to us, I always remember it just because I can remember after the game going back to the hotel,” Jordan Henderson said of the 2016 Europa League final. “The gaffer was a bit different to what you would expect, he had everyone downstairs together in the bar area and we just spent the night together. He sort of knew what was coming in the next few years and I feel he’s produced that and he’s proven that was the beginning of something special.”
In hindsight, though, those nights at Wembley and more specifically Basel were the first Liverpool scars on the heart of a manager who, over time, has endured one too many after nearly a quarter of a century in football coaching.
Because while defeat to Sevilla might have been the driving force for the success that followed, the heartbreak of it all was not a unique sensation for someone like Klopp, whose entire raison d’etre in football is to express depth of feeling and breadth of emotion.
The 56-year-old will often be self-deprecating when assessing his own legacy, preferring to point to the finals he has lost rather than the ones he triumphed in and that maybe points to a uniquely sportsmanlike trait of focusing on the negatives and dwelling on the regrets of those fine margins. For Klopp himself, it has often come across as a mechanism to play down his own achievements and profile.
As the manager who dethroned the great Bayern Munich in back-to-back seasons in 2011 and 2012 at Borussia Dortmund, those accomplishments did not come without hard work, perseverance and, yes, heartache along the way.
When it comes to German football, the Empire always strikes back and Bayern’s snaring of both Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski, in relatively quick succession, left the then Dortmund boss reeling and, for a period, crestfallen.
Throw the 2013 Champions League final defeat to their domestic rivals into the mix and it’s no surprise the seven years at Dortmund had begun to ebb away at the enthusiasm by the time he announced an end-of-season departure in April 2015.
The fact he was denied promotion with Mainz on the final day of the 2002/03 campaign before he presided over relegation from the Bundesliga a few terms later with the same club would no doubt have been tough to take too, but Klopp has made soothing the sorrow of those around him into something of an artform, dating back to those early years at the turn of the century. In many ways, sketching inspiration from sadness was one of the first skills he was forced to learn in management.
“Jurgen electrified a whole city,” Christian Heidel, Klopp’s sporting director at Mainz, once told The Guardian. “Especially after missing out on promotion because of a missing point and a missing goal. He blew away the depression with his speeches after the last matchs.
