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Across a quarter of a century and three clubs, Jurgen Klopp had forged a reputation as the people’s champion, the charismatic communicator with the capacity to get everyone to buy into what he was doing. His legend was burnished, his legacy endured.
Nine years after his departure from Borussia Dortmund, he was welcomed back to the Signal Iduna Park in September to coach in a testimonial game between sides captained by Jakub Blaszczykowski and Lukasz Piszczek, performing his trademark fist pumps in front of the Yellow Wall again.
On Saturday, Mainz turned their attention to the manager who propelled them from the German second flight into Europe. “Have you forgotten everything we gave you?” read one banner. “Bist du bekloppt?” (“Are you crazy?”) asked another, punning on his surname in his native tongue. For once, the people turned on Klopp.
And so to Wednesday. RB Leipzig against Liverpool has assumed another dimension. It is Klopp’s future – of sorts, anyway – against his past. He said when leaving Liverpool he would not coach another English club. His second bombshell of 2024 was instead to announce he will become Red Bull’s global head of soccer in January. For now, he is on holiday, but with a vested interest this week. The embryonic Champions League table, after two rounds, looks good for his former clubs, with Dortmund top and Liverpool fifth: less so for two who will now occupy his time, with Leipzig 29th and Red Bull Salzburg, under Pep Lijnders, 34th out of 36 teams.
And now Klopp, as the protests at Mainz indicate, is linking up with Leipzig. A sense of betrayal among the German footballing public reflects Leipzig’s pariah status. Perceived as the fake club, circumnavigating Germany’s 50+1 ownership rule, benefitting from corporate backing and the way the massive Zentralstadion had a new ground built within it because it was politically important for the old East Germany to have a host venue in the 2006 World Cup, Leipzig are the anti-Dortmund. Hiring the most popular figure in German football, who has vowed to “learn again”, could be seen as Kloppwashing: it will be instructive to see if it damages his commercial appeal to his host of sponsors.
But there is the political and the personal, the financial and the footballing. Klopp, for once, may be out of touch with wider opinion. Yet there has been the question of what he would do next; if, indeed, there would be a “next”. He had said he would not manage this season, a statement some ignored when touting him for the England job or when the United States approached him. He has been at Euro 2024 and the Paralympics, at a Taylor Swift concert and on Instagram, perhaps more than he should have been. Having given up his empire, he has now found a role.
Which he has been looking for. “It’s my life so I might miss it,” he said in his final days at Anfield. “But I need to have a look on the other side.” A glimpse at life outside football produced a telling conclusion. “I don’t see myself on the sideline anymore but I still love football and working and Red Bull gives me the perfect platform for that,” Klopp said. That sense he may be done with the dugout, at least as far as club football is concerned, has been there for a while: the intensity of his football was matched by the intensity of his management and left him exhausted, looking at photos of his arrival at Anfield and noticing how much younger he looked. If one job could tempt him back, it is easy to envisage Klopp replacing Julian Nagelsmann as Germany manager in 2026. Perhaps it is his ideal scenario, though Nagelsmann himself was doubtful about Klopp having an exit clause in his Red Bull deal to become the Bundestrainer.
For now, Klopp is moving upstairs. In 2019, with the air of a man who thought a chief executive was something to be, Liverpool chairman Tom Werner said Klopp could be “a world-class CEO for any company in the world”.
A global head of football is instead his boardroom role. And the inconvenient reality for Klopp’s new critics may be that the Red Bull stable of clubs, Leipzig and Salzburg in particular, come from the same footballing school of thought as Dortmund and Liverpool. The Red Bull managers have included Nagelsmann, Ralph Hasenhuttl and Ralf Rangnick, all fellow gegenpressers, the last a significant influence on Klopp. Their clubs have been notable for doing excellent transfer business, for overachieving relative to their budgets, for finding and improving young players. They have been moneyballers with a fondness for heavy-metal football.
At Liverpool, Klopp raided the Red Bull stable: Dominik Szoboszlai, Ibrahima Konate and Naby Keita came from Leipzig. The two midfielders are also former Salzburg players, along with Takumi Minamino. So is Sadio Mane, one of Klopp’s greatest buys. The trade in traffic has been two-way: Leipzig loaned Fabio Carvalho last season. Salzburg took Bobby Clark, Stefan Bajcetic and Klopp’s sidekick Lijnders this year.
And if that could put him in an awkward position should Austrian football’s moneyed club continue to underachieve, the DNA that qualifies footballers to play for Liverpool also equips them for the Red Bull family. Anfield may stand for authenticity, Red Bull seems to be slickly corporate but Klopp, despite his common touch, usually proved a fine company man for Liverpool’s billionaire employers. Klopp can move in the corridors of power, even if he relates to those who don’t. “I’m not a socialist but I come from there and I understand life like that,” he said in May.
In one respect, he was a successor to Bill Shankly. In another, he will soon be a figurehead for a club that, unlike Liverpool and Dortmund, are not powered by the people.
And yet for a manager who has spent much of the past decade and a half looking to find a way to overhaul a richer rival, whether Bayern Munich or Manchester City, with intelligent recruitment and a high-energy game plan, his task at Leipzig, when advising manager Marco Rose, may feel distinctly familiar.