LIVERPOOL Klopp suffers

Bust-up fear as boss loses trusted No2 Buvac

REPORTS JURGEN KLOPP’S approach to football could often be described as playing with fire, and more often than not it is the opposition who get burned.

But the decision to allow his trusted No 2 Zeljko Buvac, the man he describes as “the brain”, to step away from his duties just as they reach the critical point of their season could be his riskiest move yet.

The Bosnian, who first met Klopp when the pair played together at Mainz, will have nothing to do with the first team for the remainder of the season and looks to be heading towards the exit door at Anfield.

The club said yesterday that the coach was stepping back from the front line because of “personal reasons”, declining to add flesh to the bones and adding that Buvac, 56, remains a Liverpool employee.

However, insiders have suggested he has become an increasingly distant presence around the first team and coaching set-up over the past few weeks, and it looks as though a relationship that has produced huge success in both Germany and England could have run its course.

Klopp and Buvac have had a close working bond since their playing days, famously making a pact that whoever secured a managerial position first out of the two would take the other along with them as assistant.

When Klopp was appointed manager of Mainz in 2001, he made good on that promise.

Theirs is said to be a strong professional rather than close personal relationship, but it is a fruitful one.

At Mainz they secured promotion to the Bundesliga for the first time in the club’s history in 2004, and at Borussia Dortmund they secured backto-back titles and reached a Champions League final, losing to Bayern Munich. Along with Peter Krawietz, they have formed a closeknit triumvirate who arrived at Liverpool together in late 2015. A year later all three were secured, with the manager’s personal insistence, on the same six-year deal he enjoyed.

The loss of one leg of the tripod could have a hugely destabilising effect, if not this season then next.

Buvac and Klopp have fallen out before and it would be a surprise if any pairing could survive the pressure storms of 17 years in top-flight football without the odd row. But they have always managed to rediscover an equilibrium. Yet the departure of the tousle-haired No2 on the eve of their bid to secure a sixth European Cup final has a finality about it that would make rapprochement unlikely. Buvac is said to have complemented Klopp’s impulsive urges with a