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Believe Us. Melissa Reddy
Читать онлайн.Название Believe Us
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008441975
Автор произведения Melissa Reddy
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
Henry was equating being on the cusp of hiring the perfect manager for the club — an incredibly complex criteria to meet — to hitting for the cycle. No fanbase deifies the main man in the dugout as vociferously as Liverpool’s: through banners, in song and the manner in which they are tattooed to the very soul of the institution. It’s a phenomenon that stretches back to Bill Shankly’s appointment in 1959, with the Scot transforming a club in the Second Division into a ‘bastion of invincibility’ during his 15-year dynasty.
Equally, no fanbase are as demanding of what they want in their leader. At Anfield, the requirements stretch well beyond what a CV reads or being tactically excellent. You need to win, connect with supporters and represent the essence of Liverpool on a cultural, political and spiritual level. In summary, a top manager must also operate as a man of the people while illustrating he is bigger than the job, greater than the expectations and unwavering in his handling of the fiercest criticism.
In New York on 1 October 2015, FSG were confident they were going to hire that very figure. A magnetic individual who had the proven capacity to galvanise, rejuvenate and deliver sustainable success to a club, while also having a lasting impact on the place and its populace.
‘It’s the right guy at the right time,’ Gordon noted. But the owners had selected the wrong choice of day for their first face-to-face interaction with Jürgen Klopp. The meeting coincided with the annual gathering of the United Nations general assembly, which gridlocked New York. The German’s journey from JFK Airport to Lexington Avenue took six hours in snaking traffic, and while it was unwelcome, it didn’t diminish his ‘highest enthusiasm’ for the opportunity to outline his vision for Liverpool.
Long before Klopp stepped into the building, the job was his. It was not an interview, rather a confirmation of what FSG already knew about the two-time Bundesliga winner courtesy of a call, a Skype conversation, and crucially, a detailed 60-page dossier on his way of working. Compiled by Liverpool’s esteemed head of research, Ian Graham, and Michael Edwards, who was technical director at the time, it evaluated everything from the manager’s training sessions, reaction to setbacks, achievements in relation to his resources as well as his interaction with staff and players through first-hand testimony from his former clubs Mainz and Borussia Dortmund. The more Liverpool drilled into Klopp’s methodology, the greater their conviction was that he could unify the core areas of the club and elevate it.
Beyond the comprehensive document, FSG knew he was their guy because they had previously pursued him twice. Each time they sought a manager, he stood out and tallied with their long-term thinking. Towards the end of 2010, as Roy Hodgson was scraping through a painful spell at Liverpool’s helm that would eventually span only 31 games in charge, the group used a third party to ascertain whether Klopp would consider leaving Dortmund to move to Anfield. It was no surprise the answer was negative, given he was successfully re-establishing BVB as a Bundesliga and European force while they played irresistible, high-pressing football.
A year later, another tentative approach was made when club legend Kenny Dalglish, Hodgson’s replacement, was released from his second stint at Liverpool. ‘I have been made aware of interest in England, and it is an honour to be linked with big clubs in the Premier League,’ Klopp said, before emphasising, ‘I love it here [at Dortmund] and have no intention of changing clubs.’
Naturally, Liverpool were not the only English team trying to secure the elite manager, who had halted, at least temporarily, Bayern Munich’s monopoly on being Germany’s best. Winning back-to-back Bundesliga titles and bulldozing opponents in the Champions League, where Dortmund reached the final in 2013, meant that interest in Klopp ballooned — especially 30 miles away in Manchester. While Dalglish’s successor as Liverpool manager, Brendan Rodgers, was overseeing poetry in motion on Merseyside in early 2014 with a Luis Suarez-powered offensive line taking the club close to the title, David Moyes was horribly floundering at Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor was well out of his depth and urgent action was necessary to remedy the club’s demise. Their executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, scheduled a chat with Klopp in Germany to sell him on making the switch to Old Trafford.
The BVB trainer hugely admired Ferguson’s achievements and the manner he went about establishing United as a global juggernaut, which is largely why he agreed to the encounter. Woodward’s pitch, however, was the antithesis of what would appeal to Klopp. He spotlighted their financial might and offered an Americanised picture of blockbuster names and entertainment while likening United and Old Trafford to the game’s Disneyland.
Klopp, a football romantic who feeds off emotion and who counts time spent on the training pitches as more fundamental than transfers, was turned off.
That came as no shock to Christian Heidel, the former sporting director of Mainz. He has a three-decade relationship with Klopp and was the one who offered him the chance to instantly progress from being a player to the club’s manager. ‘Emotionally powered’ is one of the core descriptors he uses for his friend, who is also a ‘fighter’ and ‘builder’. Heidel knew Klopp’s powers could only be properly unleashed at places that resonate with his own personal experiences. Being at United and having an unlimited budget would jar with a life shaped by scaling adversity and making the most out of little.
Klopp’s formative years in Glatten, a tiny but picturesque town in the Black Forest, were simple. His late father, Norbert, who had been a promising goalkeeper and earned a trial at Kaiserslautern as a teenager, worked as a salesman specialising in dowels and wall fixings. He was a ruthless competitor, extracting the maximum from his son by never taking it easy on him, whether it came to skiing, tennis, football or sprints across the field. Norbert impressed on him that it wasn’t worth doing anything without full dedication. He taught his son that ‘attitude was always more important than talent’, promoted a ferocious work ethic and schooled him in the art of resilience.
Klopp junior, a Stuttgart fan, had an unsuccessful trial with his boyhood club and did not become a professional footballer until he was 23. In the interim, he turned out for Pforzheim, Eintracht Frankfurt II, Viktoria Sindlingen and Rot-Weiss Frankfurt while working part-time in a video rental store and loading lorries. He juggled that with taking care of his toddler, Marc, while also studying for a degree in sports business at Goethe University Frankfurt.
‘Life took me a few places and gave me a few jobs,’ Klopp noted. ‘It wasn’t about where I could be, but about doing what I had to do, because I was a young father and needed to provide.’ After finally landing a pro contract with Mainz in 1989 as an industrious but technically-limited striker, Klopp still took steps to invest in his future for the benefit of his family. Earning just £900 a month, he signed up to the legendary Erich Rutemöller’s coaching school in Cologne. Twice a week, he would undertake the 250-mile round trip to enhance his tactical understanding of the game.
Klopp also sponged off Wolfgang Frank, the late Mainz coach who was inspired by Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan. He would spend hours talking to him about systems and the secrets to overpowering better resourced opponents. ‘Under Wolfgang Frank, for the first time in my career, I had the feeling that a coach has a huge impact on the game,’ Klopp would reveal. ‘He made us aware that a football team is much more independent of the class of individual players than we thought at the time. We have seen through him that it can make life very difficult for the opponent through a better common idea.’
Frank was one of the first German managers of the era to shun using a sweeper, which was the norm, opting for a four-man zonal defence and a midfield diamond shape. He espoused high-pressing, attacking from inside, offensive protection and overloading the flanks — all hallmarks of Klopp’s teams to the present-day Liverpool.
Those tactics became the blueprint for Mainz in February 2001 when manager Eckhard Krautzun was sacked by the club on the eve of an away game and sporting director Christian Heidel called an emergency summit with senior players. It was decided at the meeting that Klopp, who had been converted to a defender from a striker, would undergo another transformation