Jur just starting HUMBLING LESSON FOR KLOPP HEROES
RECEIVING a guard of honour from Pep Guardiola and his team should feel like one of the greatest compliments in football.
If the gesture didn’t make Jurgen Klopp and his Liverpool stars feel special, then nothing will.
But it should be the feeling of finishing the night humiliated and humbled that has the biggest impact on the recently crowned kings of English football, following the 4-0 hammering Guardiola’s Manchester City dished out.
The new Premier League champions might have been embarrassed, but remain a wonderful side having added the title to their Champions League and World Club Cup successes of the last 12 months.
There has been enough praise heaped on the Reds to sink a battleship – and even Guardiola will know he’s had his backside kicked this season.
Yet some of the plaudits have been too much too soon, fuelled not by facts but by the fairytale and romance of the Reds having ended 30 years of waiting to be crowned champions once again.
The team has been labelled, in some quarters, the best of the last three decades. But this is premature and unjustified in equal measure.
Is Klopp’s side better than the Arsenal ‘Invincibles’ of 2004, Man United’s Treble winners of 1999 or the City side that won back-to-back titles last season as part of a historic haul of domestic trophies? It’s debatable.
The Reds are good – very, very good in fact – but to be considered truly great they now have to go on and repeat their success time and again because reaching the top is one thing, but staying there is the true measure of greatness.
Legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi once said: “Winning is not a sometime thing, it’s an all the time thing.
“You don’t win once in a while. You don’t do things right once in a while. You do them right all of the time.”
Klopp knows this, because he has been studying how the All Blacks dominated rugby union for so long.
He will also know his challenge now is to create a dynasty at Anfield, like Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley did before him.
He appears to have all the tools to do it. He is committed to a long contract, has the total backing of his owners, a team that is attractive to any target they want, young players nowhere near their peak and exciting talent on the way.
More importantly, he also appears to have the appetite when he said: “I’ve learned when you think you’ve reached the pinnacle you are already on the way down and we don’t feel that.
“I can say that 100 per cent. I don’t feel finally satisfied. It’s a big step but not the only thing I want to talk about with the boys in 20 years.”
With the likes of United and Chelsea still works in progress and City looking to rebuild, Klopp now has the ideal chance to keep the Merseysiders on their perch for several years to come.
When the parties have stopped and the hangovers cleared, the novelty of what Klopp’s side has achieved will start to fade and new challenges will be set.
Since Guardiola took charge of City in 2016 he has won eight trophies, including eight of the last 11 domestic ones available. This will form part of the legacy he will leave behind when he decides to walk out on the club.
Klopp has to make it his mission to at least emulate his big rival.
And talk of a statue for Klopp outside Anfield is nonsense. Even a legend like Paisley, who retired in 1983, wasn’t afforded his own statue until this year.
Klopp still has a long way to go, his journey hasn’t finished, it’s just begun – and City still stand between him and the legendary status he seeks.