Fans can provide memories of Dortmund for Klopp

As an opening salvo, there are worse places for a football manager to start.

Jurgen Klopp’s words at his Friday unveiling as Liverpool boss will have been music to the ears of just about every Reds supporter. A self-confessed "football romantic”, the German's Anfield love affair, it seems, has well and truly begun.

“It’s not so important what people think when you come in, it’s what they think when you leave,” said Klopp, answering a question about the legacies of Shankly, Paisley, Dalglish and co, and whether he intended to match them.

Smart sentiments, and if Liverpool fans want to know what Klopp’s former clubs think of him now he’s gone, they needn’t look far.

Within minutes of his confirmation as Reds boss on Thursday came a tweet, sent from the official Borussia Dortmund account. It showed their former manager dancing his way across Abbey Road. “We read the news today, oh boy! All the best at The Kop, Jurgen Klopp. All the best at LFC,” read the message.

It was a classy touch, one which was followed by a raft of well wishes from Dortmund supporters. Klopp may not be at their club, but he will always be of it.

“When he left, there was almost a funereal atmosphere around the whole city,” says Uli Hesse, a Dortmund-born football author who has watched Klopp’s work at close quarters.

“There was a period of mourning, and there was genuine hurt and upset among supporters. You don’t often get that with a football manager.

“Basically, in Dortmund everybody had had some kind of contact with Klopp, whether it was outside the ground, in the shopping mall, the restaurants, at the training ground, wherever. He was visible, everywhere, and so when all of a sudden he was leaving it was a shock to the whole place.”

Klopp’s final game at the Westfalenstadion, a typically entertaining victory over Werder Bremen, saw fans hold up a “Danke Jurgen” banner prior to the match, and chat their manager’s name throughout it.

Afterwards the man himself, via a big screen inside the stadium, provided an emotional address to his adoring public, including the jaw-dropping, 24,454-capacity ‘Yellow Wall’ terrace, which had provided a memorable backdrop to Dortmund’s thrilling ascent.

He said: “It’s an extraordinary stadium, an extraordinary place but of course it’s only extraordinary because all of you have made it what it is.”

It was interesting, when researching Liverpool’s new manager, to refer to an interview he conducted with The Guardian’s Donald McRae prior to the 2013 Champions League final.

In it, he outlines just why he found working at Dortmund – as well as previous club Mainz – so special. The bond he forged with supporters went beyond football.

“Just like every person who works for Dortmund is a fan of the club, it was the same at Mainz,” Klopp said. “When I was a player there we had 800 supporters on rainy Saturday afternoons and if we died no one would notice or come to our funeral. But we loved the club and we have this same feeling at Dortmund. It’s a very special club – a workers’ club.”

At Liverpool, Klopp finds himself at the helm of another “special club”, one at which the connection between team and supporters remains vital. In many ways, it was the loss of that connection which, among other things, did for Brendan Rodgers at Anfield. By the end, Reds were almost apathetic towards their side.

With Klopp, that is unlikely to ever be the case. Though he was swift – and smart – to downplay suggestions that he would immediately bestow his brand of “heavy metal football” on the Kop, there is no doubt that the style of play he will work towards is one that will be well received by Reds fans. It is fast, it is positive and, if executed correctly and backed with strong work in the transfer market, it can deliver stunning success.

At Dortmund, backed by the most fanatical support in Germany, Klopp built a team of the overlooked, the underrated and the unknown. Recruiting shrewdly and motivating wildly, he managed to tap in to the passion and fanaticism of his fans, and produce a side which reflected those qualities.

“Quite simply,” he once said. “My team runs. And runs.”

Klopp also referred to the idea that his team would be recognisable to its supporters regardless of what colour their shirts were.

“Even if we play in red,” he said, “everyone in the stadium should think, ‘Whoa, that can only be BVB’. When you sit in this stadium with your eyes closed, you should sense there is a passionate team on the field below.

“There are certain places where you can’t be pleased with staying back and hoofing the ball upfield. Dortmund is one of those places. We want to play the kind of football people remember.”

Liverpool, too, is almost certainly “one of those places.” Anfield is not always the loudest of stadiums – an issue not lost on many supporters – but it responds to teams that dare, excite and attack. It will respond to Klopp.

“When we played against his Mainz side,” says Hans-Joachim Watzke, the Dortmund CEO who took Klopp to the Westfalenstadion. “You always had the feeling they had one or two people more than your team because they had a lot of energy, organisation and a perfect plan, even without a star individual.”

A repeat at Anfield will get the Kop buzzing again. Certainly Klopp’s arrival on Merseyside this week has got Liverpool fans smiling again.

If he can repeat what he did at his previous clubs, they won’t just be forgetting their problems for 90 minutes, they’ll be dancing on the tables.

Source: Liverpool Echo

This story has been reproduced from today's media. It does not necessarily represent the position of Liverpool Football Club.