“I don’t want to wait until I’m too old to live a normal life” – Libération

2024-01-26 15:17:17

“Out of energy”, the German coach announced this Friday January 26 that he would retire at the end of the season, after nine years on the banks of the Mersey and a victory in the Champions League.

The end of an era. This Friday, January 26, German coach Jürgen Klopp gently closed a door, the one he opened in October 2015 when he took charge of the destiny of Liverpool FC, a club that he resurrected well beyond ranking lines. With complete control and for good reason, the announcement was not made in front of an audience of journalists summoned for an impromptu press conference, but on the club’s website, through a long interview (twenty-five minutes) with the native from Stuttgart.

The reason given: mental weariness, which seems to indicate – although in football, truths are always relative – that he will not return to something else before a more or less long break. “I’m leaving because I’m, how can I put it, out of energy. I realized over time that I was no longer as involved. When we were sitting together and talking about the future, the next summer internship, potential recruitments, the idea came to me that I wasn’t sure I was here anymore. Which surprised even me. […] The club is in good hands, the future is bright. But I owed the truth to the club and my assistants, so that they would have time to turn around.” Then: “I’m a normal guy. But I haven’t had a normal life for far too long for my liking. And I don’t want to wait until I’m too old to live a normal life. I also want to give myself a chance to live that life. It’s the right time for me and also the right time for the club, given my reduced involvement.”

A form of simplicity but unity

The rest, a vibrant plea (“I lived a fairy tale”) for this club that he will have embodied like few, in a sort of mixture between his vibrant personality in touch with the fans and a style of play which will popularize a word, “gegenpressing”, this aggression of the opposing team at the moment when it has just recovered the ball – Pep Guardiola’s FC Barcelona had theorized this phase of play long before him but it was necessary to understand that in German , straight away, it sounds better. Klopp could argue with an Everton supporter (the other club in the city, hated by Liverpool fans) even while he was filling up in the middle of the night in a gas station as he could resume a journalist in the middle of a press conference to put the importance of football into perspective in the midst of the Covid pandemic, resurrecting a form of simplicity, but above all of unity, from the top of the pyramid (him) to the base (the supporters), which contradicted the time.

The style was to match – committed, wild, evoking the blessed times (late 70s and early 80s) when Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and others developed a bestial, aggressive game, leaving not a square centimeter of ground in the dark. Three Champions League finals (one won in 2019, two lost against Karim Benzema’s Real Madrid in 2018 and 2022) paved what must be called a state of grace, Liverpool also breaking eternal domestic hegemony in 2020 of Manchester City by winning a title that the Reds had been waiting for for thirty years.

Immense diplomatic talents

The decline of the team after 2022 has mirrored that of the attacking trio of great years, formed by the Brazilian Roberto Firmino, the Senegalese Sadio Mané and (above all) the Egyptian Mohamed Salah, three immense players that Klopp will have managed to make run like if they were fourth division attackers while maintaining harmony between the last two named, thus demonstrating immense diplomatic talents. “If you ask me if I’m going to coach a team again, right away, I’ll tell you no,” he explains in the club video. In any case, I will never coach another English club other than Liverpool. I can say that 100%. I couldn’t even think about it for a second.” All the more reason to maintain and cherish the memories he left on the banks of the Mersey.