THE MOTIVATOR VERSUS THE TACTICIAN
CAREERS OF KLOPP AND TUCHEL ARE ENTWINED BUT THE BEST OF ENEMIES ARE VERY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS...
You have to go back to the summer of 2012 and a dinner table at the Laubenheimer Heights hotel in Mainz to understand the subject of Jurgen Klopp can be prickly for Thomas Tuchel.
The delicate question of how to rediscover the love with the FSV Mainz fans that Klopp, his predecessor as manager, had fostered was going to be broached in a meeting between Tuchel and the club’s executives, who were concerned that attendances were barely breaking 18,000.
The notion of reaching out more to the fans had just been raised with Tuchel when the name ‘Kloppo’ — as the Germans know Klopp — crossed the lips of managing director Christian Heidel.
Tuchel exploded. Heidel does not recall his precise response, though the general thrust was clear. He could not manage in the Klopp way and would not continually venture out to the stands to meet the fans, as Klopp did.
‘How often do the stands feature on the match heat-map?’ Tuchel would say whenever Klopp’s sorties across the pitch were subsequently mentioned.
Writers Daniel Meuren and Tobias Schachter, who relate the episode in their excellent biography of Tuchel, capture the fundamental difference between the two men whose paths cross at Anfield tonight. Tuchel, who also followed in Klopp’s footsteps at Dortmund, brought a scientific, understated and often austere approach to football. Klopp brought inspiration, motivation and harnessed the power of the masses.
While Tuchel wanted a low-carb diet for his Mainz team, ensuring better sleep and regeneration for them, Klopp had a very different idea when the club were struggling at the bottom of the Bundesliga in 2007, a year before he left. Arriving at a winter training camp on the Costa de la Luz, he told team nutritionist Klaus Gerlach that he wanted beef and pork back on the menu. ‘The boys are so depressed by the league table. They should want to live again,’ he insisted.
Meuren and Schachter’s chapter comparing the two managers describes Tuchel as ‘The antiKlopp’, though Heidel, who gave both men their break at Mainz, insists the two are not so different when it comes to inspiring their teams. ‘They can both take a group with them,’ he says.
Despite so many years in Klopp’s shadow, Tuchel was the one who conveyed more warmth for the other yesterday. ‘Genius’ and ‘the master’ were mentioned, though the qualities he pinpointed in the older man were subtly significant.
‘In all the three clubs he has worked as a manager, he is a big, big part, even when he leaves, in the heart of the fans and the history of the clubs,’ Tuchel said of Klopp. ‘Liverpool is a union between his players and him, always, and this is what you face when you play him. It’s a bit similar to the unity that we experience between the players of Atletico Madrid and Diego Simeone.’
This characterisation continued when it was put to the Chelsea manager that Klopp is generally considered a joyful man, while he is more grumpy.
‘You cannot compete being funny with Jurgen,’ said Tuchel. ‘He has lots of good answers to good questions. He is the master at turning any question around into laughter. If you say I have a grumpy image, I don’t know where this comes from. I cannot waste my energy worrying about my image.’
These words would have had Klopp frowning and pursing his lips, had they been related to him. The notion that Liverpool’s success is built on his force of personality, rather than technical and tactical intellect, does not delight him. The comparison with Simeone was not entirely flattering.
For his part, Klopp afforded Tuchel deference and respect. Yet his reply to a question of how their teams’ styles differed turned into a defence of why he had won fewer games at Mainz than Tuchel.
‘ He started playing a more possession-based football which was for us, with the resources we had, not really possible,’ said Klopp. ‘He has a much better record than I ever did at Mainz. He was winning many more Bundesliga games but it was just different times. You can’t compare it.’
Klopp, who at 53 is six years Tuchel’s senior, was the one who got Mainz into the top flight against all odds. He took Dortmund from mediocrity and turned them into two- time Bundesliga winners. Tuchel made both clubs better, twice securing Europa League qualification at Mainz and rejuvenating Dortmund. Tuchel delivered on numbers. Klopp delivered on memories.
Klopp was still stage-managing history when Liverpool met Tuchel’s Dortmund in the Europa
league in 2016 — inspiring a recovery from a seemingly hopeless deficit in the legendary secondhalf comeback to win 4- 3 at anfield. Klopp has won nine and lost just two of their 14 matches.
yet some sources in Germany feel there has been a sensitivity on Klopp’s part about Tuchel — and perhaps even an insecurity.
‘Kloppo was suddenly reduced to a reputation as a motivator and communicator here at Mainz, while Tuchel suddenly became the football philosopher with tactical finesse and intelligence,’ Heidel tells Meuren and Schachter.
‘When he started with us in 2009, Tuchel simply had completely different options and, above all, better players than Klopp at his time. That’s why he was able to work on a much higher level.’
Tuchel admitted yesterday that the two of them were unlikely to play tennis ‘one to one.’ He also mentioned how he had recently come across copies of the speeches he had delivered to Mainz players. Not the kind of thing Klopp ever put down on paper. They are as different as managerial compatriots can be.
With Chelsea a place and a point ahead of liverpool in the table and both sides chasing a Champions league spot, the stage is set for an intriguing rivalry.
‘They’re not really good friends,’ says Heidel. ‘That’s not a bad thing. Not everyone has to get along well with everyone.’