Best of enemies Klopp and Tuchel set for a new battle

YOU have to go back to the summer of 2012 and a dinner table at the Laubenheimer Heights hotel in Mainz to understand that 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 always fostered was going to be broached in a meeting between Tuchel and several of the club’s executives, 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 Jurgen Klopp way and would not continually venture out to the stands to meet the fans, as Klopp always 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. The writers Daniel Meuren and Tobias Schachter, who relate the episode in their biography of Tuchel, capture the fundamental difference between the two men (right), whose paths cross at Anfield tonight. Tuchel, who also followed in Klopp’s shoes at Borussia 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 insisted on putting beef and pork back on the menu when the club was struggling at the bottom of the Bundesliga in 2007. Despite so many years in Klopp’s shadow, Tuchel was the one who conveyed more warmth for the other when they sat down to discuss their latest encounter, yesterday. ‘Genius’ and ‘the master’ were both part of his vocabulary, 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.’ 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. Klopp, who at 53 is six years Tuchel’s senior, 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. With Chelsea a place and a point ahead of Liverpool 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.’