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| Hot dog anyone? |
ALONE on the halfway line at Anfield, Jurgen Klopp was transfixed.
While his players went through their warm-up away to his left, the Borussia Dortmund coach stood staring towards The Kop, holding his gaze for what seemed like an eternity.
It was a pre-season friendly in August 2014, one his team would go on to lose 4-0, but there was something about how Klopp was rooted to the spot that caught the eye.
If he was wistfully contemplating what it would be like to one day regularly manage in front of that bank of supporters, the opportunity to do so is now his to take.
Klopp's task will be to make sure Liverpool are hypnotised under his spell.
"Any club who can sign Jurgen Klopp can be happy because he is one of the most able and capable head coaches in Europe," Ralf Rangnick, the sporting director of Red Bull Leipzig who has known Klopp for almost 20 years, told Express Sport yesterday.
"At Dortmund, he turned the whole club around and played a kind of football that only a few teams played, not simply in Germany but in Europe."
New automatically feels better, though it would be to denigrate Brendan Rodgers, sacked on Sunday after owners Fenway Sports Group lost faith in him, to expect an immediate turnaround at a club which has slipped towards mediocrity while believing it remains among the elite.
Klopp is expected to be accompanied by trusted lieutenants Zeljko Buvac and Peter Krawietz, but he will not bring with him a magic wand.
Instead, Liverpool will have to rely on more conventional methods to recover the sheen they once took for granted before muddled thinking turned one of the most alluring jobs in football into one of the most difficult.
At Dortmund, he promoted a brand of "heavy metal" football. "I always want it loud," said the 48-year-old. "Fighting football, not serenity football, that is what I like."
It paid off with two Bundesliga titles (2010-11 and 2011-12) and an appearance in the Champions League final a season later when they lost to Bayern Munich.
The foundation lay in hard work and Liverpool's renaissance will follow similar tenants, although it will quickly become nature versus nurture.
Does the squad Klopp inherits simply need pointing in the right direction again? Or is it fundamentally flawed?
"I know there are many clubs in England who won't have double sessions during the week, but in Germany you won't find a single club without one or two double sessions a week," said Rangnick, himself a former coach of Stuttgart, Hannover, Hoffenheim and Schalke.
"Twice a week is normal. The way he wants to play, you cannot play this attractive, attacking, counter pressing football without the team being physically and mentally ready for that. It works only with intense training.
"Jurgen is the type of coach whose teams look from the perspective of what happens when the other team has the ball. He wants his team to always be ready and prepared to win the ball back.
"This is the only way to reach control over a game. That the whole team knows what it has to do when the opposition is in possession of the ball.
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| Jurgen Klopp is the clear favourite to be Liverpool's next manager |
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| Klopp took his Borussia Dortmund side to Anfield for a pre-season friendly in 2014 |
"His man-management is also of a high standard. On the one hand he is demanding, but on the other he is communicative; the kind of coach who loves his players and shows the players that he loves them and protects them."
FSG principal owner John W Henry looked at Klopp before appointing Rodgers in 2012 but could not prise him from Die Schwarzgelben.
In the summer just gone, the Americans opted against change and backed Rodgers to deliver.
Klopp's impending arrival interrupts a sabbatical taken after a testing final season at Dortmund when seven years in charge looked to have taken its toll and the loss of key players, such as Robert Lewandowski, checked momentum.
There is always an element of risk, though it lies more on whether Liverpool is the right fit for Klopp than the other way round given Anfield's constant state of flux.
How recruitment, the undoing of every Liverpool manager for a quarter-of-a-century, will work in practice and not just in theory remains a sub-plot of the club's own making given the fuss they made over the establishment of the now infamous 'transfer committee'.
"I cannot imagine a situation in Germany, more so with a coach like Jurgen Klopp, where anyone but the coach signs players," said Rangnick. "It is completely unfeasible in Germany that someone else signs players against the will and wish of the coach.
"Jurgen worked closely with a sporting director [Michael Zorc] at Dortmund and I cannot imagine any club would sign a player against the wish and will of the head coach.
"If the head coach says no, it does not make sense to sign a player because it is the head coach who trains the player and has to select the team."
Buckle up for the ride ahead.
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