Brendan Rodgers on Klopp, leaving Liverpool and 2014 title agony
The Jamie Carragher interview,
There is a question I have been wanting to ask Brendan Rodgers since our first conversation when he was appointed Liverpool manager seven years ago. “You called me and said you were thinking about me joining your backroom team and then changed your mind. What happened?”
I think Brendan is a bit taken aback. “Sorry for ruining your coaching career!” he laughs. “I remember thinking how much I was looking forward to working with you and Stevie [Gerrard] and it would be a good idea to have you on the coaching staff.
“Then when we met I got the feeling that you were still focused on playing for another season. It would have been difficult to do both. So, apologies if I stopped you being a big manager now.”
This was my sliding-doors moment, I tell him – all these years I could have avoided working with Gary Neville. Never mind. There is no lingering grudge. I have come to Leicester City’s training ground to find out if Rodgers is similarly at ease with his own career path, as he heads back to Anfield tomorrow for the first time since departing in 2015.
Both Rodgers and Liverpool have moved on, and spectacularly so. Liverpool, under Jurgen Klopp, are European champions and established title contenders, while Rodgers was a serial winner at Celtic and is living up to his billing as Britain’s finest coach at Leicester, whom he has transformed into the team best equipped to break into the top six, or even the top four.
But I want to know how he looks upon his three-year stint at Anfield now that some time has passed. It was a reign in which he came as close as any Liverpool manager in the preceding 24 years to winning the league title, yet which ended amid unfair accusations that his thrilling team were built around one world-class player rather than dynamic coaching.
I want to know how he feels about claims that Liverpool were too naive in that critical Chelsea game at the end of the 2013-14 season, what went wrong after Luis Suarez’s sale and how it felt to see Klopp move into his old house, as well as his office, and become a Champions League winner.
And I want to know whether, after taking the Liverpool job at just 39, he feels the chance came too early in his career. On this point, there seems to be agreement.
“When I look at it now, with over 500 games as a manager, I think, ‘Christ, I was three years as a manager before I was at Liverpool’,” Rodgers says.
“Obviously at that time you are confident about doing it. It was an opportunity I could not turn down.
“But when you look back, it is very young to be going into a job of that magnitude. I felt I was ready to do it. What I have learnt as the
‘I knew after being at Liverpool I could manage any club in the world’
years go by is, like a wine, you get better with age. Only when you go into a club that size you understand the scale of it. When you get 94,000 people at a pre-season game in Australia, you see it. It did not frighten me. I wanted to enjoy it.
“But one of the things I took from Liverpool is this: you think you are ready when you go in, but only when you come away do you see how you deal with pressure. When you are younger as a manager you want to show you are not under pressure. Actually, the best way to cope is to accept you are under pressure, and what you have to do is regulate that pressure and find a filter for it.
“I hope to be coaching for another 20 years but I knew after being at Liverpool I could manage any club in the world. No matter where you go after Liverpool, there are never going to be more expectations than there are at Anfield. It made me a better manager.”
I was there on day one as Rodgers sought to introduce his imaginative style of coaching and man-management. It was a challenging inauguration period.
“You put me in the Europa League team with Jordan Henderson!” I remind him.
“Aye, but you worked your way back into the league side!” comes the reply.
Rodgers is laughing, but he wants to make a serious point. “You have to remember where Liverpool were at in 2012. I was Swansea manager and we played and beat them in the last game of the previous season. Liverpool were eighth. I had the chance to go to another club that finished higher.
With the history of the club, it felt such a privilege and when I looked at it, there was more scope to improve. The club had not qualified for the Champions League for five years and my first job was to get players off the wage bill. Andy Carroll, Pepe Reina, Maxi Rodriguez – a great player – and Alberto Aquilani had to be moved on.
“It was an incredible journey we went on for the next 18 months. Wherever I go, when I meet Liverpool fans, they talk about that 2013-14 season.”
That year was the pinnacle, yet even the praise for this thrilling campaign is contaminated by what I consider unjust criticism – that the whole title bid was effectively “The Luis Suarez Show”. Liverpool’s deterioration after Suarez left in 2014 provided more grist for that argument and when I put that accusation to Rodgers, I can see it still rankles.
“It was unfair on every player,” he says. “The strikers obviously get the goals and Luis was also the one who started the press for us, set our intensity level, but he needed players around him.
“Look, his quality and imagination in the final third was amazing, but it was the team that flourished. I have a memory of the home game against Arsenal in 2014, when five minutes before half-time the stadium gave the players a standing ovation. That was not for one player. It was a big moment which told me we were on the right way.”
Liverpool looked destined for the title until Jose Mourinho burst the bubble. Chelsea’s 2-0 win at Anfield lodged another theory in
the football consciousness – that Liverpool had fallen into Mourinho’s trap of playing gung-ho football instead of taking the draw which would have kept their title hopes alive.
“You are going to get that, aren’t you? There are a lot of things said in hindsight, what we could and should have done,” Rodgers says. “I have heard the other one about us being over-confident. When you look at it before that game, I did nothing different.
“We had won 11 games on the spin going into the game, making a quick start playing attacking football. That was what put us in that position. We could not have played any other way and I have no regrets about sticking to that.
“You know, when you watch it back, we played well in the game for 70 minutes, Chelsea doing nothing. Then we lost a goal in very unfortunate circumstances before half-time. The only thing I would accept is maybe a more experienced team would have been calmer in the last 20 minutes chasing the equaliser.
“The story that went unnoticed was Jordan [Henderson] was unavailable for three of the last four games because of a lastminute sending-off against Manchester City. He was a huge miss for us that day. But as time goes on you realise how well we played that season, so I don’t lose sleep about it.”
Suarez’s departure for Barcelona, allied to the winding down of Gerrard’s career, meant the title-challenging side unravelled, as did Rodgers’s tenure.
“We went so close and ideally you want to build on that, but then we lost a world-class player and we lost our identity,” Rodgers says.
“It went a bit pragmatic to get results and I was not watching a team playing in the way I believe in, because we could not press high from the front. Safe is death, to me. But, you know, that third season is arguably one of my best in terms of experience. We made Raheem [Sterling] the central striker and went on a great run, so from a coaching perspective it was good to see we could show aggression and find a way.”
The upturn was brief, Sterling the next to leave shortly before Rodgers’s exit in October 2015.
“Did you ever see Thierry Henry putting his hand on my knee after it was announced you had gone after the Merseyside derby?” I ask.
Rodgers laughs. “When I received a phone call from Mike [Gordon, Fenway Sports Group president] on the way home from the Everton game, I understood where it was at. From their perspective, maybe I could have gone in the summer, but they
‘I hope to coach for another 20 years. Like a wine, you get better with age’
wanted to give me the chance.
“It was a tough start to that season and they felt it needed a change. Look, it worked out brilliantly for them. When Liverpool won the Champions League, I sent them all a message congratulating them and Jurgen.
“I was never going to be bitter. That’s why I let Jurgen move into my house! I had a good relationship with Ray Haughan – the player liaison officer – and he told me Jurgen was struggling to find somewhere to live, so I said, ‘Listen, I am moving to London for a bit and will not be there now, so Jurgen could move in.’
“I understand what it is like as a manager moving to a new place, wanting your family to be settled and happy. You want them in a good place. He took the house and has been there ever since.
“I wanted him to succeed and the club to succeed. He has great stature, a great presence, but he is very much with the players. That connection with your players is a big factor in modern management.”
As I sit enjoying lunch with Rodgers, Leicester’s players and staff before their trip to Anfield, it feels like he is creating a similar vibe. His office – decked with the usual tactics boards – is less grand than the one at Melwood, but the club will move to a £125million training facility before next season and seem well placed to, at the very least, challenge for a European place.
Tomorrow’s fixture will be a good barometer of how quickly they are moving, although Rodgers still wants realism with the ambition. “This team was ninth in the last two seasons, let’s not forget that. It’s a huge jump needed. I lived my dream managing Celtic, a club I supported. That journey will always be with me.
“We won seven trophies on the spin and if I felt I could not take Celtic further, it had to be the right club and I thought Leicester was too good an opportunity to turn down.
“I looked at Leicester and felt we could develop a way of working to improve the team. I see players like James Maddison, Ben Chilwell and Harvey Barnes. But the senior players – Wes Morgan, Kasper Schmeichel, Jamie Vardy, Marc Albrighton – they have been absolutely magnificent. They train so hard every day and really care. They are winners, too. They have that mindset, which really helps.
So, finally, what reaction do you expect when you shake Jurgen’s hand and face the Kop for the first time in four years?
“I was proud to work for Liverpool, I will always be thankful for them giving me the opportunity. At 39, I was able to manage one of the great football institutions. I am just so looking forward to going back.”