The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Sport Saturday
‘Messiah’ Klopp should have won more at Anfield
Departing manager may be adored by Liverpool fans but there remains a view that German is light on trophies
“Everything I am, everything I can be,” quavered Jurgen Klopp, tears streaming down his face, “it is because of you.” The year was 2008, and the setting was the Gutenbergplatz in Mainz. More than 20,000 gathered in the city’s largest square in an expression of undying gratitude for all that Klopp had given to their club, first as a multifunctional player and later as the manager who inspired their first promotion to the Bundesliga. It was a giddy communion, on a scale that few in his role experience in a lifetime. And he was still just 40 years old.
The structure of Klopp’s touchline career is almost perfectly tripartite: seven years at Mainz 05, seven at Borussia Dortmund, nine at Liverpool. Each of these epochs has ended with his elevation to messianic status. Just wait for the raptures to engulf him at Anfield tomorrow week. Most managers pass through, their exits little lamented and tenures soon forgotten. But with Klopp, who combines megawatt charisma with long-haul commitment, nobody is ever quite the same again.
At times, the idolatry can be excessive. On Merseyside, Klopp is the only foreign- born person besides Nelson Mandela to be awarded the freedom of Liverpool. The sheer force of his personality makes it difficult to reach a sober judgment on his reign. Klopp is a figure about whom few can be agnostic: whether in joy or despair, he pulses with a magnetic energy.
He is not just a manager but a mood, a spiritual leader of such power that he once had to clarify that he was not Mahatma Gandhi. He has mobilised an entire community in a shared quest, lifting his side’s dejection after a Europa League final defeat by Sevilla by striking up a “We are Liverpool” chant. He leaves English football not merely admired, but adored.
And, yet, there is an alternative framing: that Klopp, for all the veneration, departs with the same number of league titles as Claudio Ranieri. The suddenness of Liverpool’s recent implosion in sight of a second championship has highlighted a familiar weakness of wobbling in sight of the prize. Under him, Mainz twice buckled within reach of promotion, and Dortmund offset their two Bundesliga triumphs with two near-misses. Does Klopp’s record at Liverpool – with two second-place finishes, a third and two fourths – represent an extension of that pattern?
It would take a hard-hearted soul to damn him on this basis. After all, it has been Liverpool’s misfortune, during the Klopp period, to be pitted against the insuperable financial might of Manchester City. Yes, the club have a billionaire owner on whom to lean in John W Henry, but City have an entire Gulf state.
In 2019, Liverpool ended the season with 97 points, the third-highest haul of the Premier League era, and still it was good enough only to be runners-up. In 2022, they broke the rare 90- point barrier once more, but were thwarted again by the sky-blue behemoth. With City now under investigation for 115 alleged financial irregularities, all of which they deny, a view has taken root among Liverpool fans that Klopp’s one title should, on a more level playing field, be three.
Except Liverpool have hardly been parsimonious either. After the Loris Karius debacle in the 2018 Champions League final in Kyiv, they spent £67 million to bring in Alisson Becker, then a world-record fee for a goalkeeper. They paid £ 85 million for Darwin Nunez. These were not the luxury signings open to Ranieri’s Leicester City when they reached the Premier League summit in 2016. Klopp has been backed handsomely but still he is no more decorated in the league than the man who coined the catchphrase “Dilly ding, dilly dong”.
He has given everything to Liverpool. His absence will create a crater
appointment of Arne Slot as Klopp’s replacement.
FSG has also created a director of football development role for former Benfica technical director Pedro Marques. While at the Portuguese club, Marques helped nurture high-profile players such as Ruben Dias, Goncalo Ramos, Antonio Silva and Joao Neves. His recruitment is also part of FSG’s ambitious plans to purchase a “sister” football club to add to the portfolio.
That was one of the chief attractions that lured Edwards back, and he has gone about assembling a team who will hunt for talent for both Liverpool and the next club FSG purchases. A move for another European team appears imminent.
In Europe, too, a solitary Champions League crown scarcely does justice to a manager of Klopp’s standing. As deliriously as Liverpool celebrated in 2019, they lost two other finals, both to Real Madrid, compounding the sense of thwarted ambition Klopp had felt when Dortmund succumbed to Bayern at
Marques and Ward will commence their FSG football roles on June 1.
While Edwards, Marques and Ward have a broader responsibility, Liverpool’s new sporting director Richard Hughes’s focus will be solely on Anfield.
Hughes’s responsibilities will be at the training ground, but Ward is tasked with overseeing player development across FSG’s football operations.
Since leaving Liverpool last year, Ward has received a number of approaches from ownership groups of leading English and European clubs. Like Edwards, the expansion of his role has brought him back.