Jürgen Klopp assets

Short introduction

Jürgen Klopp is considered one of the most successful current German football coaches. The Swabian was associated with FSV Mainz 05 as a player and later coach for almost two decades until he moved to Dortmund, where he won the German Championship twice. After moving to the football motherland England, he also secured victory in the Champions League with Liverpool FC in 2019.

Early life

Klopp was born in Stuttgart in the wild 1960s on June 16, 1967 and grew up in the Black Forest with his parents and two sisters. Jürgen Klopp’s father was an amateur footballer himself and sparked his passion for football with his only son. As a child, Klopp dreamed of a great career as a footballer, coach or manager. His childhood idol was the Stuttgart international Karl-Heinz Förster. Klopp’s path as an active player was arduous: via small village teams and amateur teams, he ended up at Rot-Weiß Frankfurt and, with this club, which was coached by coaching legend Dragoslav Stepanovic, missed promotion to the second division in 1990 after losing to FSV Mainz 05. Nevertheless, this defeat was a game of fate for Klopp because it led him to Mainz, where he found his footballing home for the next 18 years.

Career

Between 1990 and 2001, “Kloppo” wore the Mainz jersey continuously and played over 300 games in the second division for the team. Klopp was used partly in the attacking midfield and partly as a center forward. His hunger for goal was only moderate, in the eleven years for Mainz he only managed 52 goals, but he managed the feat to score four goals against Rot-Weiß Erfurt in 1992 in a single game. Klopp played against relegation more often than during the front places, but Mainz always managed to stay in the league. In the 1996/97 season under coach Reinhard Saftig they just missed out on promotion to the Bundesliga with fourth place in the table. In the 2000/2001 season, Klopp then switched from the player to the coaching role and in the first year just made 14th place in the table and thus relegation. In his fourth season as a coach, he then led Mainz to third place in the table, which entitled him to promotion to the Bundesliga.

Career highlights

As a Bundesliga coach, Klopp remained loyal to FSV Mainz for several years, only when the Mainz team relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga and missed direct relegation did the coach and club part ways. Now Klopp’s successful time as a coach at Borussia Dortmund began. He took over the club in 2008 and formed a top team from the team that secured the German championship title twice in 2011 and 2012. In 2012, the DFB Cup won the double, the greatest success for a coach in German football. At the international level, Kloppo also led Dortmund in 2013 to the purely German final of the Champions League, in which Dortmund was defeated by Bayern.

After less successful years, Klopp left Dortmund for England in the 2015 season and became Liverpool FC coach in the Premier League. As runner-up in 2019, he narrowly missed winning the English championship. However, he won his first Champions League final with Liverpool in the same year after a 2-0 win over Tottenham and became the third German coach after Jupp Heynckes and Otmar Hitzfeld, who managed this with an English club.

Famous quotes

Jürgen Klopp is not only a brilliant trainer with great charisma, but also an extremely funny and quick-witted conversation partner who often blows cool sayings in interviews and press conferences. After a game of BVB, he summed up his young team “” When Dortmund last won here 19 years ago, most of my players were still breast-fed. ” Klopp is heavily involved in every game on the outside line and has allowed himself some freaking out against the referees. He remembered: “I’m an idiot. I have to apologize for that. ”

Amazing facts

Although Jürgen Klopp is one of the highest paid coaches in the world today and generates annual salaries in the high single-digit million range, not a single euro transfer sum was paid for him as a player. Since he initially only played for small amateur clubs, there was no transfer fee due when he moved to Mainz and he remained loyal to this club for so long, never had to pay a euro to finance Klopp’s club change. Klopp’s entry into the coaching profession was also curious: When his club FSV Mainz 05 stood with his back to the wall and shortly before relegation in the 2000/2001 season, coach Eckhard Krautzun was fired. Klopp, who was injured as a player, took on the role of the coach more or less spontaneously. Although he didn’t have a coaching license in his pocket, he did have a degree in sports, which qualified him as a coach from the club bosses’ perspective. That was a correct decision by the Mainz team in every respect.