The end of the Jurgen Klopp era at Liverpool is approaching then, and with him goes arguably the Premier League’s last interesting manager. Apart from maybe Sean Dyche – who I secretly suspect lives in his car – the elite game in this country is run by attention-to-detail, OCD, live-the-game-breathe-the-game robots.
Not Jurgen Klopp though, he has always vibrated on a slightly oscillating frequency: you can imagine him reading an actual novel, you can imagine him having friends outside of football who don’t really know what he does, you can imagine him waking up alarmed on a stranger’s sofa, you can imagine him eating a lit cigarette.
At the end of great managerial eras – nine years in the Premier League constitutes an epoch – fans of the club always talk about their managers in terms of fatherhood, how this man has been a paternal constant while they have grown and matured. A 21-year-old Liverpool fan on the day Klopp signed for the club would be 30, now: imagine spending your twenties with such consistency!
Conversely, a similarly-aged Manchester United fan has had to go for various nervous pints with a series of doomed stepfathers, including a two-year battle with Jose Mourinho and a “he’s not that bad, you know, he’s… quiet” 32-month stint with Ole Gunnar Solskjær. (The less said about Erik ten Hag at the moment, the better).
But Klopp is the last exhibit of the ‘cool dad’ brand of managerial paternalism. He’d drive you and your mates to your first Glastonbury. He wouldn’t tell your mum about that night you came home drunk after three nascent cans of lager. He’d smoke in the kitchen after making a big moussaka, and he’d definitely tell you about that time he took shrooms with a life model he met in Riga.
We should probably talk about the football, too. You don’t get that long at a club like Liverpool unless you really figure out how to get your wingbacks going. In 2015, I was jealous when Liverpool captured Klopp – I quietly wanted him at Arsenal, to replace Arsène Wenger at that point where he was depressed in public and the only notable sign he gave to the misery within him was buying Mathieu Debuchy – back when the German was considered a football ‘hipster’ (no one uses this word as a slur anymore: a sign of how much has changed).
You remember that season – you had to learn what “gegenpress” was, you kept saying “heavy metal football” out loud, at the pub – but it did feel like, after years of Manchesters City and United passing the league to each other based purely on who had the best striker that season, his Liverpool team was doing something explosive and spectacular.
Firstly, they were chasing after absolutely bastard everything. Then, an unheralded level of smiles-on-faces sympatico. Then they signed Mo Salah then Virgil van Dijk then the best goalkeeper in the world, and in short order won the Champions League followed by the league. They did it playing football that made you hold your breath, watch the ball ding and purr and click from foot to foot, and then the soft strange rattle of the net: wow, fucking hell. Incredible to watch, right up until the weekend it was against you.
Football is about rivalries, I know, but I don’t really care for stuff like that. Excusing Evertonians, if you love the game of football, you have to respect the giddy heights Klopp’s best Liverpool sides reached on the pitch. It’s easy to be cynical about the fact his team had seven straight years of an electric Salah, six with one of the best centre backs to ever play the game, and a goalkeeper in Allison so good he sometimes gets bored and scores goals. But you still have to motivate those players to forget that time Loris Karius’s brain deleted itself during the Champions League final and go out and actually win it again.
Top-level management is easy, in theory: all you have to do is identify 15 of the greatest players to ever live; train them so they are completely attuned to one another’s movements, moods and improvisations; then lead them out as if to war 60 times a season without them getting bored of you doing it. There have been some great teams stacked with great players who have nevertheless not won the league title – Liverpool 2018–19 were one of them – but they need someone to put a smile on their face and fire in their heart to drag them over the finish line. Just think about it like this: ‘Brendan Rodgers’.
To do it while having a full human personality is a gift and a rarity in itself. Crucially, the Jurgen Norbert Klopp who seems like he’d be sound to have a pint with and the Jurgen Norbert Klopp who turned Jordan Henderson into one of the best stiff-running metronomes the Premier League has ever seen are inherently linked. Klopp’s kloppishness made his players into iconic teams. You see it in glimpses: the deranged swinging jaw, that unbelievably German “ha–ha–ha!”, the knowing veneery smile, the arms around shoulders, the Peloton adverts.
It’s rare football managers get an end-of-an-era farewell tour – normally there's a short meeting that ends in disgrace with some lad from the Dutch Eredivisie waiting in the wings who turns up and rubs out your whole tactical whiteboard, then after eight months of exile you do a quiet appearance on Monday Night Football when the Brighton job comes up – but Klopp’s one feels apt. It feels right.
We might never have a Premier League manager again who exudes quite so much “play ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ backwards, it’s really cool!” charisma while also having the patience for two seasons of Darwin Núñez up front. That is something – even if you’re an Everton fan – worth standing and applauding.
