Champions style clash: Klopp, Ancelotti take a different path
One is a chest-beating, arm-waving, emotionally fueled leader whose team’s high-energy style is in his own image.
The other is unruffled, unflappable, so nonchalant he almost appears uncaring, transmitting calm all around him with his seen-it-all-done-it-all approach.
In some ways, Jurgen Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti are polar opposites as soccer coaches. What unites them is an ability to use their own inimitable style to win the game’s biggest trophies.
It’s yet another reason why Saturday’s Champions League final between Klopp’s Liverpool and Ancelotti’s Real Madrid is so intriguing. Put simply, neither club would want to be led into club soccer’s biggest match by anyone else.
Klopp seemingly was made to be Liverpool’s manager. He’s the modernday Bill Shankly, the club’s legendary coach and man of the people from the 1960s and early ’70s who set the Reds on the road to becoming a giant of Europe.
Klopp is no “Normal One” – the tag he gave himself at his presentation as Liverpool manager in October 2015. He won the Champions League in 2019, the English Premier League in 2020 to end Liverpool’s 30-year wait for the trophy that used to belong at Anfield, and has just spearheaded what might go down as the greatest season in its history.
League Cup winner, FA Cup winner, Premier League runner-up – by a point – after losing just two games, and potentially Champions League winner. No previous English team has ever got so close to the quadruple.
After every win, Klopp strolls on to the field, heads toward Liverpool’s supporters, and delivers a barrage of fist pumps that’s met with guttural roars from the stands in response.
It’s something Ancelotti would never do.
Nothing quite sums up the 62-yearold Italian more than his reaction to a match-clinching goal scored in extra time when Everton, the team from the blue half of Merseyside which Ancelotti was managing last season, beat Tottenham 5-4 in the FA Cup in February 2021.
While Everton’s fans, players and coaching staff lost their minds inside a rocking Goodison Park, Ancelotti blew on his cup of tea and turned around to return to his seat in the dugout.
“Football is the most important of the less important things in the world,” Ancelotti once said, and he sure gives off the carefree aura of someone determined not to be weighed down by the pressure of high-end management.
He is that elite that he could become the first manager to win the European Cup four times, after 2003, ’07 (both Milan) and ’14 (Madrid).
Ancelotti has re-established his reputation as one of the world’s top coaches this season, becoming the first to win titles in Europe’s five major leagues while also guiding Madrid past a trio of heavyweights in PSG, Chelsea and then Manchester City in the Champions League knockout stages.
All done, it seems, with a shrug and a whole lot of vibes.
Deep down, Klopp and Ancelotti are compassionate, “people” people, and just absolute winners. That’s why they are in the Champions League final again, Ancelotti for a record fifth time and Klopp for a fourth in nine years.