Jurgen Klopp’s shock Liverpool exit is the ultimate cost of his full-throttle football
Eight years and three months earlier, at his unveiling at Anfield, Jurgen Klopp had pronounced himself as “the normal one”. It proved one of the most deceptive things he ever said, but after a distinctly abnormal reign, he will leave Liverpool on a quest for a little normality. “I arrived here like a normal guy and I never lived that,” he said. “I don’t know how normal life is so I have to find out.”
His achievements are such that he will not be granted anonymity, but he is savouring the thought of time off from football. “No club, no country for the next year, no English club ever, I can promise that, even if I have nothing to eat – that will not happen, by the way, thanks to Liverpool,” he said. Chief executive Billy Hogan smiled as he recounted how his son had said he thought Klopp would manage Liverpool forever. Now, to his disappointment, they are counting down the days to his departure.
A resignation that sent shockwaves through football left Klopp with a sense of relief. The responsibility of managing Liverpool has weighed heavy on him. He has the chance to go out on a high in the summer: perhaps with a quadruple, perhaps empty-handed but either way, he insisted, he will not do what Sir Alex Ferguson did in the 2001-02 season and revoke his decision to leave. Klopp is confident he remains at the peak of his powers, worried that if he continued exhaustion would render him a passenger. If it is right for him to go, he argued, it becomes right for Liverpool.
“The club needs a manager on his top game,” he explained. “I cannot do the job in the future but I can do it very well right now. You have to be the best version of yourself, especially for a club like Liverpool. I cannot do it on three wheels, it is not allowed, and I have never wanted to be a passenger.”
And it remains Klopp at the wheel, him who has reached for the brake. If he is alone in thinking he could have crashed out last season, now he could end with a victory lap. “We had last year’s situation and I think a lot of managers would have got the sack and there was never any intention to do that and my responsibility grows and grows so when it is not right any more, I have to tell,” he said. “The owners knew I would take the decision. I don’t want to hang around and do the job somehow.” The trauma of 2022-23 – albeit alleviated a little by its uplifting end – took a toll on the master motivator. “Last season and three years ago, you can count them as dog years,” Klopp said.
Liverpool’s subsequent resurgence is a sign his powers are not waning. Perhaps his stamina is. “My energy level was endless and now it is not,” he explained. Which is not surprising, and not merely because he is a 56-year-old grandfather. “We are not young rabbits any more,” he said, with a characteristically colourful turn of phrase. In the Premier League era, only Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have had longer spells in charge of one of the superclubs, with the attendant attention on them, with the crowded fixture lists, with the annual pressure to excel. “It is intense,” he said. “My fault, not the job’s.”
In the last 23 years, Klopp only had a four-month sabbatical between posts, after leaving Borussia Dortmund and before answering Liverpool’s call. “When you have the career I have, it is pretty much impossible to start where I did and arrive at Liverpool but if it becomes possible it is because you invest everything you have,” he said: the lower-league defender given the reins at Mainz in a relegation battle propelled himself to Anfield. If some are born great and some have greatness thrust upon them, Klopp achieved it. But his teams played full-throttle football and his is a full-throttle brand of management. He explained: “My managerial skills are based on energy and emotion. That takes all of you and needs all of you and I am who I am and where I am because of how I am, with all the good and bad things, and if I cannot do it any more, stop it.”
The realisation came in pre-season, even as he was then galvanised by his side’s progress. “In this moment, I love each minute,” he said. “This team is set up for the future. When I said Liverpool 2.0, that didn’t include me obviously for the next 10 years but the team is there, the basis is there.”
Rewind to his unveiling and Klopp said: “It is not allowed you take the history in your backpack.” He will leave Anfield in search of some rest and recovery having made history, aided by his innate ability to engender positivity. He has a little over four more months, perhaps four more trophies. He said: “In my world, the best memories are still to come.”
