Absence of the ‘Brain’ Buvac from Klopp’s bootroom will have
WHEN Philippe Coutinho left Liverpool for his big money move to Barcelona in January it was suggested that it meant the break-up of the ‘fab four’.
If we take the words of Jurgen Klopp’s back-room team at face value, Anfield is going through another band-split with the departure – temporary or otherwise – of coach Zeljko Buvac.
“We are like a music band, each with their own instrument,” was how assistant coach Peter Krawietz, the other key member of the coaching trio, described their relationships two years ago.
“Jurgen is the band leader and others are behind him playing the bass guitar or drum. It is very collaborative how we work. We’ve been this way since we started together.
“Many years ago a journalist in Germany said I was ‘the eye’ and Zeljko was ‘the brain’ and people repeat it. We could only laugh at this, see it as an invention and say, ‘so what is Jurgen?’.
“We are all part of the team here but it is different in Germany to England. Here, as a manager, there are so many more tasks around the club so me and Zeljko try to help as much as we can.”
The idea of Buvac as the “brain” of Klopp’s operation has stuck as a memorable sound bite even if it has been exaggerated for dramatic effect. The Bosnian earned his reputation as a shrewd tactician after Klopp described him as a “master of all kinds of training”.
Liverpool’s dynamic style has evolved through training drills overseen by Klopp and Buvac. They became friends when team-mates at Mainz in the early 1990s and made a pact that whoever became a manager first would appoint the other as their assistant.
When the time came for Klopp to take over at Mainz – implementing the style and
methods of his mentor Wolfgang Frank, the former Mainz coach – he kept his promise and Buvac