I was honoured to be invited to a BT Sport media event recently, where I asked a few questions to a few journalists. I questioned BT Sport German football expert Raphael Honigstein about Klopp, here’s what he had to say.
“I think Klopp would fit in at Liverpool in the sense that it’s a club full of emotions, a club that lives on the interaction between the crowd and the players. I think Klopp has learned to utilise that very well. He’s a passionate guy, he’s a motivator. He also has his tactical knowhow, but I think he thrives on the energy that he manages to create in the dressing room and inside the stadium.”
“What he would need though, and this goes for any club he goes to as well, is a Director of Football. Sometimes there’s a flawed view of managers, from an English perspective, as the guys who buy and sell players. He’s never bought or sold a player, apart from maybe one or two from Mainz that he picked up like Neven Subotić. But the DoF made all the signings. I don’t think he would want the responsibility of signing players. I think you need a great partnership between him and a guy who manages to bring players which fit into the system.”
“The way Liverpool have been buying and selling players has been… well, it’s hard for any coach to really understand what he’s doing. It’s especially hard for Rodgers who doesn’t seem to have a clear direction and changes his philosophy every six months. First it was possession, where they had to keep the ball at all costs and they got a hundred 0-0’s. Then the next year they played counter attacking football which nearly won them the league, and the year after that was when they crossed the fine line between being flexible and being all over the place.”
“I think perception is very important. As a player he needs to feel that the coach knows what he is doing, even if he changes 3/4 times a game like Guardiola. If it was Claudio Ranieri players would be looking at him and thinking that this is a joke, but because it’s Pep they appreciate it. With Rodgers, I’m not sure that’s the case. There’s a lot of change going on, maybe because he doesn’t really know what idea works. But yes, it would be hugely exciting to see Klopp come in.”
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Max
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