Jurgen Klopp made this promise to Liverpool fans during his first press conference as their manager.
“When I sit here in four years I’m pretty sure we will have won a title. I’m pretty sure. If not, the next one will maybe be in Switzerland.”
So fans in Basel and Geneva eat your hearts out. That was October 2015. You’ve missed out on him. And this is what you’ve missed.
A manager who has now won two Bundesligas with Borussia Dortmund, a Premier League with Liverpool and taken them both to Champions League finals. Maybe next month to win it.
But a man who has done much more. Someone who revitalised two underperforming giants after fearlessly taking on the financial might of their bigger, wealthier rivals. And who delivered the Holy Grail.
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Because, after 29 years without lifting the trophy that said they were English champions, Liverpool were getting beyond desperate to win it again for the 19th time. For a club that won the title with effortless regularity in the 70s and 80s, their inability to take that habit into the Premier League era was consuming them.
As in 1965, when they’d gone 73 years without winning the FA Cup, the club and their fans had become manically obsessed with ending their famine. Shankly fed them the cup back then, now Klopp lets them dine out on the honour of being English champions. It’s doubtful they’d have done it, this year at least, without him.
They’d been close under Rafa Benitez in 2009 and again with Brendan Rodgers in 2014, but the goalposts had changed since then, as oil-wealthy Manchester City led by Pep Guardiola upped the ante. To just under 100 points.
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It felt like Liverpool needed someone with the power of Klopp’s personality and charisma to drive an inferior squad up to the frightening standards City set last season.
A powerful catalyst to drag a hugely-expectant fan-base that obsessed on a glorious past, into the future. Yesterday, as he led his side around a wildly emotional, barely-believing Anfield, it confirmed what most of us had known since his appointment was confirmed: Klopp and Liverpool were the perfect fit.
During his brief, post-Dortmund sabbatical, the offers flooded in, notably from Manchester United. Ed Woodward believed he was enticing Klopp with the promise of managing a club that was “an adult version of Disneyland” but the cheesy prospect of being the front for a commercial juggernaut made the down-to-earth, hipster from a humble Black Forest town nauseous.
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Liverpool, with its deep-rooted, working-class identity, its swaggering passion and huge potential, appealed far more. It was a place he knew he could connect with and would be given the chance to build, unhindered, from the bottom up.
At Dortmund he never bought players for the sake of it, and definitely not because of the size of their name. He preferred to make his own legends like Mats Hummels, Robert Lewandowski and Ilkay Gundogan.
He’s repeated that trick at Anfield. Identifying key building blocks at the back who would cost world-record prices, like Virgil Van Dijk and Alisson, refusing to settle for second-best.
But completing his defence with three others, Andy Robertson, Joel Matip and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who cost a mere £8 million. Sadio Mane and Mo Salah were bought for a combined £65 million. Klopp turned them into superstars who are today worth more than treble that.
He told Liverpudlians to cease doubting and start believing. They did. Even though that merciless machine from 35 miles down the East Lancs Road kept knocking that belief on a weekly basis.
He kept telling them to be prepared to suffer for the eventual goal. And they did. Right until the final whistle yesterday and an outcome as unlikely as it was at the same ground five days earlier when Barcelona were put to the sword.
In early March, when Liverpool faltered and let City claw back a seven-point lead, Klopp was accused by some of bottling the title race in the manner of Kevin Keegan back in 1996. Many rival fans openly admitted they would love it if Liverpool’s title challenge fell away.
The reason was clear. Klopp’s team was the real thing. Winning back their league title would not just make them unbearable, but possibly unstoppable.
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But he didn’t bottle it and neither did his players. They just matched the relentless nature of the run Guardiola’s men were on, convinced that one slip would let them back in and the promised land would be reached. It has.
In that first press conference Klopp cut through the ballyhoo surrounding his arrival with the words: “When I left Dortmund my last sentence was: it’s not so important what people think when you come in, it’s much more important what people think when you leave.”
Whatever happens between now and the day he leaves Anfield we know what the people will think of Klopp.
He’s immortal.
