Borussia Dortmund Coach: Jürgen Klopp

rwo power wrote:Well, in another interview I heard, Klopp explicitely added "when I am free" - that means he will only take the Germany job if he is not contractually bound to Dortmund anymore.

Edit: Oops, Urbanroots posted this already. I shouldn't post right after the first post in a thread ^^ - Ah well, better safe than sorry

RealGunner wrote:Klopp needs to stay in Dortmund and wait for Wenger to retire.

vanDEEZ wrote:if he can hold on to players like gotze and reus i see no reason why he would even want to leave. he has a great project he started there, all the confidence from their club. what more can he ask? its comfortable.

at a club like chelsea or real madrid the expectations are ridiculous. i do understand the draw, but i think it would be best for him if he stays.

It takes more than losing his star to keep Dortmund's Jürgen Klopp down
(c) Marcus Christenson, 8 August 2013

The Bundesliga season starts on Friday and the positiveness has returned for Klopp despite the dominance of Bayern Munich

Amid all the hype that surrounded the Bundesliga's two leading lights towards the end of last season, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, there was one moment which briefly deflated most people (apart from those involved with the Bavarians). In the week of the first legs of the Champions League semi-finals Bild broke the story that Bayern were signing Dortmund's best player, Mario Götze, for €37m (£32m). The club already leading the domestic league by a depressing margin, 20 points, were purchasing the most talented player of a generation from the club lying second. It was brutal.

"It is a catastrophe for German football," was the headline of a piece written by Carsten Heidböhmer in Stern. Lothar Matthäus, the former Bayern midfielder, said he was "shocked" and added that the deal – and the timing of it – was "damaging the credibility" of the sport. The fear was that the competitiveness of the Bundesliga would suffer. Would anyone be able to catch Bayern again? Even the Borussia Dortmund manager, the ultra-positive Jürgen Klopp, admitted that the transfer had hit him hard.

Luckily it takes more than losing his best player to his worst rivals to keep Klopp down. In July, as the Dortmunders gathered to start their preparations for the new season, which starts on Friday with Bayern taking on Borussia Mönchengladbach, his positiveness had returned. Well, to an extent. He admitted that it would be harder than ever to wrestle the league title from Bayern but said the rest of the Bundesliga should not give up.

In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, when asked what it would take for BVB to be champions again, he said: "An incredible amount. Bayern were probably the best team in the world last season. But despite that they could not beat us in the two games we played in the league. And maybe we can grasp a certain energy and motivation from the fact that we did not win anything last season. We have bows and arrows. And when we aim precisely, we can hit the target. It's only that Bayern have a bazooka. The probability that they will hit the target is clearly higher. But then Robin Hood was apparently quite successful."

Klopp has every reason to be positive. They have bought cleverly, replacing Götze with the Liverpool target Henrikh Mkhitaryan as well as adding the highly sought-after St Etienne striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to the attack while keeping Robert Lewandowski to his contract despite its having only one year to run. It is a huge gamble but it displays the feisty attitude of the German and European runners-up. They will not lie down.

Dortmund will also have been boosted by their 4-2 Super Cup win over Bayern, with Marco Reus in particularly impressive form. And Aubameyang said: "We're not far off Bayern. They have a great team with great players but we showed in the Super Cup that they can be beaten."

Bayern, though, start as favourites. They may have lost Mario Gomez to Fiorentina – he scored 39 goals last season, eight of them in the Champions League – and are about to sell the brilliant Luiz Gustavo to, possibly, Wolfsburg but those losses should be cancelled out by the arrivals of Götze and Thiago Alcântara, the Barcelona midfielder who was linked with a move to Manchester United and who scored a hat-trick in the Under-21 final for Spain against Italy.

The Bayern hierarchy has, for obvious reasons, heaped praise on the €25m newcomer, the chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, saying Thiago is a "fantastic player with great potential who will make Bayern stronger" while the new manager, Pep Guardiola, said "he is a good worker, has a good head and is good one against one".

Outside Bavaria, however, people are less sure. The former Bayern manager Felix Magath said he was sure the signing of the Spaniard would become a problem. "I see it as a problem that a Spanish coach signs a Spanish player. He [Guardiola] will have a problem with Thiago because either the other players will be unhappy because he plays all the time or, if Guardiola doesn't play him, there will be a lot of questions about the transfer fee. Guardiola could have saved himself that problem." The Barcelona president, Sandro Rosell, was even more scathing about Thiago, saying he was not disappointed that the player had left, adding: "We got €25m for a reserve player."

There are other challengers apart from Bayern and Dortmund, of course, with Schalke and Bayer Leverkusen chief among them. Schalke have kept Julian Draxler, who had offers from Manchester City and Real Madrid, and Leverkusen have bought cleverly with Son Heung-min (Hamburg) and Emre Can (Bayern) the most exciting arrivals.

A title race consisting of those four clubs would be exhilarating but it is unlikely. Magath, for all the problems he foresees with Thiago, believes Bayern can go the whole season undefeated while Hamburg's Rafael van der Vaart thinks Bayern's reserve side "would have a good chance of winning the title".

That may be an exaggeration but the sentiment is clear. Bayern will not relinquish their titles easily.

Jürgen Klopp: Borussia Dortmund are 'worth falling in love with'
Jürgen Klopp on his similarities – and differences – with Arsène Wenger, his love of 'fighting football' and why the great Barcelona side are 'not enough for me'
(c) David Hytner, The Guardian, Sunday 3 November 2013

Jürgen Klopp is pondering the similarities between himself and Arsène Wenger, between his Borussia Dortmund team and Arsenal which, on the face of it, appear to be numerous. Klopp, however, does not see it. "He likes having the ball, playing football, passes … it's like an orchestra," the Dortmund manager says, pretending to play the violin. "But it's a silent song, yeah? I like heavy metal."

Klopp's every entrance ought to be accompanied by a cymbal crash and it is no great stretch to imagine him laying into the speakers with a guitar. There is a wildness about the Dortmund frontman; a high-octane, all-or-nothing passion that overtakes him on match days. It feeds his explosive team and the 80,645 supporters that pack the club's Westfalenstadion, where 25,000 stand behind one of the goals to form the Yellow Wall. The place teems with energy and intensity. It is Klopp's home from home.

"For me, he is Sir Arsène Wenger, he is really something, I love him," Klopp adds, before miming a polite handshake. "But I'm this guy, with high fives. I always want it loud. I want to have this … " Klopp makes the sound of an exploding bomb. (An article with him demands stage direction).

"If Barcelona's team of the last four years were the first one that I saw play when I was four years of age ... with their serenity, winning 5-0, 6-0 … I would have played tennis. Sorry, that is not enough for me. What I love is that there are some things you can do in football to allow each team to win most of the matches.

"It is not serenity football, it is fighting football – that is what I like. What we call in German – English [football] … rainy day, heavy pitch, everybody is dirty in the face and they go home and can't play football for the next four weeks. This is Borussia.

"When I watch Arsenal in the last 10 years, it is nearly perfect football, but we all know they didn't win a title. In Britain they say that they like Arsenal but they have to win something. Who wins the title? Chelsea, but with different football, I would say. This is the philosophy of Arsène Wenger. I love this but I cannot coach this because I am a different guy. You think many things are similar? I hope so in some moments, but there are big differences, too."

Klopp will face Wenger in Dortmund on Wednesday night, in Champions League Group F, knowing that a repeat of the victory at Emirates Stadium the week before last would put his team in the driving seat to qualify. That 2-1 win was built on trademark pressing and quick transitions but what appeared to please Klopp the most was the statistic that said his players had run a collective 11.5km more than their opponents.

"Coaches will say that it's not important for their team to run more and they prefer to make games the right way," Klopp says. "I want to make games only the right way and run 10km more. It's a rule to give all and it can make the difference if you work more. If you don't have to give all and you still win, what's this? You don't like this game? It's like this [Klopp yawns]. What, you can win Wimbledon like this?"

Klopp peppers the conversation with tennis references. He was not impressed when his own meltdown at the fourth official that saw him sent off in the Champions League defeat at Napoli in September was attributed, in some quarters, to the pressure he felt. "No, I make this *bleep* face when I play tennis. That's the truth."

The 46-year-old is a talker, and he adds flavour with anecdotes and detail; some insightful, others more off-the-wall. He admits to being rubbish at DIY, for example. "You'd be waiting 30 or 40 years for me to build a table," he says. "I have more than two left hands."

He remembers his one and only meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson as lasting for two minutes and coming "during the most shitty moment of my life". He encountered Ferguson at Wembley after Dortmund had lost last season's Champions League final to Bayern Munich. "He said 'great season' to me," Klopp says, before indicating how his own chin had been on the floor.

It would be interesting to hear what Ferguson thinks of Klopp's look – the jeans and trainers and black-rimmed spectacles – given his more traditional sartorial values. "I don't think I have a chapter in his book," Klopp says. "Chapter One: How is Klopp looking?

"I'm sorry, he is British," Klopp continues. "You drink tea at four o'clock in the afternoon and nobody else knows why in the rest of the world. You drive on the wrong side of the road. We are different. But I'm sure I can have two days and two nights with Sir Alex Ferguson. I don't know what he drinks. Red wine, OK. He can have his red wine. I prefer beer.

"But we are like we are. He worked with Ryan Giggs for 20-odd years and when Ryan Giggs hears Ferguson's name, he doesn't go like this [Klopp pretends to vomit]. That is the best you can do in your life. Every day, every year, all the talk ... you know everything about this guy and you still like each other. That says everything about Sir Alex Ferguson."

Klopp loves to laugh and his is a very big laugh. He jokes that his ugly face is one problem and he turns to the journalist from the Sun. "You have the same problem," he says, uproariously. He has all the trimmings of the charismatic maverick and it is put to him that he would get on well with Zlatan Ibrahimovic, with whom he would like to work. "Crazy players love me," Klopp says. "I don't know why."

He is relaxed and engaging when he does not have his must-win game-face on and it is easy to see why the Dortmund players like him and, to quote the midfielder Nuri Sahin, will "run through walls for him". Most importantly, Klopp gets results. He has the highest points-per-game ratio of any Dortmund coach in history, together with two Bundesliga titles and one German cup.

It has combined to make him an attractive proposition and the predators have sniffed, particularly from the Premier League. Klopp does not want to say that Manchester City and Chelsea wanted him before they appointed Manuel Pellegrini and José Mourinho respectively – to him it is in the past – but the references are almost matter of fact.

"I know that some clubs were interested, of course," he says. "They thought about us. You know these clubs … they changed coaches last season. Man City? But I don't say anything about this. From other countries, they were also interested."

Many Arsenal fans believe that Klopp would be tailor-made as Wenger's eventual successor. Like Wenger, he came from a small club (Mainz in 2008); he promotes young players; he is wedded to an entertaining style and he hunts for answers when key personnel depart. Klopp has lost Sahin, Shinji Kagawa and Mario Götze over the past three summers, although Sahin has since returned, and he will lose Robert Lewandowski as a Bosman free agent next summer. Klopp believes that renewal is essential for progress.

But Arsenal and anyone else would have to wait until 2018, at least, for Klopp. He signed a new contract at Dortmund last Wednesday and he could not have been clearer about his intention to honour it. He had previously been contracted to 2016 and there was no pressure from either side to agree to the extension. But they did it because they wanted to; because the partnership feels right.

"Borussia Dortmund is the only club in the world where if I speak to a young player, he knows that I am his coach for the next four-and-a-half years," Klopp says. "We want to have this situation. The players are similar to the journalists. They always think: 'Ah, he says this and then Real Madrid call and he is away.' But this is the message: Everybody can call but nothing will happen. This is for sure and then we will see what's with the players.

"It makes me proud to hear that some Arsenal fans might want me, but it's not important for me to be proud. My mother is proud. It's a better feeling than if nobody knows me but it doesn't help me in the morning, it doesn't help me in the evening and it doesn't help me through the day."

Klopp's connection with Dortmund is total. He talks emotively about how the club is "worth falling in love with because this is pure football" and, also, the unique thrill of emerging from the dark and narrow tunnel at the Westfalenstadion, in which he has to stoop at various points, to be assailed by the colour and noise.

"It's a little bit like when you are born and your mother is [Klopp makes a face like a woman in labour]. Then, you come out and you see the best of the world," he says.

Klopp is the incurable romantic. To him Dortmund are the Rebel Alliance to Bayern's Death Star, but his club can compete. The players have an average age of 25 and they will enter their prime years over the course of Klopp's contract. "The important thing is new ideas, not money," he says. "It is important to make the next step. You always want to be the team that can beat the one with more money."