Jürgen Klopp had the world open to him. The star trainer has now decided on a job at Red Bull. This damages his image massively – and destroys everything that football fans believe he stands for.
The figure of light becomes a shadowy man: Jürgen Klopp has a new job. The 57-year-old signed with Red Bull and became Head of Global Soccer at the Austrian beverage company (Klopp’s new area of responsibility can be found here). Klopp will start work in January 2025 and will no longer be at the forefront as a coach on the sidelines as before, but will instead be pulling the strings in the background at clubs like RB Leipzig or Salzburg.
“Nothing could inspire me more,” Klopp is quoted as saying in a statement from the company about his commitment – and this is likely to send a sensitive stab to the hearts of football fans all over Germany. Because signing with Red Bull causes the Saubermann’s facade to crumble and torpedoes everything that his supporters believe he stands for. In their eyes, Klopp is apparently making a pact with the devil.
Video | That’s what Klopp says about his move to Red Bull
Red Bull has always been a thorn in the side of the majority of football enthusiasts. The German offshoot club RB Leipzig is met with hostility in almost every stadium in the Federal Republic, rejected and not accepted by many supporters of the other Bundesliga clubs. The reason: The Red Bull clubs are generally understood to be constructs without tradition, money and marketing machines created out of the ground, without body or soul. The fact that teams like Leipzig are successful in sport due to high investments by Red Bull bothers many people.
Jürgen Klopp is now entering into this soullessness of a machine controlled by purely economic interests under the guise of sport. The fact that he is really concerned with the development of football and coaching talent, as he claims in the club’s announcement, seems like a flimsy justification for a step that is hardly comprehensible. Talent doesn’t just exist at Red Bull. He could have trained them at other clubs too.
Klopp’s decision to join Red Bull is particularly bitter because he is actually a symbol of pure football romance. He coached three professional clubs in his career: Mainz 05, Borussia Dortmund and most recently Liverpool FC. Klopp shaped an era at all three clubs, was extremely successful with them and became a legend. Rightly so.
He once said about a possible end to his career as a coach: “And if in the end there were only three clubs with Mainz, Dortmund and Liverpool, then there were definitely three great ones.” To this day, every football fan will have agreed with the Strahlemann, who is popular throughout Germany, with this statement. Klopp’s career path up to this point had been too perfect. He obviously put too much passion into his work at his clubs. There was too much truth and honesty in his words.
But his credibility, his popularity, his standing among football fans: Jürgen Klopp put all of this at risk in what felt like a snap move – for this job at Red Bull. The entire effervescent cosmos is the opposite of what Klopp has always stood for in football. Over the years, Klopp has embodied an incomparable emotionality and passion for the sport and, above all, for the clubs themselves and the fans. He seemed tangible, was one of them, literally bled for his teams. That’s what made his three departures so painful for everyone, that’s what made him a cult figure.
The assumption is that Jürgen Klopp has now sold himself out and has completely thrown his previously undisputed authenticity overboard, probably for a lot of money. He tore down his own monument within seconds. The image as a charismatic figurehead of German football has been badly damaged.
He leaves the nation’s football fans, many of whom looked up to him, stunned. This man who perhaps doesn’t love football as much as he always claimed. This man who must have disappointed so many people by going to Red Bull. Jürgen Klopp’s football romance took a toll today.