I held the rings at Jurgen’s wedding.. so let’s hope the BEST MAN wins!
WAGNER OUT TO CLOBBER CLOSE PAL KLOPP
DAVID WAGNER has happy memories of scoring a hat-trick against best mate Jurgen Klopp – and he is ready to silence the Liverpool boss again tomorrow.
Klopp has become renowned for his touchline histrionics during his two years at Anfield, which have not always made him popular with opposing managers.
But Huddersfield chief Wagner has promised that he might just take the Reds boss down a peg or two if he gets too wild in his Anfield technical area this weekend.
Wagner admits it will be strange for them to be in opposing dugouts.
They have been friends since they were team-mates in Germany with Mainz in the 1990s, with Klopp – who is godfather to Wagner’s youngest daughter Lynn – asking his pal to be his best man when he married writer Ulla Sandrock in 2005.
However, there was no sentiment when they faced each other in their playing days, with Wagner scoring three as Gutersloh beat Mainz 6-1 in a German second division match in 1998.
“I don’t mention the hat-trick to him,” Wagner said. “OK, maybe if he flies too high, then I will.
“Was he to blame for any of my goals? No, it was only my quality. He had done everything right.
“I think I am less lively on the touchline. Maybe I know that everything which happens over this 90 minutes between him and me, or between us and the referee, us and the players, this is forgotten after the game.
“I had a lot of arguments with him when we played together in the team, when we were together as room-mates, and this is always forgotten afterwards.” Klopp has told a story that Wagner softened him up
for that meeting nearly 20 years ago by inviting him over for dinner the night before the game.
“I remember he came to my house the night before the game,” Wagner smiled.
“There was certainly food, but I can’t remember if there was beer.”
Wagner claims that Klopp was a surprisingly quiet room-mate during their Mainz days – largely because he had a young son, Marc, by his first wife Sabine, and needed his sleep.
But they did have lively talks over Klopp’s smoking habit, something the Reds boss has still not kicked.
Wagner said: “He was pretty quiet, because he had a child, so he liked to sleep, like I did.
“Unfortunately, he was a smoker. That was not easy at the beginning, so I convinced him that he was only allowed to smoke in the toilet, and not in the room, and he followed what I said. But he still smokes.
“This was more or less the biggest discussion we always had. It was perfect, as he more or less had the same rhythm that I had as a person.
“So we had hunger at the same time, we were thirsty at the same time and we went to bed and got up at the same time.”