The Sunday Mail
JURGEN KLOPP never set out to be a football revolutionary. His first goal was to become a doctor.
Fortunately for Mainz, Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool, if not the German healthcare system, he was drawn towards the moment instead.
It is not trophies won nor a style of play that matters most about the game to Klopp. It is the moment.
“I didn’t become a manager and think to myself, ‘I’m going to revolutionise football.’ Absolutely not.
“How could you?” explains Klopp in an ebook, ‘Reading the Game’, that was published for the first time in English on Thursday.
“I’ve never given much thought to football per se, but only to what I need more of – a bit more readiness to make runs, making pressing a bit more aggressive. I never even dreamed of winning the league. Never.
“I could hardly believe my luck when they let me be a manager. That’s just the way it was, and that’s the way it still is, in fact. And then thanks to that we had the all-German Champions League final in 2013 . . . ”
A final that your Borussia Dortmund team lost 2-1 to Bayern Munich, Klopp’s interviewer interjects. “But I don’t remember that as a missed opportunity to win a trophy, I don’t think in those terms at all,” he replies. “Trophies and medals, they get put away somewhere in the clubhouse and you forget when exactly it was and who won which trophy when. What’s important is the moment itself, the memory of being there at the game, that you were part of it. That’s what it’s all about! The experience!”
Klopp’s interviewer is the German novelist and dramatist Moritz Rinke, who met the 48-year-old days before his final home game as Dortmund coach in May.
Rinke has edited a book that covers all of Dortmund’s games at Signal Iduna Park last season, when Klopp’s team opened with a Supercup victory over Bayern Munich, plummeted into the relegation zone at Christmas, discovered their revered coach would be leaving in the summer and rallied to finish seventh, securing Europa League qualification in the process, before losing the German Cup final to Wolfsburg.
Some story.
Unsurprisingly, it was a campaign that prompted Klopp’s wife, Ulla Sandrock, to suggest the pressures were taking their toll.
Having reiterated that injuries, and not Germany’s exertions at the 2014 World Cup, were to blame for Dortmund’s turbulence, Klopp reveals: “We had to sit it out, dig deep, and hold on until the bell rang in Bremen at the end of the final match before the winter break. Then I went home and my wife said I’d finally completely lost it – because I was in an incredibly good mood, euphoric.
“We’d just lost in Bremen, we were 17th or 18th in the table that evening, which meant we would be spending Christmas in the drop zone – and I got home and I felt like a new man. And that’s because I knew that now we had a chance to tackle our problems.
“And luckily, when we did, we were successful. Our play, and the results, in the second half of the season were at or above expectations, although of course it didn’t feel that way because you’re still weighed down mentally by what happened before.”
Klopp claims he “never reads the papers” and can detach himself from the emotional intensity of a game as soon as it ends. “Honestly, for me, football is deadly serious for 90 minutes and that’s it,” he says.
“The whole circus that’s built up around it, the protagonists who are made out to be this, that, or the other – it’s all crazy, obviously, and happily I’m smart enough to be able see that for what it is. So I tend to prefer a more humorous approach to the subject.”
During a game, however, Klopp’s living of the moment leads Rinke to query whether Bill Shankly’s quote about football being more important than life and death – an originally light-hearted remark that is often over-stated – applies to the present Liverpool manager.
Klopp, who cites Dortmund’s late comeback against Málaga in the 2013 Champions League quarter-final as his most emotional touchline experience, admits: “Without a doubt, those 90 minutes are a kind of state of emergency for me, and I can’t always rationally explain my behaviour afterwards. No, during these intense 90 minutes it’s not a matter of life and death, but I wouldn’t say it’s much less than that.” The Stuttgart-born coach takes notable exception to allegations that “the cult of Klopp” was to blame for Dortmund’s deterioration last season, a claim made by the German philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger in an interview with Die Zeit. “Dortmund,” said Eilenberger, “as they presented themselves towards the end of last year, were no longer a club but a cult, with all the classic attributes like a ban on articulation, total community suggestion and unconditional belief in the saviour.”
“Absolute rubbish,” counters Klopp. “You can always see a little bit of their true motives when someone comes up with something like that.
“I don’t want to make a club dependent on me any more than I have pretensions to be the best manager in the world. For as long as I’ve been here, I’ve always said: stop building up everyone connected to football to be some sort of demigod. The fact that I take responsibility for defeats, and that they rest on my shoulders first and foremost and not the players is just how I’ve always dealt with things. I couldn’t do it any other way.”
Liverpool would not want it any other way following Saturday’s mauling of Manchester City in their own backyard, but Klopp’s career would have taken a different path had he fulfilled his childhood ambition.
Asked what he wanted to be when he was a young boy, he reveals: “A doctor, originally. I think I still might have ‘helper syndrome’ to a certain extent.
“But I’m not going to lie, I don’t think I was ever smart enough for a medical career. When they were handing out our A-Level certificates, my headmaster said to me: ‘I hope it works out with football, otherwise it’s not looking too good for you’.” — Guardian.
