Merseyside derbies are so intense, and cool Klopp’s just what Kop stars need
That’s why I can confidently predict he’ll have been the calming influence on the Liverpool squad this week, even if most of you see him as that crazy guy who loses his s*** on the touchline, and gallops on to the pitch like a psycho!
I’ve played in a few of these Mersey derbies and the thing you need most is the hardest thing to apply as a player – calm. I know, because I’ve lost my head myself – got wound up, got sent off, got involved with the Everton fans.
You shouldn’t, but the occasion, the magnitude of the game seeps into your brain.
And it happens in the buildup in the week before the game. As a local lad, you’re bombarded with it and, by the time the game comes around it’s full-scale war in your head.
In fact, it’s not just the local lads... every player senses it, feels it. And that is where the management have to play a crucial role.
Of course, you want that passion, you want the commitment. You definitely want the aggression because, if not, you have no chance in the heat of that game.
But you don’t want it too much – and Klopp knows I’VE got so many friends with Celtic connections and I can understand their anger and hurt at Brendan Rodgers’ decision to leave them at this stage of the season.
With so much at stake, it that better than anyone. I’ve seen him coaching, I’ve seen how he is around the training ground – and it is totally different to the wide-eyed figure you see on match day.
One of his greatest qualities is the atmosphere he creates. He’s a far more technical – and tactical – coach than many people realise, as his masterstroke in confusing Watford by playing Mane centrally showed.
Yet he knows that you need a team spirit and mentality to win anything, especially at a club that must seem bewildering to them, how he can walk away from the chance to win a Treble Treble, and deliver the 10th league title in a row.
They even had a song about that, so it must be doesn’t spend the most on wages to attract a collection of superstars. So he works on keeping his players relaxed and happy all week, enjoying being there at the training ground, enjoying being together.
That can be vital when the gutting. But I think that tells you everything you need to know about the financial power of the Premier League – and it is now choking the life out of every other domestic league in comparison. I saw pressure piles on. I’d guess that at their Melwood training ground this week, Liverpool have hardly mentioned the derby, other than in technical team meetings. Klopp allows his players to do their job without worrying about all the other stuff. There’s n o way round it, this something recently which suggested the Premier League could overtake the NFL in terms of revenue in the next five years.
It is already almost three times as big as the next highest-earning football is a huge game – for both clubs. But for Liverpool’s title hopes, a win would be massive in the message it delivers in what, on paper, is their toughest away game left.
Everton will be up for it and they have a good team who may just have turned the corner on a terrible run with that hugely important win at Cardiff.
And bragging rights are definitive – for the next six months. I loved the derby.
To me, as a kid, it meant the world.
My greatest memory is my first one in ’94.
I was a teenager, I’d just broken my leg and I was out for two months – and then on my very first game back Roy Evans put me straight into the derby! That was mind-blowing. But then I scored the winner at the Kop end – the last derby goal scored in front of the old Kop – and all the talk about calm went right out of the window.
I can’t tell you how much it meant – as much because I scored past Neville Southall, a keeper I’d grown up believing was one of the best of all time, as anything. It was a fairytale. And now the players on both sides have the same opportunity to make theirs come
true as well. league, Spain’s La Liga. That’s the reason why Rodgers has left Scotland.
And it’s the reason why managers such as Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino are working in England.