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In an era short of admired leaders, Jürgen Klopp has been a rare role model. The German soccer manager, who announced on Friday that he will resign at the end of this season after nine years at Liverpool, offers numerous lessons for his counterparts in business and politics.
First, he became the embodiment of the institution he led. He always presented himself not as a simple technocrat but as someone who loved Liverpool FC. Joining the club as an outsider, he worked to understand what it meant to everyone involved in it. In his emotional hugs and runs along the touchline (and sometimes onto the pitch), the giant with the happiest smile in football expressed the feelings of every Liverpool fan.
When the club won its first English league title in 30 years in 2020, saying, “I never would have thought I would feel this way, I had no idea,” and cried. He told Liverpool fans: “It’s a pleasure doing it for you.” He probably wasn’t faking it, given that he has continued to perform virtually daily since 2015. He understands that the goal of professional football is a shared communal emotion.
Second, he treated his players and staff as human beings, not mere instruments for his own success. When a member of staff did not know that full-back Andy Robertson would soon become a father for the first time, Klopp asked: “How come you don’t know? That is the most important thing in his life now.”
Klopp wanted to know everything about his players — “who they are, what they believe in, how they got to this point, what motivates them, what awaits them when they leave the training.” And the I meant it: “I don’t pretend I’m interested, I’m interested.”
Klopp is often praised as a motivator, but in reality few top footballers need motivation. His human management was more sophisticated than that. His understanding of people helped him find the right words in clear, simple and cliché-free English, his second language. In 2019, after a 3-0 defeat in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final in Barcelona, he jumped smiling into the deflated Liverpool dressing room shouting: “Boys, guys, guys! We are not the best team in the world. Now you know. Maybe they are! Who cares? We can still beat the best team in the world. Let’s go again.” Before the return match at Anfield, said his players: “Just try it. If we can do it, wonderful. If not, it fails in the most beautiful way.”
He was lifting his men up and at the same time lifting the pressure: he gave them permission to fail. Instead, in perhaps the most impressive game of his tenure, they won 4-0 and clinched the Champions League. His Liverpool lost two more Champions League finals. With a little more luck, his success could have been generational. But even in the most difficult moments, all sectors that make up a club (owner, players, staff, fans, media) wanted him around. Klopp made ruthless decisions without making enemies.
Another leadership lesson: I could delegate. A football coach today is less autocratic than a CEO, supervising a staff of dozens of people. Klopp provided the guiding vision of a pressure match played at a frenetic pace: “It’s not serenity football, it’s fighting football, that’s what I like. . . “Rainy day, heavy pitch, everyone has a dirty face and they go home and can’t play football for the next four weeks.”
He left most of the details to the specialists. For years he outsourced much of his training and match tactics to his assistantŽeljko Buvač, whom Klopp called “the brain” of his technical team.
Klopp was so obviously the leader, an Alpha male blessed with empathy, that he felt safe enough to listen to others and admit mistakes. In 2017, when Liverpool needed a striker, the club’s data analysts pushed for the Egyptian Mo Salah to be signed. Klopp preferred German striker Julian Brandt. It took time, but Klopp was finally convinced to buy Salah. The Egyptian became possibly Liverpool’s most important player. Klopp later apologized to analysts for his mistake.
In a profession that attracts many megalomaniacs and then subjects them to inhuman stress, it was rare that he never took himself too seriously. He had opinions outside of football. for leftist politics, against Brexit – but he rejected the temptation to present himself as a universal leader. When Covid-19 was spreading in early 2020 and a journalist sought his views, he said Experts should speak, not “people without knowledge, like me.” . . I don’t understand politics, coronavirus. . . “I wear a baseball cap and I shave badly.”
His final leadership lesson: leaving at the right time, with dignity. Today he explained his resignation: “I came here as a normal guy. I’m still a normal guy, I just haven’t lived a normal life for a long time. And I don’t want to wait until I’m too old to have a normal life, and I need to at least try.”
He also admitted fallibility, with a typically well-chosen metaphor: “I’m a real sports car, not the best, but pretty good, I can still drive 160, 170, 180 miles an hour, but I’m the only one.” who sees that the tank needle is going down.” It was a message to all the failed leaders currently clinging grimly to power.
Follow Simon @KuperSimon and send an email to simon.kuper@ft.com
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