Without wishing to be rude, Jürgen Klopp has already learned that, for the time being, he is better off turning down photograph requests on his crash course into life in Liverpool. The other night, eating out with his coaching staff and their respective wives, two people from a nearby table came over. “I had to say no,” Klopp said, pointing out how quickly these photographs tend to turn up on Twitter or in newspapers. It was different, he said, in Germany and Liverpool’s manager was concerned about the impression it might leave of his working habits. “It looks like I’m always in restaurants and bars,” he explained.
In reality, Klopp has devoted himself to a week of intensive learning at Liverpool’s training ground, devouring hours of tape of their matches and perhaps wondering what he has done to deserve the bad luck that has ambushed him so far.
To lose one player to a ruptured knee ligament would be a grave misfortune; for two to be diagnosed with the same problem within the space of 24 hours is fairly astonishing.
Danny Ings and Joe Gomez have suffered the injury every footballer fears the most and Klopp could probably be forgiven for being a touch more sombre in front of another huge media turnout than in his introductory press conference six days earlier, even if he did flash a smile when the reporter from TV2 in Norway pulled out a Liverpool shirt with Normal 1 on the back and announced it was the bestseller in the megastore.
Klopp was in work mode, turning up in tracksuit top and shorts, rather than the jeans and boots he wore at Anfield last week, and after four months out of the game there was the sense he probably felt he had done enough talking now and wanted to see the team he calls LFC play some actual football.
“I’ve had a really good time in those four months,” Klopp said. “The holidays were the best of my life because they were the longest of my life but the best moment of this week was the first moment I was back on the pitch. I had to cool down myself a little bit, by not giving them too much information.
“I feel good. OK, the injuries are not good but we cannot change that. The rest is good. The staff, all the people working here, are very kind and very nice people. They all want to help us. They have a big heart for LFC. It feels good to work here.”
His message to his players is that he wants to see a different and “free” attitude, and it is when Klopp addresses these matters that it becomes clear why his teams at Borussia Dortmund and Mainz found him so motivational. “We have to open our chests,” he began. “Let’s run and fight and shoot, defend together and attack together, like your best dream about what football looks like. I want to see more braveness, more fun in their eyes. I want to see they like what they do.”
Ings twisted the knee during his first training session with Klopp in charge and tests have shown the former Burnley forward ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament, meaning that a player who has just broken into England’s senior team will be out for a minimum of six months.
The manager was already reeling from the news that Gomez had suffered the same injury playing for England Under-21s in the 3-0 defeat of Kazakhstan. There were certainly no hard-luck stories about Liverpool’s injury issues, when other managers might have been tempted to get in their excuses early.
Klopp’s preference is to remain positive, even though he is also missing Christian Benteke and Roberto Firmino for his first game at Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday. “I’ve learned that you do not think about the players who are not available because there is no chance to get lucky if you do this all the time,” he said. “We have Daniel [Sturridge] for the position and we have [Divock] Origi. Two strikers: I don’t need more.”
As for settling into a new home, Klopp seems bemused that the city’s paparazzi apparently found out the address even before he had the keys. “In Germany I have what they call an 08.15 face – not the best shave in the world, funny hairstyle and glasses.”
A doppelganger who turns out to be a car salesman called John Vena – or a Kloppelganger, as the Liverpool Echo called him – has been attracting publicity on Merseyside but Klopp seems more taken aback by the clicking he hears every time he opens his front door.
“I don’t like being photographed all the time,” he said. “It’s a funny job, to wait two or three hours for me to come out, take one photo and then go home, but that’s not a real problem. I’m only really interested in what we do here, behind the doors. Everyone has told me it [the attention] will cool down in the next week.”
On his other ventures into the city he has been learning about the mood of Liverpool’s supporters. “I have met two kinds of people in the last week. Most are: ‘We’ll win the league, we’ll win the league, we’ll win the league.’ And the others look a bit like: ‘What have you done? Why are you here?’
“Both are not right. The only thing that matters is we want to get better. We want to get back confidence in our own skills and quality. That takes time. Some things, you can change like this [click of the fingers], like mentality and readiness – but to get really tuned as a team takes time.”
