Jürgen Klopp: an apology. Like many other news sources, we might previously have given the impression Liverpool’s manager was a charming, successful, tactically coherent all-round hunk of competence. Headlines such as “Klopp’s Dortmund win Bundesliga title”, “Klopp leads so-so Liverpool to European final” and “Klopp: pretty much every other club jealous they didn’t hire him” might, in retrospect, have been misleading.
The Guardian is happy to correct its errors and in the interests of accuracy it will in the next few weeks be publishing a series of articles with headlines such as “Klopp – serial loser”, “When will Kloppo-Floppo finish the job?” and “Mad sad Jürg: my five-time final agony”.
Such is the way, of course, with football’s personality-driven churn. In his press conference after Liverpool’s Europa League final defeat by a superior Sevilla team, Klopp was asked about losing five successive finals with two different clubs. His response was familiarly lucid.
The story is not about me, Klopp said. Yes, it’s easier to say, here’s a manager who loses finals. That’s the problem. In reality there are so many variables involved that to suggest the result of a game such as this comes down to one aspect of one man’s personality, that it has anything to do with what happened at Wembley, say, three years ago between two different teams is a risible simplification. Just as it is to suggest victory is entirely a manager’s doing, or stasis, or mild improvement. This kind of reasoning is inherently limiting.
Yep. Good luck with that one, Jürgen. Or in other words, welcome to England where the corollary of continually overestimating the magical qualities of managers – father, teacher, spiritual guide – is that we are also honour-bound to rage against their projected failings. It was always a toss-up what part of Klopp English football would pick away at first. Some thought his excitability, a kind of Loony Kloppo schtick, just as Mad Out-Of-Date Louis, Mad Tight-Fisted Arsène, Mad Classy Manuel and Just Generally Mad José have all been safely dispatched this season.
Instead it looks as if losing finals is now set to become a Klopp thing, just as Pep Guardiola is now deemed a failure by some because the outline facts suggest he has a bizarrely specific hang-up over Champions League semi-finals.
The bad news for Klopp is his team lost in Basel in a way that seems to reinforce this sense of freezing in the moment. Liverpool stopped playing in the second half, spooked by Sevilla’s own champion surge. The players looked overawed, or overextended. They stopped following the plan, stopped passing quickly and running hard. Sevilla had 10 shots at goal in the second half and ran almost 3km more.
The most coherent argument for an innate, systemic flaw probably goes something like this. Klopp has a set pattern of playing. Not a complex one, or a system with any real built-in variation. On the other hand, in a one‑off game against good opponents, when everybody’s nervous, victory often comes from fine detail and adaptability. Finals are about finding a way to win. Klopp has only one way. His substitutions rarely change things, just refresh what’s there. Hence dead-ends, fixed gears, an inability to react.
Perhaps you could also suggest most finals happen at the end of the season, when Klopp’s hard-running players are more tired than the opposition. Or that his own relentlessness, an asset in the everyday grind, drains and distracts his players on these one-off occasions, prevents them from playing cold when the situation is already hot.
Still, the truth seems to lie elsewhere. Most obviously is in four of those five losing finals Klopp’s team have faced a demonstrably stronger opponent. Twice this was the all-conquering Bayern Munich of Jupp Heynckes, albeit the narrow loss in the Champions League final in 2013 came after Dortmund had thrashed Real Madrid in the semi-finals, itself clearly the work of a serial choker.
This year Liverpool lost at Wembley to Manchester City, Champions League semi-finalists, on penalties. Finally on Wednesday they met the three-times Europa champions, a more settled, grizzled, tactically grooved team in Unai Emery’s fourth season in charge.
Otherwise, Klopp’s Dortmund beat Bayern in the final of the DFL-Supercup in his first season but presumably that doesn’t count. Neither does the 5-2 shellacking of Bayern in the 2012 German Cup final, one of the few times Klopp has headed into one of these finals with a superior team at his disposal. Funnily enough, that same year Bayern also lost to Chelsea in the Champions League final. In Germany the Schweinsteiger set began to acquire a slight Klopp-style bottler tag, a Neverkusen sheen. Then they won the Champions League and the World Cup. So, maybe not that then.
It may be better simply to accept that modern football is like this, a hugely competitive, cash-stratified business of teams who hold the whip hand, who tend quite often to hoover up the trophies. Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United lost two Champions League finals in three years. Was he a serial loser too? Or did he just come up against the intractable Barcelona Supremacy? Klopp has to date managed ambitious secondary giants with an eye on the next level. He got there with Dortmund. He may do so with Liverpool. Either way the time to judge him is not on his past five unconnected one-off trophy games but on the next few years of graft and refinement, of finding a team that really does look like his own.
Certainly the current one is a temporary fix. Klopp took on a real camel of a squad last October, built by committee, bulging at the edges. Since when it has been a ragged season all round, all lost glasses, emergency appendectomies, emergency Steven Caulkers, drug bans, last-minute winners. Klopp hustled this team through to a final. There have been glimpses, exhilarating peaks, not least a thrilling 15-game ride in Europe powered by 11 different goalscorers.
Next comes the easier job of stripping out and paring back. This inherited team lacks the running power and muscular presence to suit Klopp’s preferred style. At times at St Jakob Park Liverpool were simply overpowered by a more imposing team. Emre Can didn’t have his best game but he is still raw and on an upward curve. Adam Lallana has found his inner scuffler. Central defence is being restocked. Hopefully Klopp will also indulge Daniel Sturridge a little. He may not hustle much but he is a genuinely high-class, inventive goalscorer.
In the aftermath of defeat Klopp suggested one day Basel 2016 would be seen as a significant staging post en route to the good times. One thing is certain. When he does get to lift a trophy again, it is unlikely to be because he’s learned, via some instructive bolt of lightning, how to win finals; more that these flickering gains have been nourished into a wider process of refinement and team-building, confirmation of a genuinely compelling character at work.
