Jurgen Klopp has never had it better as a manager.
At Liverpool, he is in charge of the reigning Premier League and world champions, while he also boasts a Champions League winner’s medal from his time at Anfield.
The Reds possess some of the finest talent on the planet with Virgil van Dijk, Alisson Becker and Trent Alexander-Arnold well-established as the best players going in their respective positions and Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane continually staking their claim to be the best player in the world.
The majority of that squad, like himself, are under long-term contracts while, in FSG, he has owners who support his vision and are willing to back him with the signing of Thiago Alcantara a prime example.
If he wanted, he’d have a job for life. It’s why he extended his deal until 2024 late last year.
But he’s nearly been in such a position before, only to fall short at the final hurdle.
Prior to joining Liverpool in October 2015, the German spent seven years with Borussia Dortmund.
Like with the Reds, he guided them to Bundesliga titles in 2011 and 2012, as well as a Champions League final in 2013.
But rather that push on to build a bastion of invincibility, as one legendary Scottish manager once called it, Dortmund were unable to push on and keep Klopp’s all-conquering side together.
Turning the likes of Robert Lewandowski, Mats Hummels and Mario Gotze into household names, they lost star name after star name at a time when they could have been on the cusp of greatness, in turn allowing Bayern Munich to wrestle back control of German football.
Nuri Sahin was the first big-name to depart Dortmund in the summer of 2011 after their first Bundesliga title, signing for Real Madrid, while Shinji Kagawa joined Manchester United the following year.
Gotze famously chose to sign for Bayern Munich prior to BVB's Champions League final clash with their bitter rivals, while Lewandowski joined the same on a free transfer at the end of Klopp's penultimate season with the club.
With Klopp calling time on his Dortmund career in the summer of 2015, Hummels, Ilkay Gundogan and Henrikh Mkitarayn followed him out the exit door the following summer as they signed for Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Manchester United respectively,
And with Dortmund unable to close the gap on Bayern and replicate the Liverpool boss’ glory years in the seasons that followed, the likes of Ousmane Dembele, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Christian Pulisic have only continued their reputation as a selling club.
Klopp has spoken in the past of how the departure of Gotze in particular, which signalled the start of his Dortmund’s decline, was a bitter pill to swallow and saying it was ‘like a heart attack’.
“I had one day of happiness [after Madrid]” reflected Klopp at the time. “And then somebody thought ‘enough, go back down on the floor.’
“He (sporting director Michael Zorc) looked like someone had died. He said, ‘I have to tell you something’.
“Michael asked if I wanted to talk and I said: ‘No, I have to go'. That evening my wife was waiting because there’s a very good German actor, and a good friend, Wotan Wilke Möhring, in a new film in Essen and we were invited to the premiere.
“But I walked in and told her: ‘No chance. I cannot speak. It’s not possible to take me out tonight.’ There were all these calls from the club – we should meet in a restaurant and speak. I said: ‘No, I have to be on my own.’ Tomorrow I’ll be back in the race – but not tonight.
“I spoke to six or seven Dortmund players who were damaged in the heart,” continued Klopp.
“They thought they were not good enough. And they wanted to win together. That’s the reason it hurt them so much. But Bayern told Mario: ‘It’s now or never.'”
“I told him they will come next year. They will come in two years, and then three years. But he’s 20 and he thought: ‘I must go’.”
Had Dortmund managed to hang on to Gotze, who knows how things might have panned out.
They could have carried on winning trophies, together, and Klopp could have even decided to extend his stay with the club, robbing Liverpool of the opportunity to bring him to Anfield when persuading him to cut his sabbatical short.
But while Dortmund’s transfer stance was ultimately their undoing, at Liverpool the German has what he always wanted but never possessed at Signal Iduna Park.
Like in Germany with Dortmund, Klopp had the golden touch when after taking over the Reds, gradually returning them to the top of domestic football and even going one better than his former side in the Champions League.
But at Anfield, he has been able to keep hold of his star names with Philippe Coutinho, and perhaps Emre Can to a lesser extent, the only player he has reluctantly been forced to sell.
But by selling the Brazilian for £142m to Barcelona, he was able to take the Reds to a new position of strength with the arrivals of Van Dijk and Alisson, while Fabinho swiftly ensured that Can would not be missed in midfield.
While Dortmund were unable to keep winning trophies together, Klopp’s squad certainly have.
Speaking on the eve of last season, just months after winning the Champions League but being criticised for not strengthening his squad, the German spoke of how his side deserved another year together after missing out on the Premier League title by the narrowest of margins.
"There was never the intention to spend again because of the team we had last year which is a wonderful age group,” he said last summer.
"It’s only in England where you come up with 'now bring in more quality and new faces' and all that stuff at the end of a season.
"Divock Origi has a new contract and all the others have stayed – THAT is transfer business. I know people smile and even laugh about it, that’s just how it is.
"But keeping a team like this together is not easy. Half the world would like to have these guys. And they (other clubs) don’t throw nuts - they have money as well! It’s like this.
"We wanted to keep that team together and it means consolidation, pay the bills, play football, go for everything then after the season we can have a look what happened.
"But this team deserves another year together - that’s how it is. So absolutely it’s a bonus just keeping these guys together for another year."
Fast forward 12 months and Liverpool had finally ended their 30-year wait to be crowned champions of England.
Van Dijk, Alisson, Salah and Mane may remain the subject of speculation, with the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain inevitably waiting in the wings should the opportunity to pounce for one of the Reds’ stars arise.
But none of them have, publicly at least, shown any desire to call time on their Liverpool careers.
And with their winning side kept together, Red bosses have essentially learnt from Dortmund transfer mistake that gifted them their manager and handed Klopp the tools to carry out the job he always wanted.
