‘It’s been tough time but you don’t need to worry about me’
private from professional duties. “I do not need a break,” Klopp said. “Look, the last thing I want to do is talk about private things in a press conference, but everyone knows we have been through an absolutely tough time, but that was three weeks ago. It was a much longer time already. We always deal with it as a family, 100 per cent.
“I’m 53. I have been in football for 30 years. I have been a coach for 20. I can split things. I can switch off, one thing from another thing. I do not carry things around. If I am private, I’m private. If it is football and it is the workplace, I am here.
“Nobody needs to worry about me. I might not look like this – because the weather is not cool, I’m white and the beard gets more and more grey. All these kinds of things. Yes, I don’t sleep a lot and my eyes look like this but it’s all fine. I’m full of energy – honestly.”
Liverpool had privately sought to dismiss the unfounded speculation about Klopp’s future. Nevertheless, the manager’s reassurance will be welcomed as he spoke during his pre-match press conference ahead of tonight’s Champions League round-of-16 tie with RB Leipzig.
Panicked by earlier claims, Liverpool fans rallied around their coach, including erecting a banner outside Anfield which pledged enduring support for the charismatic coach.
“The banner is nice, but not necessary,” Klopp said. “I don’t think I need special support at this minute. I’m very grateful, but people can worry about other things. They don’t have to worry about me.
“The situation is here. I don’t want to have the situation but the situation is an interesting challenge. Nobody wrote a book about how you came into a situation like this and how did you solve it. But we will sort it.
“While we are doing it, it could be tricky. But sorting it by playing football, sorting it by staying even more together. Sorting it by fighting with all you have, sorting it by learning more than you have learnt in each season before – that’s the plan.”
SNowadays we insist that they are 24/7 control freaks, their focus on our team. We need them there
ince his mother Elisabeth died on Jan 19 at the age of 81, these have been the darkest of times for Jurgen Klopp. “She meant everything to me,” he said. We can only imagine how difficult it must have been when the pandemic restrictions precluded the Liverpool manager from attending her funeral in Germany.
Initially it may have been unspoken, but in retrospect his dismay was all too evident. Before news of her death was made public, Klopp had been noticeably tetchy when attending to his post-match media duties.
At the best of times, answering the same question to 15 reporters could never be described as the most rewarding part of a manager’s job description. But after
Liverpool’s defeat by Manchester City, Klopp was unusually snappy, belittling an Israeli journalist’s professionalism after being asked the most routine of questions. At the time we merely thought he was being a bad loser. Now that we know what must have been on his mind we can only sympathise.
One thing Klopp has not done in dealing with his loss, however, is take time off. As they would any employee, Liverpool would have granted him compassionate leave. But however testing those interviews with Sky’s Geoff Shreeves may be, Klopp has chosen to work on: organising training, analysing performance, poring over statistics, on the touchline at every game. And speaking ahead of his club’s Champions League tie with RB Leipzig tonight, he insisted he did not “need a break”.
Nor, he added, did he require “special support at this minute”, because “nobody needs to worry about me. I may not sleep a lot but I am fine, full of energy”.
We all have different coping mechanisms. Some of us need time away to digest the enormity of loss. Others – particularly football managers – prefer to continue as normal. Klopp is by no means alone in pressing on; Pep Guardiola, after he lost his mother Dolors to Covid last April, suggested that returning to the routine of preparing his Manchester City team for matches was the best way he could imagine dealing with his grief.
Indeed, rolling up the sleeves and ploughing on has become the default reaction to setback among football managers. You only have to listen the next time one of them is asked what the solution is to a run of bad results. The insistence will invariably be: “Work harder on the training pitch.” Relentless graft is reckoned the answer to any issue, whether it be tactical or personal.
And the truth is, this is what we fans want to hear. We require our managers to be workaholics, their task to dedicate their entire lives to improving the chances of our club. Never mind that Brian Clough twice won the European Cup that way, the era when the Nottingham Forest manager could spend most of his working week playing squash is long gone. Nowadays we insist our managers are 24/7 control freaks, their single-minded focus solely on our team. We need them to be there. Constantly.
While anyone with a hint of human understanding would have understood had Klopp stepped aside for a spell to process his grief, it is not difficult to imagine what the keyboard critics would have made of his decision. Particularly had it coincided with a decline in his team’s performances.
The assumption now is that football managers are apex workers, obsessed with the job. We once thought Arsene Wenger was an oddball when we discovered his hinterland was restricted to watching videos of French under-23 games. These days the French league is old school; if our managers have not done their homework on the junior leagues in Burkina Faso we question their commitment.
We presuppose too that those extraneous issues that might poleaxe the rest of us, they will just ignore. Domestic issues, personal misfortune, even loss of their closest loved ones we reckon should be subsumed into the relentless pursuit of three points. In a working environment based on such expectations, frankly the surprise is more of them do not crack under the strain.