Jurgen Klopp, Borussia Dortmund break up rare love affair between coach, club
There was something deeply endearing about Jurgen Klopp's relationship with Borussia Dortmund, the club he brought back to the top. But this season, which has been something of a face-plant after years of staggering success, will be his last there. In a soccer world that often resembles some kind of cold-hearted future from a 1970s sci-fi flick, wherein overpopulation has reduced emotion and loyalty to impractical obstacles to survival, there was something sweet about the way Kloppo talked about his club.
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He could have moved on to work for just about any other team in the world after taking Dortmund to back-to-back Bundesliga titles in 2011 and 2012, and the Champions League final the following year. Somehow, he had broken Bayern Munich's chokehold on the German game, even though Die Borussen worked on a budget that was a fraction of the Bavarians' and he'd done it by playing some of the most arrestingly beautiful soccer ever seen.
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But when advances came from elsewhere, he demurred. He was still in love with the club, he declared. So he would not leave. He didn't worry about the heights his meteoric ascent would take him to next. He was happy, so he'd hang around.
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On Wednesday, however, he declared that this difficult and taxing season – in which Dortmund actually sank to last place in the Bundesliga twice, in late November and in early February, before scrambling back up to its present 10th place – would be his last with the yellow and black superpower.
He said he felt he is "no longer the perfect coach for the club" in an emotional press conference.
"That is something I have thought about in every phase here at Dortmund and decided in the last few weeks, days, that I was no longer able to be absolutely sure about that," the Guardian quoted him as saying. "And then, because of the unusual relationship I have with this club, the trust we have for each other, it was my duty to tell the club."
"We reached the decision together. You can't imagine how difficult it is when you have something so wonder as here," he continued. "We were able to create a wonderful piece of history. It's very unusual for a story to last seven years in football."
It really is.
Soccer is a mercenary world. Insofar as it exists, loyalty is a function of the highest possible salary or value or performance, combined with the most prestige available. Which is to say, long-term relationships between players or coaches and clubs are usually just the residue of convenience. As soon as either side can do better, they will.
But that just wasn't so with Klopp and Dortmund. They genuinely believed in each other. He was allowed to build a team, to bring Dortmund back to the summit after a decade of financial ruin. He was given time. And once that team began to sparkle and lit up the German and European game, he didn't cash out. He returned the time the club had given him by overseeing its newfound success. Tellingly, players like Nuri Sahin and Shinji Kagawa – stars of his teams who moved up to Real Madrid and Manchester United, respectively, but failed there – soon came home to Dortmund. To lick their wounds and rehabilitate their form and pride.
Few star players really left. Mario Goetze and Robert Lewandowski were poached by Bayern, but you weren't going to do a whole lot better anywhere else than you were doing at Dortmund. That's what Klopp believed. That's what he preached and demonstrated himself.
Against the odds, a love story had blossomed in a hostile environment, littered with temptation.
Soon, they will break up. Amicably.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.
