Believe Us. Melissa Reddy
would be the driving force in his new managerial setup.
Klopp is unrivalled in dealing with massive disappointments and moulding them into both lessons and motivation. ‘Even when you don’t want defeats, when you have it, it is very important to deal with it in the right way,’ he said on looking back at his career in the game. ‘I had to learn that early in my life, especially my coaching life. We had so many close failures: like with Mainz not going up by a point, not going up on goal difference, then getting up with the worst points tally ever; Dortmund not qualifying for Europe, then losing a Champions League final. I am a good example that life goes on. I would have had plenty of reasons for getting upset and saying, “I don’t try anymore.”
‘Obviously, it is not easy to go through these moments, but it is easier to deal with it because it is only information, and if you use it right the feeling is good.’
That is pure Klopp. And it was why Hans-Joachim Watzke, Dortmund’s CEO, was convinced he would reject United’s offer. Their money-based pitch clashed with rather than complemented the manager’s make-up. In the second week of April 2014, Klopp told Watzke he’d be swerving the chance to take charge at Old Trafford. As he once summarised: ‘You can be the best in the world as a coach, but if you are in the wrong club at the wrong moment, you simply don’t have a chance.’
Enquiries from Manchester City and Tottenham would both also be rebuffed a few months later. A year after shunning United, however, Klopp’s circumstances at Signal Iduna Park changed considerably.
With Dortmund regularly ceding their greatest talents to European football’s apex predators — chiefly Bayern — they found that continuing to usurp their powered-up rivals in the Bundesliga was becoming too taxing. BVB’s results were no longer as good as their performances, with staleness and a sense of comfort creeping in. During a press conference that reverberated around the world on 15 April 2015, Klopp announced he would be leaving Dortmund at the end of the season. At the time, the club were 10th, 37 points behind Bayern. The city in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia was enveloped in sadness.
‘I always said in that moment where I believe I am not the perfect coach anymore for this extraordinary club I will say so,’ Klopp stated. ‘I really think the decision is the right one. I chose this time to announce it because in the last few years some player decisions were made late and there was no time to react.’
Fast forward five months and the atmosphere couldn’t have been more of a contrast in an expansive boardroom at the New York offices of Shearman & Sterling, where over the course of four hours, Klopp sketched his plan to restore Liverpool as a global and continental powerhouse.
He addressed the lack of an on-pitch identity, which would be the first facet to rectify, and also pointed out the importance of harnessing the emotional pull of the fans. From the academy through to the first-team operation at Melwood, Klopp outlined a blueprint for the club’s playing style and standards to be aligned. For Liverpool to have any chance of becoming a force again, he reasoned, they would have to operate as one formidable unit.
Mike Gordon remembers being ‘in awe’ of Klopp, not on account of his magnetic personality, but the substance of his strategy and the concise yet convincing way he delivered it in a second language.
It is why, just an hour into spelling out his vision, FSG told Klopp’s agent, Marc Kosicke, that their lawyers had begun drafting his contract of employment. When the juncture came to discuss personal terms at the end of the talk, the manager excused himself and took a walk through Central Park. As Klopp stood soaking in the sights of the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, it dawned on him that it was not the type of surveying he had originally contemplated after his break from football.
As a player, he was fascinated by watching how managers work — from implementing their philosophies to handling different personalities, balancing squad dynamics and drafting plans that extended beyond match preparation. Klopp had resolved to travel around Europe to absorb as much knowledge as possible from coaches when he hung up his boots. However, his immediate transition from pulling on a shirt for Mainz to becoming their manager paused that idea for seven years. Switching from the Opel Arena to Dortmund further shelved it for the same amount of time and now Klopp was fresh off a four-month sabbatical and about to become Liverpool manager.
That night, when he returned to his suite at the Plaza Hotel, he thought about how he wouldn’t change anything about his path, his choices or the timing of them, relating as much to his wife, Ulla Sandrock.
That same evening, Liverpool stumbled to yet another dispiriting draw at Anfield. The sound of the final whistle against FC Sion was met with booing for the third time in four games at the famed ground. Over in the Bronx, the Red Sox were defeated 4–1 by the Yankees, their greatest rivals. Yet those results couldn’t dilute FSG’s celebratory mood after finally securing the manager they had coveted since their takeover of Liverpool in 2010.
Back at Melwood, it was hard to escape the feeling that Brendan Rodgers’ time was running out. After Liverpool’s 1–1 draw at Goodison Park on 4 October that left them 10th in the league table, Rodgers was driving back home, when he received a phone call from Mike Gordon relieving him of his duties. News of his departure quickly broke, with Klopp’s status as the prime candidate to replace the Northern Irishman dominating the coverage.
Conversations at Liverpool’s training complex centred around him being so heavily linked with the job. ‘There was such a buzz and he was really high profile as well, which got the lads going,’ Adam Lallana recalls. ‘I remember us sitting in the canteen discussing that he ticks all the boxes for Liverpool. We weren’t going to outspend the likes of City, United and Chelsea and he wasn’t a big-money manager. He had a history of improving clubs by making the players he had better before building on that base. We spoke about games we’d seen of Dortmund, about things we’d read or heard about the gaffer and there was so much excitement around the place.’
Jordan Henderson was at the Bernabeu in April 2013 to watch BVB line up against Real Madrid in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final. Dortmund took a 4–1 advantage to Spain and lost 2–0 after late goals from Karim Benzema and Sergio Ramos, but still progressed to the climax of the competition at Wembley.
‘I was fortunate enough to go watch Dortmund against Madrid at the Bernabeu and I was really blown away by how clear their identity as a team was and how they controlled large parts of such an important game against a side with superior resources,’ Henderson says. ‘They lost the match, but it didn’t matter because they managed the tie well and you expect to be put under pressure by Real, especially when they’re at home and need to win, but Dortmund handled it.
‘When the gaffer was linked with us so heavily, I thought about the experience of that game and how positive everything around him and Dortmund felt. I was all in, and to be honest, a lot of the lads were desperate for it to happen. We knew his success with Dortmund was no accident and you could tell he was a special manager that could make a big difference.’
Carlo Ancelotti was the other candidate under consideration by FSG. While there was no questioning the Italian’s pedigree as a three-time Champions League winner, he did not generate enthusiasm around the club. The owners were put off by his focus on rebuilding through transfers and he seemed to be more of an overseer of good teams rather than a constructor of one. The majority of players were of the belief that Ancelotti would want to secure success through immediate investment instead of attempting to bring the best out of them over time. The staff, meanwhile, had heard from colleagues within the game that the man who led Real Madrid to their 10th European Cup could be detached and didn’t do much to uplift or inspire his squad or those behind the scenes.
‘With Ancelotti, the general feeling was he wouldn’t be the worst appointment because of his past accomplishments,’ remembers one member of Liverpool’s conditioning staff. ‘But it was like you had to explain to yourself why he would be good for the job. It was the opposite with Klopp — everyone was bouncing around the place at the thought of him becoming the new manager, because it just made so much sense.’
The bulk of Liverpool’s fanbase subscribed to the same thinking. They had been motioning on social