Jürgen Klopp: Would You Go Back To Manage LFC...? The Real Reason I Fell In Love With Liverpool!

It was an intense time, we had to win football games but all the rest was on my plate as well.

I need a break and you cannot do that in that business, you cannot say give me a year, see you later.

So it begs the question, do you think you could ever go back and manage Liverpool again?

It's possible.

So what would it take?

You changed the club, you changed the city, you arrived at a time when clubs were in a period of dysfunction to bring that club back to its glory and you did that over and over and over again, how?

To win in a very decisive moment, you have to be the best team and to be the best team, everybody has to buy into that team and walk through fire together.

What do I get people to walk through fire?

I better go back to the start.

My mom was very caring, she loved people and my dad had expectations.

The problem was I was absolutely useless in most of the things, even with football.

My teammates were better than me and I thought I only can get on that level from the first until the last minute, I was a warrior on the pitch, but it made me the guy I am today.

And so my team plays a little bit more like a heavy metal band because you have 19 minutes and there's no guarantee to get anything, but the only chance to get something is to give you all.

So do you want to have the maximum success?

Don't waste time with holding back.

I want to know why Manchester United didn't pursue you.

No, they tried, but there are some reasons in that conversation which I didn't like.

Arnie Slott coming in after you and didn't change much.

That's super smart, not changing much.

And all of a sudden you win the league by some distance.

But this year, Liverpool have spent, what, 450 odd million?

You never had a transfer window like that.

Nobody ever told me that it's possible, that we can spend that.

You seem to always be successful.

How does someone succeed you?

You want to be able to become the best team in England?

You need to.

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So yeah, thank you.

Jürgen, to understand you and the man and the anomaly that you went on to be in your career and still are, what do I need to understand about your very earliest context, where you came from?

And how, can you point out to me how that very early context created the person you are today and that everybody knows you to be?

Jürgen, I think we all are who we are because of the environment we grew up.

My dad was a salesman and my mum came from a family and my grandpa had a brewery and she worked there, blah, blah, blah and all these kind of things.

So, but her only purpose was her kids.

She loved me more than her own life, definitely.

And my dad had expectations.

He loved me as well, but he had expectations, but my mum didn't.

So my mum was just happy that I was there.

And my dad had always something where he was not really happy with.

And all the things my dad wanted me to do, I loved doing.

So he wanted me to be a sports guy, each sport, tennis, skiing, football, that was his life.

So he wanted that his son is good at that and he loved doing it.

If I would have been, I don't know, sitting at home and drawing or whatever, he would every day take me out and say, go outside and play something.

But then pretty quick, when I became better, it was never good enough.

And I was, he always, so that was the process.

So that's how I was brought up.

That's him.

That's definitely him.

Yeah.

Can I keep this picture?

Of course you can keep.

That's good.

That's good.

Because I have them, but I'm not sure where.

Yeah, exactly.

Good looking guy, yeah?

Yeah.

Was he a tough, tough man?

Yeah.

It's not long ago.

I never, I never got hit by whatever, never, never, never.

It was just, he wanted to, to bring the best out of me.

I think that was what he wanted.

Tough in a way, yeah?

How people who are brought up in that time probably, but not tough, endless, that you thought, you don't want to have to do anything with him.

No, no, no.

I loved him to bits and he loved me.

He was very proud, but never, never said it.

And these kinds of things.

So he was a good guy, a really good guy.

But with his son, he wanted him to be ambitious and was a bit afraid that I might be not ambitious enough.

Competitive man, I hear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reading about stories of him racing you on ski slopes and sprint races and never letting you win.

That's true.

Who knows if it was right?

Probably it was right.

I don't know.

It was not nice in a way.

When you tell the story, it's like, my God, come on, let the poor boy win or whatever.

But he had no chance.

It's just, you stand on the touchline and you run to the halfway line.

And when you, and when you look back over the course of your career, are there moments where you have flashback to lessons that he taught you or principles or values that he taught you that you think, gosh, I got that from my dad.

The one skill I realized that my dad had without knowing that time it was a skill he could speak publicly.

You don't know that you have that, but I have it.

Today I know it.

I don't care if a camera is in my face or whatever.

I say what I have to say in that moment without being too worried.

What might people think about it?

If I'm convinced it's right.

And I say talking in public is not a problem.

It's probably from him.

My love for people unintentionally is from my mom.

So this mix of a very confident and a very caring, very confident dad and very caring mom

is where I was brought up in the middle of it.

And you wanted to be a doctor before, before then.

So you were aiming to be a doctor.

That didn't work out.

Yeah, that's true.

Why, why, why doctor?

No, it was always, it was something I wanted to do.

So in all this wonderful upbringing, it was pretty clear that money is an issue, not in a sense that we didn't have enough.

We always had kind of enough.

But I remember discussions, bad discussions about money, arguments if you want, who spent that, who spent that.

I was the little one.

I just sat around and listened to it.

But there was a moment in my life when I, when I realized I have to earn a lot of money that I can sort at all.

Well, I wanted to earn money to not having this kind of discussions with my wife or with the kids or whatever.

So it grew as a, as a, as a thought when you are a young man and you think, what could you do with life?

And for me, it was clear, I cannot earn my money with football because in my mind I wasn't good enough.

And then I got surprised by some people.

They thought, oh, there's something that could be interesting.

What did they see in you as a football player?

What was it that they, they saw in you as a young man?

Because I've got these wonderful photos of you as a young player.

And oh my God.

So in my village, I was a best player in my village.

So I scored the goals.

I was the fastest, all this kind of physical talent.

I was really fast.

Later on, when I studied sports science, I could jump far, I could jump high, all these kinds of things.

So it was a physical talent.

I was literally surprised by the approach from, from professional football clubs.

I didn't think, oh, who's coming?

So it was like, the question was, are you number seven from the game before?

Yeah.

Oh, come on.

Let's have a chat.

Do you want to come to Frankfurt?

That was the question.

It was before that.

It was 87.

And you were 20 years old at the time when you went to Frankfurt?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, a lot happens in your 20th year of life.

Yeah.

A lot happens.

That was a change.

Wow.

Yeah.

I came to Frankfurt.

It didn't take long that I met Mark's mom.

Your son's mom, yeah?

Yeah, exactly.

And then she got pregnant and December 88, I became a father.

Were you scared?

20 years old, become a father?

Massively.

When I heard she's pregnant, I wanted to run away and go, oh God, it's not me.

So, the moment when I got aware of the fact that I will be a dad, I was really scared.

The night, 13th December of December, 1988, when Mark was born, was the night when I became an adult and the night who changed my life in the right direction.

From that moment on, I was always more an adult than all the other people in my age group.

So, they were at the university, there were parties, I couldn't go.

They went on holiday, I couldn't.

I played football, low wages, third division Germany, had two other jobs, one in the morning, one at night, and playing semi-professional football.

That taught me the discipline I didn't have to learn at home, because I had no jobs to do in the house.

So, I got it a bit later, but it made me the guy I am today.

Because of that experience, when you became a manager yourself, did that become a bit of a personal reference point to understand the individuals that you were managing?

Because if you were managing a 21-year-old dad versus a 21-year-old that didn't have kids, did you understand them to be different?

One is, in your own words, one is potentially a man and an adult, and one doesn't know what that is yet.

Yes, of course. I don't just want to say I like people, and I'm super curious. Everybody has a story to tell, so I want to hear it.

I think I asked that question in part, because I heard stories that Sir Alex Ferguson would prefer players who had a girlfriend or a wife and kids.

Yeah.

And I was wondering if there's any truth to that, if they have a different stability or…

Oh, it's probably, yeah.

A couple of problems, you can have a great partner, married or not, and then everything is fine.

It's the wrong partner, it's not great. You have no partner, not great for some, and you have too many, it's not great.

So there are so many things in life, so I never thought about that. I heard about it.

I coached in Germany, a very successful manager, Otto Rehagel, I love him to bits, fantastic guy.

He had as well, I think he said it once as well, that he wants married players because they go home and stuff like this.

Yeah, that's not, that's one part of the personality, but not the overwhelming or the most decisive or whatever.

So it's like, and you need, football is a football game, you need the cheeky ones as well.

So you need them, the street smart, you need as well.

They get out of situations in life and on the pitch, stuff like this.

So it's a mix of everything. That's what I loved about football teams. I treated them, let me say 50% of the time, completely the same.

And 50% what he needs, what he needs, what he needs, but in front of the other teammates.

So players came to me, why do you treat me like that? You would never say that to him.

No, because he's from Argentina, grew up without a window and you are from Munich and everything was fine.

You want me to treat you like him, really.

To bring all these people from different areas in the world together, you cannot expect that they all tick the same way.

It's just not possible. Growing up in Germany is obviously different to growing up in Senegal.

It is different.

So, but then we come together in our dressing room and then everybody says, so this is the rule for all of you.

And yeah, be in time, of course, for all. Easy.

But then all the other stuff, come on, calm down.

You want a football team full of different skill sets, full of different talent, full of different personalities.

You want that because that's what you need. That's what makes you unpredictable.

But then you put just one, I don't know, helmet over it and say, so that's for all of you.

That's how we go. There are moments in the game where they have to act like this.

In all the other, in all the other moments, they have to be themselves. So treat them like that.

This is one of the most shocking, counterintuitive ideas that I've, that I heard from players with other managers, specifically because I've just interviewed so many of Sir Alex Ferguson's former players. One of the shocking things they all said was that he treated people differently.

And to hear you say the same thing as well, it, it, it really is the opposite of what you hear in business. In business, you hear that you have to be a consistent leader, that you have to be consistent, treat people the same.

Um, but in the world of football, people like you tell me, that's my true.

I think in business, in life, it's the same. So to lead, that's one, number one thing you lead yourself.

So that's the first one in the morning, you stand up, you have to kick your own butt and say, come on, it's not a great estate, but anyhow, we go.

And then, then the people you lead, you need to understand to do it properly.

So now that means you, you, you talk to them, you listen to them, you ask them, where are you from?

What's your background? What are we doing here and there? And why did you do that? And stuff like this.

So it means it's already in that conversation, it's clear he's different to the other guy.

It's not about the rules like punctuality, early in, late out, not about these kinds of things, but how can we get the best out of people if we treat them all the same?

It's crazy. It's in business. I don't think it is like that, but I've never, I only worked in this football business.

So maybe it's just working here. I cannot see that. For me, it's super important that you really pick the individual from where it stands, not from where you want it to be. No, actually where it actually is.

Can you give me an example that I would know of two people that you treated differently and why you made the decision to treat them differently based on their origin?

So you have a young player as an example. So Trent Alexander comes up to the first team, and then James Milner is already, I don't know, 31 or whatever he was that time.

So James makes clear, first and foremost, that Trent doesn't go crazy because he sorts all these kinds of things.

But there are so many things, just as an example, but James doesn't have to do this and that because you know he is doing it anyway.

So for Trent, you still have to educate the boy. This example, which you probably didn't think of, but it explains how different they are.

There are different age groups. One is 16 or 17, and the other one is 33. So that shows already that it's not possible.

So you are talking about the rules in football. So everybody has to work hard. Everybody has to do it.

In my case, everybody has to defend the shit out of the opposition team. So everybody has to buy into that. There's no, no, no, no.

I always said, if you're not Lionel Messi, you have to defend. You have to defend. Because I never had Lionel Messi, so they all had to defend.

For example, everybody has to do that. But then to get there, that they really grow together as a group.

In a group, everybody accepts that they are different. Otherwise, we are, I don't know, an army. And they are different.

But it's not just because we are the same shirt. We have all our own qualities. So to bring them to life or let them shine, yeah, you have to get treated in the right way.

And that's what I love to figure out. How is that possible? That was the conversations I had, the conversation with players during a season.

Of course, there were football talks, but we had already enough meetings. The most important conversations were the private conversations.

Why are, so when the player is not training well, could be, could, that he just is not ready for training.

Had a drink last night, didn't sleep enough. Or you ask. So that's all what you think. He looks like he didn't sleep enough.

You bring him in, ask him, what's going on? And he will be surprised. Most of the time, they either slept enough or didn't sleep enough for the right reason.

Because something happened and nobody could sleep. They had no drink, blah, blah, blah. But they lost focus right now because massive problems at home.

Without asking, you will never find out. So here's one guy with a problem. Here's another guy. He's flying. Don't treat them the same.

The one needs more support and the other one you need to bring down a little bit. So all these kind of, that's how you work with people.

In the end, what you want is that the job of a leader is to make the target, the aim, the final destination, whatever, that clear, like the sun, that everybody's automatically going there.

And you don't have to push them every day and say, by the way, there's the sun. Let's run there.

So that they know it. On the way there, you support them in different ways.

It's not so important what I want to say in a moment of anger or whatever. It happens. Emotion, do that to us, especially around a football game.

You shout something, did I really say that? But it's not so important in a talk conversation with people, which depend on you, you are responsible for.

It's not so important what you say. It's much more important what they need to hear.

It's not them telling them what they want to hear. No, what they need to hear to deal with their situation.

So that's what leadership means. Not just telling them off for whatever. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. Try to understand why.

And that was, I love that part in my job. And I still do that, if you want, right now. Not with world-class players all the time or coaches, point directors, whatever.

They're all young. Younger than me, at least. And that's how I understand my role and understood my role.

Was there certain players in your team that you felt you could be tougher with and others that you felt you could never really be tough with because that would make, that would hurt their performance?

I'm reflecting on that.

Yeah, of course. Of course. You have them. Sadio Mane and Mo Salah are two top examples.

So, in the end, not a lot of people who saw it coming. We knew they are great. We knew they are massive talents. They have fantastic potential.

But they were not who they became later on. In that time, it's not that they came to Liverpool and said,

Boss, I just want to tell you, I defend anyway, so we don't have to talk about that. Just explain to me how we do it.

And we, obviously, to be successful as a football team, you have to organise a football team to get stability.

To get stability, you need to find a way to defend properly and together.

If you have that, based on that, they can start flying.

Then we, then let's talk about the football part. So, and now there are obviously no defenders, but we were famous for our pressing and counter-pressing.

I talked a lot to them and it was, and the way we spoke about it was just 100% clear.

You want to win more often than not. You want to have the maximum success. You want to be able to become the best team in England at one point.

Yeah? Okay, then do that. Come on. So, agreement. And then from there, we went on.

But then with years, and not because they changed or whatever, here a little bit less, there a little bit less, and I have to decide, do I go for them?

Like I would go for a young boy playing in that position and say, come on, turn, run, fight, jump, and take them off in a moment.

No, of course not. You don't do that in that moment. It's a, it's a story in the newspaper.

We had this one argument, I think, with Mo at West Ham at the, at the sideline when it didn't start and I brought him on and he was not happy.

The problem, our problems then are always in public. It was not a real big thing, but in the moment, we didn't agree, definitely.

So, how do you deal with that the next day? I think I can say, we have a very good relationship today, even though on that day it didn't look like.

And that's all the things. So, you learn, you try to do it the right way, you try to show the players respect, but at one point, it's never enough.

And you have to accept that as well, because the players, they grow, they get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And at one point, you hear years later, he never spoke to me.

Whatever, another player from wherever says about a former coach, about me, about Jose Mourinho, he never spoke to me.

I don't know, we spoke a lot. We just can't remember. And we didn't speak what you wanted.

I didn't tell you what you wanted to hear. So, you can never make it 100% right, but you can only do as good as it's possible for you.

And that's what I tried all the time, to create a relationship where even when we had arguments, we always found a way out as me, player.

And it never got carried into the team, that I lost respect, they lost respect for me because I acted that way.

So, we always stayed together. We always find a way that they understood, okay, it's really important that we get through this, that they sorted, the boss sorted with him or the boss sorted with us, that we can go from here again.

From a very young age, one of the things I found really surprising is in, as I was going through all of these football teams you played in as a young man, it appeared that you were always the captain, repeatedly assigned to be the captain.

And I wondered why, what was it that you were doing from a very young age that meant all of your coaches back then asked you to be captain of the team?

I have no clue. The coach I learned the most of, Wolfgang Frank, when he came back to Mainz, he was at Mainz, very successful spell, left.

And then we were in trouble again, he came back, and I was the captain.

And we had a very experienced player from a first division team coming to Mainz in the second division, Lars Schmidt was his name.

So, and Wolfgang, it's like, Jürgen, can we talk?

Yeah, of course. Jürgen, I want to make Lars the captain.

Oh, yeah, good.

So, then you are not captain, I'm like, yeah, I know.

So, it was exactly like that. It meant nothing to me.

So, my role was not, I was a leader in the team, not on purpose.

I was on the pitch, an aggressive leader, which I didn't like.

So, heart rate above 140, I lost it very often, in a very, very, not good way.

So, really aggressive talk, shouting at everybody, and in all that, really, it was, I had to, very often, I had to apologize to my teammates.

Where did that come from? Because you're, I don't, I don't know.

There's a real dichotomy with you, because you're such a sweet, kind guy.

You have your mother in you, in terms of the empathy and the love of people.

But then there's this other explosive part.

I didn't like it at all.

And I was afraid, when I stopped playing, that I'd take it over.

So, I was emotional, I had moments where I lost it with referees and stuff like that.

But, generally, I was really, I'm a very calm person.

So, people think, because I'm probably, I think I'm a motivator or whatever I do, get up in the morning and come in the dressing room and say, come on, boys, today we go again.

Not at all.

I mean, it happens from time to time, but not that often.

No, I have no explanation for it.

But, if I would have had an explanation, it was a little bit, I knew I'm not good enough, actually.

My teammates were better than me.

And I thought, I only can get on that level if I squeeze everything out from an aggressive point of view, stuff like this.

So, that was a bit my explanation, because they are so much better.

But, if I calm down and want to play cool football, yeah, I'm out.

You eventually become the manager of Mainz.

Yeah.

You're my age when you get that job, and the former manager's been sacked.

The club have never gotten to the Bundesliga, the first division in Germany.

You don't have experience managing a club of this size or scale previously.

The chairman comes to you, the owner comes to you and says, they want you to do the job.

Why did they want you to do the job?

Because I didn't find anybody else in the short period of time.

So, we played Sunday, and the next game was on Wednesday.

The idea was just to do that game.

So, the whole story is that Eckhard Grauzohn, the manager at that time, we lost the game on Sunday, and we had a little camp, a crisis camp, let me say, because on Wednesday was another very important game.

We had to play, so he took us to a hotel, that we stayed there, have two good sessions, and then we go for this very, very important and maybe decisive game.

And at night, we had a meeting, a meeting with all the players, and he said, gentlemen, I want to ask one question, do you still trust me?

Are you still behind me?

I don't want to answer now.

I order beer for all of you.

I go out, half an hour, I come back, and you tell me.

So, he goes out, we just bring some beer in, we sit there, look at each other and think, huh?

And discuss a little bit.

And I was not captain at that time.

I was not the captain.

But then, it's like that, the decision's no.

What?

Yeah, he asked.

Why, you ask?

No.

No, no.

So, and it's like, everyone's in it.

Now, we have a discussion, yeah, the majority.

Some people, some players didn't speak, but it was clear.

If you ask, the answer is no.

So, it's like that, I'm not captain, but the captain says, Globo, you tell him.

I tell him.

Why?

Oh, okay, but he comes in, he comes in, and he said, and, and that, actually, no.

And he was shocked.

He was really shocked.

He was like, he didn't expect it.

It's more like a little thing to do, and then we say, yes, we go through that together, something like that, but we said, no.

Why?

Because he was not the right person.

Why?

Because we played bad, and he was, I love Eckhard Grauzen, but that time for that team was really, he was just not the right coach.

That can happen.

It doesn't say anything about you.

But we did, wrong training, wrong lineups, wrong tactics, wrong everything.

So, that's how things go bad in the wrong direction in that time.

And we had no, that time, and we didn't have to make the decision, yeah, who can take over, or that we just could say no.

He could have said, okay, I will prove you wrong, or whatever.

But he ran out and said, tomorrow morning, nine o'clock training.

Okay.

And then he wanted to do a press conference where he wanted to tell the public that he kicks out all the experienced players and starts now the rest of the season and plays only the young kids.

So, I was one of the old players.

I was 33.

But I didn't know that that should happen.

So, he called the sporting director, we need a press conference, and I want to talk to them and tell them we change everything.

And the sporting director says, yeah, we do a press conference, but the subject will be, we sack you.

Okay.

So, done.

And now they didn't have a coach.

And then they called me, and for that game, can you do it?

And I said, yeah, yeah, I can do it.

And I did it, and we won the game.

And they didn't find a manager, so we had Sunday and other games.

The first game, we won 1-0.

The second game, we won 3-1.

Yeah, from the first seven games, we won six and drew one.

So, and we stayed in the league pretty comfortably.

Comfortably is incredible.

We were a bunch of friends.

They were all my friends, and I was their boss.

They had to tell me that I changed from now on in the coaches dressing room.

What are you doing here?

Yeah, here's the coaches.

That's your office.

Okay.

The first night, we had a twin room.

Yeah.

So, and I got one more game to sleep there with my friend, you and Klamny, they're in the same room.

And then the next day, they all told me, yeah, you get your own room.

Oh, okay.

So, but all the rest, we were a real bunch of friends.

And they respected me from the first second.

What was your approach going into that?

You go from being a player to a manager of these boys.

Like, what's in your mind?

Are you thinking, I'm just going to let them do whatever they want to do?

I'm going to...

We had Wolfgang Franke, very, very, the best manager we all had when we were at Mainz.

She was an exception.

We, at Mainz, we were a football team who lost all the games when the other team had better players.

I think it sounds normal, but, you know, in football, it's a way to win games anyway.

We never had that.

So, then Wolfgang Franke comes in and implements four in the back, ball-orientated defending.

And we did nothing else than that.

And we changed overnight into the one opponent nobody wanted to play against.

We were like machines.

We were like machines.

We were not great footballers.

We were like machines.

There were games.

Our goalkeeper didn't touch the ball once.

We were just defending.

It was new that time.

So, it was really for all of them.

It means we all became believers in that.

Then Wolfgang left.

And none of the other coaches could do that.

None.

There was no connection to the coaches after Wolfgang.

So, I was one of the players who benefited massively from Wolfgang Franke.

And now I arrived.

And the only thing I did when I, the two sessions I had were both exactly about that.

Four for two, ball-orientated movements.

And we go for MSV Duisburg that time.

They were third in the table.

We go for them like nobody else.

But I like these moments.

I like to find a reason why it makes sense that why we give our absolute all in a moment like this.

Why we don't invest only the minimum.

Why invest the maximum.

Why we would regret it if we don't do it.

How better life is if we do it.

How much more fun it is if we do it.

I love these moments.

And probably something like that.

I told them.

And from that moment on, nobody wanted to play against us anymore.

So, like, we were like, wow, animals.

It was great.

It was a fantastic time.

Same team pretty much changed overnight.

So, you fixed the defensive situation, the formation.

And you also told the players in that dressing room a story of why we had to give everything.

Show the, they wrote us off.

Show the outside world.

Whatever you can do.

Most of the time it was real life.

But that time, so, in my meetings later on, I never prepared in a way that I wrote something down or whatever.

Our life was preparation.

What happened during the week with us in the world.

That was preparation for a meeting.

I never thought long about it.

Just remembered it when I needed it.

We spoke.

I told the boys.

But that time, they needed one person to believe in them.

And I did.

It was not that I had to convince myself.

I have to tell them now.

Before that season, I told in an interview, this is the best squad my team ever had.

It would be really difficult for me to play.

But good for us that the team is so good.

And then we were in a hopeless situation before I took over.

So, when I became the manager, I was the one who thought, this team is incredible.

Nobody knows it yet.

But we will make sure in a few weeks they will have a sense, at least.

How important did that prove to be, this idea of making sure that the players you have throughout your career had belief in themselves?

That's all.

It's all about that.

It's not football.

It's life.

If you had no, when you started your podcast, people probably told you, well, that might be something for you.

But you were not sure.

And then with each little thing here and there, oh, how many people listened to your first podcast?

Do you remember?

No, no, no.

I think I read it somewhere.

40?

Something around that.

It was under 100.

Yeah.

So, it's a start.

So, it's a start.

And all the rest is if you want history.

And that's always in life like that.

That it's just, give it a chance.

Of course, it makes sense you believe in yourself.

But not everybody can do that.

But then if you meet somebody who helps you with that, who has a perspective, who can see something in you, yeah, then tell.

Tell them.

Why you should keep it for yourself.

Oh, my God.

I think he's a talent.

She's a talent.

Whatever.

Well, yeah, she's good at that.

He's good at that.

We don't tell each other.

So, where's the problem?

Did someone do that for you?

It told you that you should believe in yourself.

They saw something in you.

Once I said, I never struggled with confidence.

But I don't know why.

That's the truth.

But it's true.

I never struggled with confidence.

There's no reason for it.

My two best friends in school were genius.

And we sat together doing exactly this, reading the same books, invested the same amount of time.

They had the best A-levels in school.

And I was far off that.

So, a normal reaction would be, I'm a dump, obviously.

But I never thought that.

And I don't really know why that happened.

So, I took it how it was.

I thought, oh, respect.

You can remember all these things.

Crazy.

I can't.

But you had lots of players that struggled with confidence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I tried to create a situation to make sure that the player, if they are not confident yet, they are confident.

But, you know, there are moments when they lose it.

Confidence is like, perhaps, once there's a little flower and constantly somebody steps on it.

It's like that.

Oh, and then it's growing again.

And, oh, now we are confident again.

Stuff like this.

In football, it's really difficult because it's like you cannot play without making mistakes.

So, if a mistake costs you confident, that's a real challenge.

But I try to.

If you would believe as much in yourself as I do, that would be a start.

But as long as you cannot do that, just trust me.

So, you are good because I don't work with, not with other players.

I don't waste time.

I don't.

That's what, and it's true, I don't.

So, I really, I really see something.

And if I see it, I'm patient enough to work on it.

Much more patient than the public wants me to be.

But, of course, the idea is that one day I help you learn flying, but in the end you have to fly yourself, obviously.

I cannot do that for you.

That's what it is, football.

You have to perform alone.

They cannot look at me.

What should I do?

And that's my job, is to prepare them as good, to make it the education, the coaching, as wide.

I just pick for my dad's idea, but not too much as well.

It's, yeah, it's obviously, it was a good time in my life doing all these kind of things.

I worked with some of the best footballers in the world.

Really good time.

Do you sometimes have to lie in public to protect a player's confidence?

I wonder this, because you see managers come out and say, oh, he can't play because he's injured or whatever, and they say things.

But I wonder sometimes if managers are protecting players because they're struggling.

Yes, we protect players.

I'm not sure I ever had to lie, to be honest, I don't know.

But we protect players.

Super important.

So, for me, super important.

He lacks confidence.

That's in football obvious.

You see that.

You run one-on-one on a goalie, and you don't make it.

You can see it.

It's because you don't have confidence.

That's how it is.

There's not a lot of other reasons.

It can be wind, weather, ball, opponent.

It's there, but you do it once, you do it twice, three times.

Yes, that's not good for the confidence of nobody.

Having that in training, the job is not to talk too much about it, just to give him a chance to get confidence back with the things you do in training.

That doesn't last forever.

So, the one thing you have to protect players from is public.

Try to, because they are ruthless in moments.

They don't care until something happens.

So, there were supporters sometimes.

I think we were really lucky with that.

We created that bond between the supporters and the team, that they were not angry, disappointed, yes, but not angry in a way that I don't want to see them anymore.

So, that helped.

But, of course, we have to protect them sometimes.

We have to protect them sometimes from themselves as well.

So, that's the job.

Did you have to involve yourself much with social media usage of your team members?

And did you ever consider someone's social media usage when you were considering signing them to join the club?

Because I think this now, as a Manchester United fan, I think some of our players are posting on social media little indirect messages and little emojis and commenting things.

I just think, oh, God, troublemaker.

We had a situation that players texted us or posted something at night and deleted it, but I still got aware of it.

So, not that I read it, but people tell me, oh, last night, didn't that happen?

When?

Three o'clock.

Three o'clock?

Okay.

What did you say?

This and that.

Oh.

What I do in these situations, even delete it, I go in the dressing room and they all lie on the house.

Last night, this and that's happened.

Uh, got deleted.

I know what's there, but maybe you want to tell everybody?

You would ask them to say it in front of everybody?

Yeah.

Not nice, eh?

The thing is, I don't go for them and tell them, how can you write that or whatever.

So, I said, come on.

Somebody told me, so I know it.

Ah.

Not important, really, but come on, tell the whole team what you wanted to say.

And then it's not great.

I don't like to bring people in that, but I think that's a deserved punishment for something like that.

But actually, the effect is, nobody ever did it again.

Because nobody wants to be in that situation in the dressing room, sitting there and be the one who has to explain something he did last night or whatever.

I discussed individual problems, if it was okay, in front of the team, if it was important for the team.

Yeah.

Come on, explain why you did that.

Why you went out that long.

What happened in the last two hours?

Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay.

This photo here is of things going well for you.

Yeah.

Minds?

before i had that to get here we that's these are tears the tears the year and two years before were not for the same reason so you probably know we didn't get promoted for a point and a goal first a goal first a point then a goal and then this happened that was the first day when it

really went well so this was the day that you got mine promoted for the first time in their history

yeah but before winning that i i learned how to lose this is very important i would say i think that's again to learn even though you want to be as successful as somehow possible you have to accept that from time to time you lose and then keep then when you then keep going you have a good chance if you learn from it a defeat is a defeat if you don't learn from it if you learn from it's a

very very important information and obviously in football we have a lot of opportunities to get beat and opportunities to learn from it but this was the biggest relief in my life not happiness that i was just pure relief the pressure was mounting i was crazy not only myself nobody not from outside i don't know even over the outside world thought but to make it happen that year

that was really special but it took two years of coming close yeah yeah and dealing with the disappointment yeah true when i spoke to jamie carriga i asked jamie carriga actually this earlier this morning i said i said to him you know what what was he curious about with you and this is actually what he said he said there were so many near misses in your career whether it was in the champions league or i remember when you were head to head with man city that in that season and you were one point shy of winning winning the league and his question was he's fascinated with how you

you were so good at dealing with the disappointment of near misses because sometimes near misses can cripple people they can turn them into a downward spiral it can be like the plant that got stood on it can crush someone's confidence but it appears through your career that near misses ended up being positive forces for you

it's not that i knew that always but what made me spoke about very early but what made me the person i am these people of course mom dad my faith as well so and i i knew

always that i'm not here to get everything i am here to give everything so

that doesn't help in a moment when you when you when you fail for a point

but in the general understanding as a person of course it helps so i'm not surprised that i fail i don't i don't think i don't see myself as a constant winner in my in my mind i see myself as a constant tryer so i don't know constant winners but there might be some out there but i just can't imagine a world it would be like that you know all all people running around there all the happy people that win all the time nobody wins all the time nobody does so

it's all about dealing with the things you want and not get and then you wanted more and or not anymore or whatever so the moments were not great but i learned it here doing it that day changed the the destiny of the club of meins05 that's how it is my destiny the player's destiny changed everything so we wanted it that hard but we learned before we have to try harder and that's what i always took if you don't get the result you want try again and try harder

it was christian that gave you that job wasn't it yeah mr heidel christian heidel i am i spoke to christian heidel he made his english is very funny isn't he yeah i've had i've had to i'm going to translate it for the viewers but i'm going to actually play what he said to you in in german

oh of course so you can hear it here we go global yes dear global we've known each other for exactly 35 years now first we were both players then you subsequently became my esteemed coach it all started in mitz you changed an entire club you changed an entire city back then we were promoted to the bundesliga together and today mainz has been in the bundesliga for over 25 years back then that was actually unimaginable you go to dortmund change your club change an entire city and we never

every title there is to win you move to liverpool and the same thing happens for the third time you change your club you change your city i don't think any coach before you has ever achieved that and i'm always asked what makes jürgen klopp special to this day he has simply remained a genuine person always authentic which is incredibly important apart from the fact that you are of course an outstanding expert i hope we'll see each other again soon on our little shared island in majorca um and have a great day and lots of fun with your podcast wow

yeah

global i told you you changed a club you changed the city yeah you did that over and over and over again you went on and did that again at dortmund um winning a huge range of awards there at a time when they were weren't considered to be hopeful and then you went off to liverpool and did the same and as you i was reading about how when you travel to liverpool there was 30 000 liverpool fans watching your plane fly across um the channel to liverpool because they're all very excited and you arrived at a time when they were in a period of dysfunction kind of similar to where

manchester united are now i guess yeah and you managed to bring them up from being a team that were dysfunctional hadn't won there was a lot of pessimism around the club i think as a man united fan i was hoping and wondering that if liverpool would ever come back i was hoping they would never come back again but you brought them back annoyingly when you when you arrived at liverpool that day you said in that press conference that you're the normal one i remember that what what did you observe when you arrived what was the culture what was the feeling and what was your first thought about what

you had to do to to bring that club back to its glory the feeling i got i had roughly a week

to to think about everything from the op from the first call to the signature i think did you have other offers from other clubs oh in that moment not but in the summer i had a lot of offers like before i mean i when i finished at dortmund um but in that moment it was just liverpool but it was kind of destiny because i didn't want to it was not we were on a family holiday in with the with the two boys well i know i is sitting there phone goes my agent why is he calling boys look at my face and i think liverpool and the both yes the boys yeah and when i looks what

what is he and she didn't see my lips when i mean i spoke what and realize oh god we start again before she knew we will we will um go to liverpool why did your boys come on if you're not a man united fan you know what what liverpool means for two people um and they they they yeah they loved it and we we fell instantly in love with that club so did manchester united ever call yeah i spoke to them

so in the year when sir alex retired they they spoke to me yeah yeah of course they were interested at one point so i was that time i would have been interested i was a young i've had a sensational team at dortmund my god so somebody they probably thought what is he doing there um later on i heard that my players handle adam lallana james mellon so that they flew to to to to a real madrid when we played the semi-final in the championship to watch us i wanted to see

what is dortmund doing my god what a football that is i mean you can't get bigger compliments it's really it's really good i want to know why manchester united didn't no no no they tried i it was wrong time wrong moment for me i was in i had a contract at dortmund i wouldn't have left not really for for for nobody in that time they just needed a manager but the manager they wanted in that case now it was one of a few options i think um so it was you that turned down manchester

united not manchester united turning you down yeah that way so i yeah so we need someone else

on negotiations we need yeah no no no he's not there anymore the guy who negotiated that so um there are now other people in charge it's long ago long ago so what why wouldn't i'm gonna like

manchester united's often known as the biggest club in the world why wouldn't you take that job

why didn't you take that job manchester united the great manchester it's just typical we are now not in private in a private space so there are some reasons what the people in that conversation told me which i didn't like oh really so united was that big we get all the players we want we are like we can this we get him we get him we get him we get him and i was sitting there

so it was not my project it didn't feel like my it was a wrong time but on top of that it was not my project i didn't i didn't i didn't want to bring back i don't know pogba paul is a sensational player my god but these things don't work usually but these kind of things or cristiano my god we all know that he's the best player or together with messi the best player in the world so but bringing back never helps in that time in 2013 it was obviously not about cristiano maybe about paula i'm

not even sure when don't get the numbers together but it was just the idea is we bring the best players together and then let's go it wasn't about the football it was not at all and i sat there and was like and uh i am not sure that's not for me so and then the pure pure football project comes up with with liverpool and the sensational talk to to mike gordon should that's really important as well like he was the owner i know john and tom of course as well but mike was responsible for us

i wanted after the talk i want to be his friend he's such a good guy so that's how it started and in the end yeah it was pretty special i find this fascinating because as a manchester united fan i

observed from the moment sir alex ferguson left we adopted a very different approach and we brought in all these massive name players dean maria falcao you know ibrahimovic pogba ronaldo and we we failed and it it taught me something as a entrepreneur about what matters more and i actually when i read through your philosophy it's quite clear in your philosophy that you you prefer attitude and character versus how many instagram followers you've got and what you've done in the past

yeah of course and i wanted to get your take on why you think the last this is very selfish for me the last sort of 15 years at manchester you know it haven't worked out as an objective observer i wouldn't i need to you you you cut no you're a man that was able to take teams and make them successful and we are currently underdogs in many regards because of the last 15 years what is it that we've missed in that time what have we overlooked in your view i know you don't want to hear that

you have a hypothesis though i didn't think a second since i joined liverpool about what man united did right or wrong i just did so it's like i buy into a situation so um i went to liverpool and that moment you became our opponent not my enemy but a very important opponent one who is much more fun to beat and maybe and and and like other slicks with everton i know so many everton fans in liverpool we lived there for nine years so i know so many people great people yeah so absolutely but then

you go to the game and think oh my god that's something different to it not i make that up it's like that um but i really didn't think but but always in football is like this and again like in life you have a problem and you only try to find a solution for now knowing you have two days later another problem you know it but such for now just find a solution for that problem there's no mid no long term so generally okay we have to deal with that for another day or two and then we can sort it and that means in in our extent we have to deal with that for a year or two and united and then we

can make a big step then this in our case and football case contracts are running out player goes anyway we can sell him we can do this but because you're in such a rush all the time just because you want to or have to win the next game a little bit like that being now in the situation probably united in the years when they were not happy they would buy the time from that time jose becoming second and nobody was really happy there and you think oh remember that in that time second was not

good enough and now you are not even close to that but that's not a man united story for me it's just a football story it's always like that in the foot in the world of football you win you're the greatest you lose you know nothing about the game you draw you're boring so that's not that you're constant and it's only about your own idea what you really want to do and where you want to go and everything in life is about development we today you were not the same 10 years ago i was not the same 10 years ago so it means the time between then and now counts so if it counts for me the next

10 years do the same so it's important what i do it's important what i see in a year two three so i have to plan my own life mid and long term as much as i can do that and especially the destiny and the future of a football club a player can score a goal can score five goals will never solve the problems if you have real problems and i don't know the united problems but that liverpool was the same it's not about that on the day when we when we lost sold phil coutinho that was not the day when i thought oh good that we have the money i lost the player i wanted to

work with for the next to 10 years if you want it was not that that i thought and we can invest it yeah we invested it smartly that's true but it's not that we found a player for the position and sorted that that that's we had to sort differently but we found two really solid solid and becoming world-class players with allison and pandai that was for the future to go from there and now that's

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you remember a conversation i had on this podcast with anthropologist daniel lieberman it was one of our most viewed conversations of all time and the most replayed moment in that conversation was when i talked about this product these are what i call barefoot shoes by vivo barefoot which have significantly reduced support which gives my feet the opportunity that they desperately want to need to strengthen we're living in a comfort crisis and that at all times in our lives we're making this trade of whether to have more comfort now and therefore more discomfort in the future or a little bit less comfort now

but to be stronger and healthier in the future and research from liverpool university has backed this up they've shown that wearing vivo barefoot shoes for six months can increase foot strength by up to 60 percent so if you want to start strengthening your feet and your body visit vivobarefoot.com slash steven and you'll get 20 off when you use code stevenb20 at checkout that also comes with a 100 day money back guarantee what i love about football is the analogies to the world

i'm in which is the world of business where you can watch a team like we're seeing i think crystal palace at the moment who objectively don't have maybe the best players in the world they don't have the most money born with as well born with as well yeah but they're doing something which is creating this magic and it's this wonderful narrative of you don't need to have the most talent or resources to have the best outcome so what is that gap between like and that's there must

be something now look it's it's a situation a moment in the situation where crystal palace and born with is massively different to the situation for united if if born with wins a game 1-0 and doesn't perform particularly well you can take it and you go on i'm not sure you would really find an article in in in the newspaper about it just win and go but united is united united each step is under the under focus and they're like what oh he didn't they won but he didn't play great so they win a game and then somebody doesn't perform well so pick him out and go for him full throttle you think wow right so

the coach has to pick him up again no no it's all right stuff like this and the next one and then they're different completely different situations the only problem you have now in the time you try to sort your problems all the other clubs improve their situations so liverpool has incredible squad yes are they 100 happy right now with the three defeats no probably not but incredible squad arsenal incredible squad city city i mean and i want to strike back there's already three clubs chelsea

they're in that time when everybody thought do they have an overview about their transfer market do they know who they own and who they loan and stuff like this obviously somehow it pays off so they have already five clubs they are above you are you happy with position six no yeah so and here's the problem should you be happy theoretically with position six maybe this year and build on that so find um find a reason find a reason to enjoy the situation again find a reason to enjoy a one nil victory two nil victory at home

whoever against whoever southampton try to enjoy that really be happy go home and not listening to others who tell you then that's what we had years ago when we decided after a draw against west prom

to say thank you to the supporters we stand in front of the cup and hold his other hand and and said thank you and then the press conference and tony pool is uh what what the world we are living in when liverpool with the money they spend celebrate a point against west prom uh oh thank you um so but it's it's it's your choice how you grow together again and i think after all the years now without a lot of good football they need to find a way to grow together again i fully believe in ruben amrum

um i think he's he's a man that's focused on culture and i i like how honest he is as well and i think with the team that they have around them with people like jason wilcox and inios who i've met um and colette and all the others that are there i think we're we've never been in a better place i personally feel like that because i just think they're aiming for more long-term things they're aiming at the only the only problem is you have no clue about football but besides that

that's a small problem so yeah good on you good on you but i have faith yeah that's great

i don't know if all my friends do but i but i certainly do and the only reason i have faith is because i see the club aiming at more long-term things now and not buying that's what they have to do players because they have loads of instagram followers yeah when you got that phone call from liverpool and they asked you to come and join you said well the reason you chose liverpool is because they felt like a football project versus manchester united who seemed to be a bit more less football oriented but it's not the same year yeah two years yeah two two years before i'm wondering what is it about their proposal that made you think it was a football project oh the situation

i knew the club i knew the team so if you look at um on top of that i didn't think it that way but when sir alex left it was and they became champion in his last year but it was not that the team was one you build a future on so that's how it is when you come in as you it's it's a bit built to fail if you want it but i didn't see it that way and that time it was at other reasons but if i would have thought longer about it could have been probably

yeah so david moy is a fantastic fantastic manager um body proofs every year um couldn't do the job and since then it's a bit of a problem so a new team needs time he was stitched up he was so well needs time so liverpool the team as i said when i came um nobody likes the team not even the team likes the team um i like the team i like the team i knew the players i thought when bobby firminian moved there i said oh that's a smart that's a smart transfer i know chris i knew christian pentaker i love divok origi i knew john henderson i knew adam london i know many plenty players and

hurt only ah kind of good enough and i thought oh well let's see so i like the team so that's a football team proper football super attitude i mean just on day one i could have um um played handle milly and adam together midfield maybe i did i don't even know my first lineup but this is a proper engine room it's smart players it's people who really want to want to um perform want to work hard and all these kind of things that what you need for a start i knew liverpool was not

the same club than they were before it's not that i went into the shiny room i played there a year before with dortmund in the summer in the preseason and i was massively disappointed about the dressing rooms i remember you have these pictures in your mind you think oh my god it's envy

and you walk in and make two steps into the dressing room when you run against the wall and you think

kidding is that all where's the rest so english stress rooms really really small in the old stadium there we think oh my god how can you bring it it was built for 11 players and now we come here with 30 so people in that room it doesn't help so i i knew about the history i knew that nobody's happy i knew that i like the team um that's a good start and did they tell you that they were going to

develop the the ground the stadium did they make any promises to your assurances did they tell you

we didn't we didn't really speak about that in the first conversation that's that's nothing i need to talk about in within this kind of conversation i know my the job i had in that moment was just to improve the football team not the club that i was involved in all the other stuff happened with time with time with time just to be i realized this is my responsibility now as well um you could you never know i don't plan seven eight nine year spells in a club it just happens it's like i don't i don't think they could sack me but i know could happen so i plan from a specific moment on when i

sorted the first few things then i plan mid and long term or always did knowing it might not be for me but um i was i was never uh worried about that too much what was the first first couple of things

you thought you had to change to get them winning and to get the the confidence back and to ultimately bring the city behind you was there anything you thought okay the first thing i'm gonna have to do

is get rid of him change this so that a year before and like not in that season but the two years before they nearly became chairman was a different team and it was a very specific way of football offensively oh my god they were ridiculously good defensively yeah lucky a good goalie there stuff like this it was not the same so we didn't have the team from that time we didn't have suarez we didn't have sterling we didn't yeah we had still um dennis storage stuff like this but it was

different different team complete different i arrived there i had five strikers it was

christian manteca danny inks divo gorigi bobby famino daniel sturd five strikers and i want to play one striker system oh how do we deal with that but it was it was fine and there was so much quality just really sorted so the first thing i had to sort is like to organize them so find find a way to make sure that they understand that we have a chance to win the next football game we have to do a couple of things for that but tottenham three days time to train yeah jump in their face and let's see what what we get for it so that's it's not organized it's like when we started with an

organized chaos so i gave them a few ideas about where we have to where we want to put them under pressure and in that moment and now do it and afterwards we work we talk about it how it worked out because there was no time to train we anyway we had no time the week after we played european league i think in a midweek and then you play again and no it's like you are in a rush at a coaching career with all the games you have to play if you really want to a top team especially if you really want to develop a style of football you are set up to fail because it's like you have no time in the preseason

there's no their players are everywhere playing big tournaments blah blah blah and then you come two weeks before the season starts into your camp okay so let's drive let's go from here then you play top teams play every three days from a specific date on we obviously we lost a lot of finals that means we played a lot of finals that means we played all the games until the end of the season which is a lot so there's no really time so to train and really develop things so you have to use

each little moment to implement a specific idea we all can buy into and that's what we did i loved our first game against tottenham simon minu they had to make a few good really good saves but they had to do as well and that year tottenham was really strong they became second behind leicester i think

it was that season and that's a start what are those little ideas that you started to implement

one by one so many if you don't have time to change football what do you mean we are all not genius and we cannot go there and show them a little bit pass the ball here pass the ball there and then if you pass the ball back again you can shoot on your alone in front of the goal that doesn't work like that so i want i'm 100 convinced that you have to make sure that you are stable and if you're stable it means that the other team whatever they try it's not easy for them to get through and should just finish i don't like that so it's like if you can avoid that do it because we are people but we

now realize a few times it's not easy that you if they have five six chances after each other opportunities after each other then it's like that you you don't feel great nobody plays his best football if each attack of the opponent ends in the arms of your goalie that just doesn't work so how can we do that instability is to organize a team that's number one two and three on the to-do list of a successful manager and that's what i did we organized and then we told them to run their socks off if you people have to you have to show the people that you want to change something you

have to show the people that you want to achieve something how we can tell i can tell them but in the end you have to show them so run and they went for it i loved it so much they loved it so much it's easy they're all top fit they want to run so just show them which direction and it goes and then we developed step by step our own way of football brought players in step by step but we got we got stable pretty quickly not as much as we wanted i think we became six seven eight i don't even know first season two finals great lost both not great um but then we we knew each

other and we loved working together with this group brought in super players really super super players super character super players and stick together in i mean what can you do we lost it we lost the european league final in basel how it always is there's a party after the game so you cannot organize a party but you always know if you lose who wants to go to the party so i was a new manager on yes not that new way anymore seven eight months in or so and i realized some players are not there

but it wasn't a team hotel so i told i called them told them all here come on come downstairs oh it was really i tell you what this was only to start we only are together since six seven months this is not the last final we're playing this is the first final we played okay we lost a bit the caraboy it's not important the first international fine we lost no problem we go again and then went on stay on the dance floor it was a dance floor and i said all coming when i was saying we are liverpool i mean i had um had a few parties after finals we lost and i always thought i don't waste time

at all on not being happy about what we achieved over the whole year because qualifying for a final is a real achievement losing it is not great but until then everything was fine and i never accepted that we ignore the rest so we have a party and then we went on to achieve new things and we need a bit

of time obviously but it was okay and this goes back to the point earlier about controlling the mindset and the psychology after you lose to make sure that you don't get depressed and if you don't learn from

a defeat it's a real defeat if you learn from it it's just it's a very very important information and that's how i always understood understood it so i had enough opportunities to learn really how i said i lost more champions league finals than most people play it's not a great thing to say

it's the truth anyway you're known for what they call heavy metal football yeah but that's the

i know like that phrase and you know i said a lot of things but it's like they are that i said that so it was not in my mind that i thought you want to play heavy metal football they asked me about arsene wenger on the comparison and they did think we are similar in a way and i thought what arsene and i know so come on don't be disrespectful to arsene i'm a young man from somewhere um but if you want to compare us then i'm not sure that's possible because arsene's football is rather like an orchestra and my team plays a little bit more like a heavy

metal band but that was the first day when i thought about my team i got heavy metal band but it

but it's true yes somehow it is true and i know that more than anyone is a manchester united fan watching i'd hate playing your football teams because they they ran so much they were so passionate they never let up they would they could always win in the last minute and the intensity was you were just anxious as a as a football fan watching the games because it was so full-on and it was overwhelming it's almost overwhelming emotionally and i i remember through your era you would win sometimes you'd win games by seven you'd score seven goals five goals every week when i pull up my phone to check the

scores that week oh liverpool have scored five again oh they've scored seven again they've scored six again sometimes you would concede three but you it was it was it was crazy how high intensity the way

he played football was don't waste time with holding back i i don't understand it we have nothing to do the 90 minutes 95 minutes whatever i don't we had to learn i had to learn to to manage games

inside me until the last day it was like come on come on try but then i had to i mean it back and grow up and i got more mature and stuff like this it was like okay come on hold the ball control the ball all the things you you at one point you do you you learn some at any time on your on your journey and that's that's how it is and i love the game so much and could play it not that good that i was so happy that i could work with these outstanding players i couldn't stop it i loved it i enjoyed it so much

seeing them doing what they're doing i was i was number one supporter of my team teams wherever i was i love what they did so and that's what i i carried through the week i didn't tell them i told them i want to be your friend but don't i cannot be your best friend because i'm the one who tells you off very often and they'll tell you this is not right this is not right but then about the feeling the general feeling was i love them in my mind my ex-players i love them all and some of them don't love back let me say like that probably for some reasons or whatever but that doesn't mean

anything to me i love my clubs do you think it's important how you win because you you know this heavy metal high intensity for your win was great for the fans they they love watching three four five six seven they love watching that stuff do you think that matters or do you think it's just

about getting the three points let's say we didn't win that often five or seven it felt like it it felt like against united we did yeah now uh you can cut it out um no it's yeah of course it's important so if you have your backpack going to stadium as a player if you have your boots and if you have a wear shirt it's always time with anything then giving you all there's no guarantee to get anything but the only chance to get something so give you all from the first until last minute you

have to understand this game is only that fun for us because all the people are watching it that's why we earn the money i mean it i know that's what people want to hear but we earn the money because everybody's interested in it everybody wants to see it knows about it reads everything about it all these kind of things and for that with all the stories around the only thing we really have to deliver

is give your absolute all in a game like that whatever whichever game is there 5 30 2 30 3 30 whenever the game starts give your absolute all but why not just one nil and defense and boring and pass it around and that happens that happens in games you are you realize okay we scored a goal but today's not our day come on let's get it over the line that happens but it cannot be the target or the purpose for the next game again let's do it like that not for there are clubs if you own the only

realistic target is to stay in league a one is a wonderful result but we talk about a club like liverpool we are we were are bigger than that you have to win each football game when you are manager of liverpool that's what people that's not that before the season anybody thinks oh i don't know 38 games oh it makes sense oh more than 100 hey nobody had ever so it's not like that but still each defeat and each choice like how could it happen it's like and so and that's why you have to to play in

a specific way not all clubs have the same things to do but the top clubs they have to win all the games and when you have the chance you win them clear you have in them high with the proper results stuff like this you have to make the people enjoy the football you play and i love to do that i loved it honestly it's like the the games we played the the the the results we had were just incredible it's just amazing but not all of them and i love the bonnils as much as i do all the others the champions league final was the worst the worst final of all the four my teams played but we won

it would i take with the changes okay let's the other three as well a little bit the performance in other games was really good but we lost so here we are yeah it was not fantastic but we won so all fine it's about the result but if you have a result and another result it has to lead to really good football at one point as good as possible for your specific team you want to stay in the league do it with good football you want to qualify for europe do it with good football because we are there for

the people we don't it's not there that we just go home and people think oh it's unwatchable eh i'm not sure i come next week again that's not that's not fair try to play the game is really is

a really cool game so let's make sure that everybody sees it and what is the liverpool way what is inherent in when you come to liverpool you are the manager or you are a player what is the thing that you have to do that's specific to liverpool in order to be successful you have to

understand the community i mean the community just the city community and it's a bigger community around the world there are so many people and this club went through a lot not as the only club in the world but come on for that moment we just think about ourselves went through a lot the reaction of to these situations was always exceptional to be 100 honest and that's what you have to understand what you have to learn that this club means more to the people than just football so and that was you have to understand and that's why what we do is more important than it maybe is somewhere else that

that's the responsibility responsibility we always took and understood 100 our boy the players understood to play for liverpool is not just a club where you play during your career it's the club and it's something you will definitely remember for life so that we try we try to make sure that the boys understood if we give our absolute everything now we meet in 10 15 years look back and we think it was the best we could have done the absolute best we could have done i think that's how you should

though my view on life is as well all the other stuff is just sorting the problem in front of you there's something we have to sort but when you saw you think about what's the effect for for the rest and that's what some people some clubs maybe don't want to see because the pressure is too big just to make sure okay tomorrow at least they will not write we have no clue tomorrow at least they will say they found a solution and then we can think about um the next day or whatever how does how does

someone i don't know how someone succeed succeeds you because you have such a big aura are you aware

that you have a big aura don't know if anybody has the awareness of that i heard about it but i doesn't they don't know what it means 100 to be honest but i see with other people an energy when

you you arrive it's the passion it's the ability to talk it's the ability to inspire people it is you know it has an impact on the rival team you're playing because they go clocks here and big personality big charisma so arnie slot coming in after you he's he doesn't appear to be as have the same size of an aura and i i don't know i just think big big shoes to fill in terms of your aura i have to go to the toilet big shoes i would not want to fill such shoes a couple of things first and foremost i uh

i thought i have to say what i had to say when i when i um announced my exit if you want my retirement whatever you call it at the time and people judge that wrong moment blah blah whatever it cannot change that the first time the feeling was i have to say that then you have to finish the season as good as somehow possible in idle world you win something we couldn't do that for whatever reason and then you have to make sure because that's still something you have to do you have to try to make it as easy

as somehow possible for the guy who's coming after you that's what i tried as well because i wanted

them all to do incredibly well and i always thought if somebody is not doing it that way you it's a first

the first hint you can get that maybe he wants the next guy not to do it well everybody's shouting oh my god he did that he did that he did that and i don't need that i want liverpool to do well i want liverpool to win what they did so what i liked a lot about arnold and arnold didn't hesitate what you said no i want to go on these shoes arnold didn't have that problem he thought okay that's a good that's a great club that's a great team and he's right it was a fantastic it's a fantastic club and it's a fantastic team and he stepped into that we had a lot of contact after that he was super

he's a super super good guy um and my god what the team wow thanks a lot blah blah all these kind of things and yeah and he made the best he got the best out of this team and they they became champion in an incredible manner to be honest so and i'm really really happy about that so that's all that's all you you is it it all about it shows again it's all about how you see it you can see you step into my footsteps how you said called it or you take over a fantastic football team it was a brilliant i mean

my my best friend's a liverpool fan and he said before you left actually he said this is the best squad liverpool have ever had yeah um arnie has inherited that squad which is considered to be the best squad by many people that liverpool have ever had and in that first year didn't really change much there wasn't really there wasn't any big signings coming i actually heard from one of the the players in liverpool that them say to a really good friend of mine that the best thing arnie had done was actually in that first year don't change much don't come in and try and radically change

things but that's what the honest lot would say himself probably i think he said it that's super smart so it's not about what arne wants to show the world what he can do it's about how to get the best out of this team and that's exactly what he did not changing much means he changed a little bit we became third a year before so there's not a lot you have to change but a few decisive things you have to change and all of a sudden you win the league by some distance so that's what it is not that he has to put his new own stamp this team was was was good in a lot of ways but we didn't win

the year before so and that's what he what his what his um job was and he did that in an incredible impressive manner so and that's all you want and you need people who have the confidence to do these kind of things because um it doesn't make sense if you have a a manager who is not 100 sure about the things he wants to do and i want us to play like this or if that's not possible i want to play like this or i want to but we may be completely different that doesn't work being a football

manager is already a challenge with all the different things you have to do being a football manager in in in such a competitive league like the premier league is a real challenge being a football manager in the world we are living in with media social media and all these kind of things it's an incredible challenge believe me you you have no clue what's coming up the next day you think oh my god where's that coming from who was that oh my player you read the story whatever and all of a sudden you

think oh from a problem it turns into your problem and in a wing so sorted and all the rest as well so you need this kind of i love that about arnold as he came in and and took over and he knew he got a good team yes it was um and did a perfect job i mean in terms of making changes this year

you liverpool have spent what 450 odd million which is a crazy number i mean the broke i think you've broken the transfer record in various positions several times with wurtz and um with isak now as well so change has arrived these are these are new people they're coming in with their their own ideologies from their previous clubs they've all arrived at once a lot of new faces at once is this not now where the challenge begins because this is this is going to become arnie's team now yeah but

that's not a problem it's just completely normal only that it doesn't mean exactly that today was a lot of change i mean no team in the by the way it's 450 or whatever million i don't know the exact numbers but they earned a lot of money as well um and change always has an impact and change always needs time and don't and but people talk then about yeah but this if no that's not like that he keeps us exactly the same team like last year darwin yun is still there louis diaz is still there as an example so they start playing and we'll have problems so yeah okay we needed change so now they're not there

anymore the new guys are there and they're good really really good players it's not working out i mean yeah why why it's not working at because development needs time right then nobody can change that and people need to find uh need to adapt to situations and adapt to things and that all this kind of thing so it's all it's all good it's all in place what you have at liverpool this year has to be in the competition in the decisive moments and then they have to be ready to go for it there's no guarantee that you then will win it again that doesn't happen just like this you cannot be champion spend

money and be champion again the other teams don't sleep that's how it is and to become champion you need luck in moments here and there that's how it is nobody wants to hear that but crossbar over the line not over the line all these kind of things it can go in your direction on the other direction so it's all fine and we discuss the situation now like it's a struggle surprise yeah we we take we take the money and throw it against them 450 million yeah but they earned 200 odd million as well so it's

all fine if you're with liverpool and only these people are really that's only the only people who matter if you are with liverpool yeah you trust them and they do the right they did the right stuff they do the right things so work on it and become the best football team this team can be you never had

a transfer window like that where you spent that much money and no we built we built three stands and a training ground yeah exactly and i remember the press conference i think when you were referring to city's ability to spend money i had no clue that this is possible nobody nobody ever told me that

it's possible that we can that we can spend like that my last year at liverpool so we obviously

so the adidas deal the new stadium all these kind of things yeah they earn more money but it was never no never ever i could have asked for the amount of money but that's not a problem that time it was not there no problem at all really not and i love the fact that we were as successful as we were and build new stands and build a training ground because we talk now about a transfer window in the way you want to talk about it spend a lot of money um but there's no discussion about the stands and no

discussion about the training ground they are second to none the training ground the stands are wonderful so and and at the same place where enfield is they could build pretty much a new stadium without leaving the old one so that's a fantastic story and that will stay forever maybe at one point they decide the cop could be even for more people or whatever i don't know if that ever will happen but you could do stuff there and that's what i love about this and i think i really want as much as i

can it's not my first target because i have to win football games with my team but i want that a club benefits from the time we were together after we left i want that this might be a quite a naive

observation but in the time when you were at liverpool my assessment of liverpool was you never you didn't necessarily have the world's most famous starting eleven team but you could be anybody so you know when you brought in milner who was at city before and when you brought in these other players i would see i'd be like why are they signing him he's not but then when they'd play for liverpool they would be unbelievable players and you could be anybody so there was almost this culture at liverpool which i observed where you didn't necessarily go for the galactico players you weren't

trying to get ronaldo or messi you were going for sort of these players that had character and in a culture fit and ultimately that meant that you know you at times it looked like you were playing with 12 men and so then this neutral this transfer window that i've just observed where you you have gone for the very very best names you know some of the best players on planet earth that were number one choices for real madrid and the biggest clubs on earth i almost don't recognize liverpool it moving like that in a window yeah there's part of me that i'm like oh hopefully that this is

their falcao di maria moment ronaldo moment where they were they for big players but they didn't think of culture i'm praying yeah you wish that's the difference you wish

is i guess an incredible striker incredible striker flow words you all will eat your words if you have the wrong use the wrong weather is an incredible talent and to get their incredible player um yeah just offensive place it's a really really really good well your squad if the young center half is not getting injured it's the perfect squad now he's injured that doesn't help then you might be a majority on the center half position besides that it's a perfect squad two super left

backs really super right back so it's it's just a really good foot but that's how you set the team up and now we have to deal with the situation and they all think they have to start the game but that's the normal job it's not that it's difficult over that's the normal job you have this discussion who will start a week or two in a third week one is injured you are happy that the other can start so that's that's the the world a football manager is living in so we have we don't have to to worry about what's that i'm really interested so you don't have to worry about liverpool they will be

fine this was the just the net spend graph of the different clubs um while you were while you were there and it's quite clear that you um you weren't spending the same as your rivals during your time and a lot of the fans in the media speculated that the owners the family sports group just weren't giving you the money but you were still getting the results which is pretty no no no so yeah

what's the what's the public perception that i didn't ask for the money that's probably not right i probably had these conversations but i didn't ask in a way if you don't get it

we can do it it's not my job to think about how much we can squeeze out of whatever area i was i've i felt massively respond my my idea was always with the the boys we have become the best team you can be and you were right when you said um we were maybe not the best team i think there was a period when we played football you could have thought that's maybe the best played by the best team i don't know exactly between 18 and 20 that was a pretty long spell um but we always and

was the idea we always were able to beat the best team and that was the idea because that's a constant thing the next best the next best we can beat you we can beat you be the best you know you are the one everybody wants to beat i love that so that's net spend and stuff like this i was never too worried about we had all these conversations yeah i was i was happy with how it was i couldn't have discussions with people no i cannot decide how much money we spend it's not just not possible an honest lot cannot decide how much money liverpool spend that's how it is you do there are other

people who decide that and if you have the money then you spend for really good players what liverpool did this year and i think it was it was the right thing to do and i'm pretty sure one specific moment change the whole transfer window yeah that was the the saddest day of of last year um and how do you how do you replace somebody like jogu it's not about the player itself it's about the the guy he was

he was he was good with absolutely everybody absolutely everybody his he arrived he had no real it was i think he was a bit surprised that we approached him that we asked for him then he came and then we he delivered from day one i remember still when i saw him the first time playing four wolves he said phew what's that when i went to the you always hear these stories when people tell me and it's it's true that mo salah they had to convince me and stuff like it's not convinced that i take him

but it was like there were other players as well and mo was one of the others and we we decided all together for more but it's fine but this nobody came to me and told me come on let's have a look at jogu jota i saw him and i said please give me more material i have to see him and that's and he he he excelled all the expectations as as a guy super smart super super teammate and now he sits in a dressing room and i i cannot imagine right now the dressing room without him being there that's

as so hard it's so hard i still cannot speak properly about it it's it's really like that it was an incredible shock and that's for the boys as well and and i don't we could think we don't speak about it because otherwise some bad journalists make a story of it what i said about him and how it what it means nobody at liverpool will ever use it as an excuse but it is the situation you walk every day in this room where he was omnipresent he was can you imagine he to to to to talk about timmy he

he was so close with james milner they are not the same age group they are nothing the same it's just he was so but on the other side very close with costa simicas that's like mountain moon and mars so that's that was him and dealing with that as a per on a personal level not easy impossible and now as a club take all the the emotional stuff out and think how do we replace him and you have to think about that wow that's difficult impossible i would say and now we charge the transfer window

where they buy the players there was not a plan i'm pretty sure the two that he had to get to um

replaced do you remember where you were when you heard the news yeah

i got a message in the morning boss i have bad news and then i got and i got a message from a from a friend from liverpool and i i i couldn't believe it i just it was not possible i heard it and i know what it means but i couldn't believe it the whole story i saw all the pictures obviously from the wedding and all the boys were there and and stuff like that and it was so it was only before that and um i know exactly where i was it was i was exactly how long i sat there

without speaking a word so it it is it is this it is a family member it is exactly like that so look it's it's it's really like that you have it's it's an example for the things you have to deal with without knowing at all you cannot be prepared to deal with things like that and today we talk about the transfer of indian if you want of liverpool that would have looked completely different

so you have to sort the things you did never expect that yet you have to think about

everybody wanted this boy to play the next 10 years at liverpool all-around player all positions

can play but was smart on july the 3rd 2025 diego was killed in a car crash alongside his brother in spain um i think just just before then he had got married to his partner and he had several beautiful children he he said of you he said the first time you and him met he just felt your presence he said i think that's one of his main characteristics the way you can you can just feel him only with his presence

and diego went on to be incredibly successful under your leadership at liverpool yeah that's true

yeah same i could say the same i could say the same about him i was as impressed with his presence very very special very special young man i have to say how much of a role do does a

manager like you play in the transfer window this is something that's always speculated by the fans

do you remember the first when i came and told me about a transfer committee i never had the day they told me that the journalists asked me yeah because they implemented a transfer committee because they didn't want to have to manage that the managers that decisive in a transfer window obviously before me there was some issues yeah there's no problem with that i can discuss with everyone as long as no player signs for the club i don't want i'm used to not getting all the players i want that's completely normal it's not up to the coaches we say we need one that player and i say

it's too expensive now you can ask again sorry can we make it happen um and knowing they all try absolutely everything to get the right price and get the player in you cannot do anything with that

that anybody in the club would bring in a player you don't you don't agree on that that that's not possible but it's very very normal in a football code manager life that you don't get all the players you want so no problem with that as long as the transfer window is open you try to create build the best possible squad on the day after the transfer window you have the best possible squad whichever transfers you made and that's the way you go into the rest of the season

michael edwards left during your tenure he was sort of one of the key people that was responsible for looking for players and and signing them and he's back now so first and foremost before i don't want

to say anything else because i really have a really good relationship michael edwards is absolutely great in what he's doing um but it was not on one day his job alone to bring in players there were a lot of

people that were involved in in in barry hunter all these kind of things were involved in these kind of things it was a process we were really we were really close together it's not it's one sitting there and being the genius and having producing ideas and you think oh my god he's available i didn't even know him he's yeah so like we know we know football players it's like negotiating finding the right moment to sell so i find the right moment to buy that's a sporting director's job but he was before

and now i don't even know exactly the role something in the holding company yeah across the board so richard use is now they're doing an incredible job um so this company it's it's it's all in an idol world so like people from outside are idolizing sometimes people like that definitely some of them with me maybe with michael but michael never did the job alone i never did the job alone it was always like a really good yeah they worked together just really well we didn't have a lot of

disagreements where you think boof where is that coming from why you want him it's a process and football team is an open book everybody can read it every day so if you want to add something it should not be a surprise to everybody anything huh where is that idea coming from you think we need a left back why we have already forward that doesn't happen you are it's a work on progress all the time during a season but the transfer windows it clashes obviously and english people in professional football enjoy d-day a bit more than probably in other countries um so that's what i didn't get that

to a full extent but um i learned um a lot about the excitement of a good transfer window did you always get on with them yeah i would say 100 and michael definitely and richard i don't know we spoke quite a few times after um after i left um so i like him so and i think they didn't they did an incredible job

honestly because you became bigger than the coach you became such a huge i mean you still are such a huge figure in the in the city i mean my my assistant who's been with me my pa has been with me for 10 years she's from liverpool and she i'm probably going to embarrass her now but you're like the king to her not even in liverpool you're the king globally yeah exactly if i was if i was a michael edwards or someone else at the club and i was trying to that you have you had ultimate power kind of like

sir alex ferguson he became you know he was everything he is the state he's on the stadium he is the club so i i always wondered how anyone would be able to overturn your opinion or argue with you when you are the city you're like you're the great jrgen klopp but that's the outside world come on i'm

not i'm an idiot i don't i don't sit there and i always said i need other people to understand things it's like i my own opinion opinion i know already well the more i get up i know my opinion so come on how can you get a better view on it on things that's how it is it's just by discussing with people yes the final decision i have to make and i have no problem with that but for that i need all people being really involved and if you want to have an argument have an argument in the end i will make the decision absolute problem did we have argument maybe yes i don't remember them but it's not

important because it's just in the end it's it's about the outcome it's about what is best for the club and i never had a problem with that i never thought they all have to please me so i realized

how famous i am after i left liverpool i have no clue i was never in liverpool out there on and on the bus it's normal that the people cheer because we they're everybody is that they cheer for everybody so i realized how good i was the coach since i'm not in the job anymore so because i thought what i can do everybody can do and i realized maybe not so it's it's 100 the truth because in the job you just do try to sort every day the things in front of you that's what you try can i ask you about

nunes he didn't seem very happy on your last your last day darwin darwin yeah we had an absolutely

good relationship as good as can be with a striker who is not scoring as often as he wants as the people want and as i think he could have and with a striker who didn't play as often as definitely he wants so how can you have a fantastic relationship is would it be if he would i don't i didn't see that picture i heard about it if he would have stand there and be the number one and jumping after me crying his eyes out and and and hugging me for 10 minutes i was okay what's going on here completely normal

situation i cannot my first concern cannot be to please everybody it's just not possible it's not possible in that job you have easy the first problem starts with 25 players 11 starting positions so sorry more players are not happy than you make happy that that's that's already where it starts the problem so now you have to get through this and i'm pretty sure he had super moments at liverpool we had super moments together and on my last day if i would have been him i would have

thought as well okay come on the next one is a new chance for me because players do that if if it's if it goes really well for them it's not that they think thanks to the coach if it's not going well they think it's okay it doesn't bring me off and it's not my fault all these kind of we are humans we all the same so it's not that they are special in that moment and some of them think yeah i have to do more i have to do more for the week one week two week three and anything now i did three weeks more i still not pick is not picking me so it's this it's it's a bit you cannot have always harmony

and and flowers and all this kind of things that's a competitive environment and you need to perform

to get what you think you deserve when did you decide did you decide that you wanted to sign

darwin how is that how did that decision exactly like before we decided it all to all together involved in that in that process and yes that's how it is nowadays uh we would have loved to sign him for lesser money of course but it wasn't at the moment not possible we need a striker we only wanted to have an an extra like an extra option for striker like we had bobby always the best false nine in the world yeah and now we needed somebody with a bit more speed and stuff like this we need to the

actions the moment and sadio i'm not sure i'm sure sadio was still there probably not so so do you win that year yeah i think so i went that year so we had to we had to change as well so luis diaz great cody gacpo great what kind of player we don't have i thought cody can play a little bit like bobby good footballer on the side but feels much better on the on the on the wing all these kind of things so yeah of course we all signed him together no problem to to to admit that it maybe didn't work out as good as good but without darwin unis so many things wouldn't have happened the biggest comeback of all

times in newcastle for example oh i love that day i love that game we came on yeah just give me 15

seconds to explain how you can build a viable business online the people i see winning in life don't have a perfect plan they just take the first step and then the next and then they keep going they stay obsessed and they stay consistent and stand store a platform i co-own and one of our sponsors is the best first step to help turn your knowledge into income it only takes a couple of minutes to launch your business and start selling digital products coaching memberships or communities online without any tech headaches or endless setup thousands of entrepreneurs creators and risk takers

use stan to take control of their future because stan is for entrepreneurs for those willing to put in the work and bet on themselves if you're ready to start building join us launch your business today with a free 14-day trial at stephenbartler.stan.store we launched these conversation cards and they sold out and we launched them again and they sold out again we launched them again and they sold out again because people love playing these with colleagues at work with friends at home and also with family and we've also got a big audience that use them as journal prompts every single time a guest comes on

the diary of a ceo they leave a question for the next guest in the diary and i've sat here with some of the most incredible people in the world and they've left all of these questions in the diary and i've ranked them from one to three in terms of the depth one being a starter question and level three if you look on the back here this is a level three becomes a much deeper question that builds even more connection if you turn the cards over and you scan that qr code you can see who answered the card and watch the video of them answering it in real time so if you would like to get your hands on some of these

conversation cards go to thediary.com or look at the link in the description below why did you leave why did you leave liverpool i watched your videos uh announcing your departure so many times and i was almost trying to read between the lines oh i was trying to read between the lines tell me what you read no i was just you know because you talk about just the energy not having the energy for it that's kind of how i was interpreting you you know you you sat down with your board your board talked about plans for next year and you realized in that moment that

you didn't have the energy to rebuild and go again etc no no not to rebuild that we didn't have to rebuild yeah i knew i know that the team is a good team so my expectation of myself is i'm i i'm i'm i'm the energy giver to everybody in in this environment like that what i bought my way if somebody have struggled come on you can have my money don't need it let's go i have to

be on top of absolute top of my game to be the guy who deserves to be the liverpool manager that's what i said when i said in the day when i feel uh i don't know that anymore then i don't so that i say okay let's wait until everybody sees it and then they can give me the sec and la la all these kind of things i cannot do it like that not after the time we had to get i realized i don't want to be there after all the time we had together i want i don't want to be the guy i don't want to go on tour to usa but why because wasn't i loved it all every day so it's then you realize

whoo i need a break whatever i need to have something else and you cannot do that in that business you cannot say ladies and gentlemen give me a year see you later and today it's just not like that and i really think we did what we had to do to to to say what we felt and thought in that moment and it was exactly like that i didn't have the energy to think about what what's next i didn't want to think about what's next i just wanted to to go i was happy with finishing the season but then don't ask me

what can we do here what can we do there what can it was all my responsibility for all the time because yes i don't decide money but all the rest it was in my hands from a specific moment on kobe kicked in noseboarding director michael came after i after i left it was not there anymore and not it was not because we had a problem or whatever not at all um it was just they wanted to find a leader for the for the pack and founded with michael and and and richard and arne obviously now working

really close together so that what was that was the decision but there was a time there was no richard no michael no julian ward so it was just me sitting there um like on the top of all the things and we had to win football games but all the rest was on my plate as well it was an intense time there wasn't a structure around you in that regard and kobe changed a lot it's i mean people didn't fly as much anymore um the owners didn't come that off and over it was like budget calls were on the

phone uh more or less and we brought in york schmadge the germans for because we didn't have a sporting director at the time in fact julian came back but then um i don't even know exactly why why he left again so these kind of things that just happened and the only guys who were always there were we the coaches and the football team so they were just the normal stuff over a day so he was doing the sporting director stuff yeah us and together with in that one in that one window with i think it was with york schmadge the general guy we brought over i don't even know if julian ward was still there

the lawyers the scouts so um do you think you could ever go back and manage liverpool again is that within the realm of possibilities i said i will never coach another team a different team in in england so that means if then it's liverpool yeah so yeah theoretically it's possible

what would it take theoretically for you to want to do that psychologically i don't i don't even know

exactly i just it must be i love what i do right now i don't miss coaching i don't i mean i do coach but just different not not players so and i don't miss it i don't miss standing in the rain two and a half three hours and and and i don't miss going to press conference four times three times a week having

12 10 12 interviews a week i don't miss that i don't so

i don't miss being in the dressing room like in a sense of that i didn't have it often i coached 1080 something games so i was in a dress room very very often and i don't want to die in the dressing room just because so nice it smells so it's it's it's these kind of things so but there might be something i'm 58 that's from your perspective old from other perspective from the other side it's not that old that means i could make the decision in a few years i don't know do i have to make the decision

today i will not coach again but thank god i don't have to do that i can just see what future brings but now i'm involved in a project i really love and i love the people i'm working together with and the clubs we are responsible for and the countries the clubs are in so i like doing what i'm doing right now

and in my mind only if i'm focused 100 on it i can do it really good and that's what i always want to do to do those are the things you don't miss what do you miss sometimes people so yeah sometimes i miss people like i i wish i so that's i don't miss a dressing room as a dressing room but sitting there in the restaurant with the players and having a nice chat that it's nice it was always nice when

they were just in a good mood we won a lot of games and so like there was often a very good mood in in in the building and standing there hearing them laugh i still have virtual laugh in my ear for example yes this kind did this part of the of the job it is obviously but that's for these players which i had the last time it's now um do i miss it in general but football players not right now it's not like that but i there is there's really not a lot to be honest what i miss because i'm still

in the business i i i know most about so the football part i don't miss because i have it and the only thing is like they don't have to be outside i'm not the guy in the chair before a game and stuff like this no i i honestly that's that's probably

the best because i don't miss anything that's how it is when i look at your career mines dortmund liverpool you seem to always be successful and it's it's extremely rare it's extremely rare and you seem to always succeed with a lot of passion and all those things but my question is and i think about the audience we have which are often business people leaders ceos is there anything else that we haven't touched upon that is central to your idea of getting the best out of a group of people we talked about being a sort of bespoke leader being the jigsaw piece you need to be to get the

best out of a person we talked about giving everything is there anything else that's really central to your philosophy of leadership and management that you think is important that we haven't touched upon yet that young coaches might be able to create the best team

possible and i mean in an understanding of the team like really there's there must be a reason why this team wins and not the other team because there are other teams out there they try absolutely everything so don't waste time with walking next to each other not knowing anything about each other not being bothered about the problems of each other not being interested about no no i want to grow together and it was my job to help them to grow to create situation where they could do that to make sure and if i had to be harsh to all of them that they found a way to get together i did that it was not what i said it was what they needed to understand why we are a very special team in a very

hard and difficult competition but we have to find a reason why we deserve it more than others yes that's what i what i say what you have to do and that's what i people want to convince today with knowledge they want to say i know everything about that look i can tell you i can explain it to you stuff but it's in the end that's one thing and other people can know as well it's about how close can we really grow together to go out there and smash the whatever out of them so that's the that's the the

thing what what what i wanted to or what i always did so it was always clear for us we would walk i don't know we'll go through fire i'm not sure if you say that anything but we really would do absolutely everything and without me telling every day to find it so to find a way to grow as much

together that was obvious how do i get people to walk through fire so you're talking about making sure the bonds amongst themselves are strong i heard stories of you making sure everybody knew everybody's name when you first arrived and things like not players when it was stuff the staff names etc

what were you doing to get people to walk through fire and that's exactly that's exactly that's a good

question there's no answer for the question because it means it would mean you say you say one thing and for everybody runs that's not like that you have to create a culture as an environment a situation uh a vibe where everybody realized this is special the underlining message is this is special and now let's go for it this is worth it this it means really more to all of us that we really can fight more for it what is special the togetherness the way we we had we we the way we and that people can say

that's in our club the same but the way we interacted in the training ground with the kitchen stuff with the with the respect we we showed every day with the kid man with the gardeners with all the people there there that was for me most important because it just you just realize that's the respect you show this is the respect you get you can show respect you don't deserve any so that's how it is and you don't have it's not a lesson in the sense of that i tell you let me sit here you have to respect the gardener and then the other people will respect you as well it said you don't do it like that it's

just you learn that show respect you get respect don't show respect you don't deserve it so all these little things over there there's not a big thing it's not that every day i go for them and tell them why is this different why is that different the way you deal with situations we found a way for us

that the most important information about the game was what i said and it was in the media not was in social media and i said it was good it was good there was still all the things out there were written but that they were not important anymore when i said it was not good then could they write yeah but you won 3-0 and then we found a way to talk about it and and worked on it we created our own world in that time which was more important than the outside world how is not being respectful to

the gardener going to lose you the champions league what is the the through line i believe just in if you

cannot do that if you don't appreciate what think what other people do then you can't appreciate what your teammate is doing if you don't that's just a little sign it's not that of course there's not direct impact from here to there but in the end i'm pretty sure if you would really have a a brief look at it in one or two situations like wow it doesn't look like a proper fella and then you go back to the to the beginning you would say yeah because he isn't i can tell you i'm fascinated by

this point because when i was um when i was at Old Trafford and the ladies who served the food in the in the boxes and lounges when i'd ask them what was different after Fergie left the thing they kept saying to me was oh it's just so different around here and i'd say explain to me how they go i don't know just he started focusing just knew our names yeah that's what they would say and it's a strange thing to hear that the only symptom that some of the staff in the stadium could point at was just the new leadership don't know our names yeah but this is obviously not the answer to the

men united problems that's just the situation with the the ladies or whoever working in that in that area but it shows if that doesn't then you don't know theoretically the names what it shows is the togetherness is not there anymore it starts already with it was just different and then you yep but not on day one but after 23 years of course it was different of course he knew your name he saw you

growing up so how can you compare that this was under edward wood just for the context this wasn't under any also amram this was before then a couple of years ago yeah and i just always found that for me that as a business leader became a really interesting reference point because it as you said it's just a downstream symptom of something where the club has gone from feeling like a family and special and you know close and tight and these values to the decay of the values and it's from all the way down to the the stream at the bottom but this is this is a generation discussion isn't

it so like in the past again i'm not that old that i say in the past everything was better for sure not but we are differently raised that's how it is i came home i walked home in a 1200 people village i had a 400 meter walk from the bus station to my home i walked home obviously a lady crossed my way i didn't can't remember it i arrived at home after 200 meters and get more meters and my mom said why you didn't say hello to mrs so-and-so what so is that does does that help me in life i'm not sure

it's just how you get it's just how you get raised so i didn't run back and say sorry hello but next time believe me it leaded so in my life where everybody a lot of people recognize me so it'd be difficult not to say hello to people because of that but i start obviously getting attention if i can't get through something and i would say hello that doesn't work properly for me anymore but it's still in me one thing is the things we read the other thing is the things we feel the other thing is how we get treated we all are the result of a lot of things what happened to us and as long as we are together

let's make sure that we influence each other as positive as somehow possible and let's see where

it leads us to that's the idea i have a lot of managers or leaders or ceos would focus on tactics and strategy first and foremost and as you say the information and all those things but it appears that you focus somewhere else not first same time it's not first it's not same time it's it's same time

i 24 hours a day two hours time for training there's not a lot more you can do maybe you have another in the preseason definitely more another session two hours four hours 20 hours left seven eight hours sleep 12 more hours welcome what can we do with that that's become the best group we can be so that's

i'm 100 interested in definitely the best group we can be yeah that's those relationships those values yeah and were there any particular changes you made to how the team interacted with each other i know that um that the ineos guys told me at manchester united they've changed the like canteen so that people don't sit on separate tables now and the team are together when they eat just small things like this that some people might think are inconsequential are there any things that you changed any rules or policies i don't like these obvious things too

much if you don't like each other and the size of the table makes no difference to be honest i don't say that's not important i don't i don't see the the real effect i i want to reach it in a different way i want to to introduce them to each other in a specific way on the pitch by the way that's where it starts because we have a football team we are not the community and just sit there and drink tea

and and biscuits it's a it's a real competitive environment and it's all to get the best out of the boys on the football pitch so rules pitch rules dressing room but then there's so many things left right of the rules there's so many things you can do together there's so much to talk about so much to know about and that's what life is otherwise we just live next to each other and we don't benefit from each other that makes no sense i don't want to make it bigger than it is but my general understanding from football team is to become the best football team you can be this is the this is as

important as tactics as important as tactics they're kind of the best tactics the guys don't respect don't like each other nobody will see them ever ever so if the worst tactics by the law of each other boy they still can win that's possible idol world great team good coach you have a good chance to be

successful i have i have two pictures that we haven't shown yet but this this particular picture

is of elizabeth yeah mama your mama yeah 2011 we became champion with dortmund my home club sv glatten invited me to build a stage

my elder sister wrote a poem my mom couldn't have been prouder obviously

uh that day i saw my teammates from my first football team they were all there nobody would have thought that somebody from there would arrive where i was there yeah great day

elizabeth was a really really nice woman i have to say she passed away in 2021 um after falling ill yeah because of everything that was going on at the time with the pandemic you weren't able to attend her funeral because of the travel restrictions and all those kinds of things she did get to see

your your success she got to see that's a big difference so i was not in a funeral and that was the the sounds crazy the online funeral was one of the saddest things i i experienced in my life but i made it happen at least that was good that we could see it that we could be part of it we couldn't be there my mom had in the end had dementia so it's not that she would have known that i was not there when she was lying there she was that that's uh not a nice thing but she saw the majority

of my working life if you want my dad didn't see my coaching life so that's is the there's no nothing is perfect but mom was was super happy was a very happy lady until she could remember us and see us and um recognize us and the time when he could when she couldn't do that anymore yeah it was not too long

but that's a can't wait for the day when somebody finds a solution for these kind of things uh for these kind of diseases and um because in new age obviously you don't think about it but if you come older they think who dies today just of a heart attack and not by having already dementia or stuff like this and don't recognize the kids anymore and stuff like this you don't want that you just can get through this by ignoring the fact and hoping that science will find a way until we get there

yeah she started to lose her memories of her family because of dementia yeah so like the normal things

on phone she didn't know didn't recognize my voice first this is a this is a strange strange disease or whatever however you call it you close so many doors and opens others so long time memory incredible she recognized ladies in the street they were together in primary school stuff like this but didn't know

who we were just these kind of things it's not it's not a competition of things you you forget or whatever there are a lot of things you forget and especially for the people and that was my sisters who took care of her obviously that's not nice if she don't recognize you who are you go away these things

how is that to do how is that to deal with as a family member when someone you love a parent can no longer recognize who you are like you it's almost like it sounds like a grief as a heartbreak

yeah i think but obviously my my sisters were around um so for them it's harder of course because they were around for me it's not a problem at all because i knew she loved me more than our life in moment she can recognize me anymore that it was not a problem for me i just felt for her that is that is really that it's really so that's so hard must be so hard if you have bright moments where you oh i know oh my god you are here what are you doing here and then going again it's it's really it's really not nice and i i i really sincerely hope that we find um yeah medication for that i think

science is uh you know in a good way but still a long way to go but thanks for this picture i don't i have it on my phone somewhere but i don't have it as a yeah thank you very much faith is a big part

of your life as well yeah your belief in god yeah and from what i understood that's not always been the case when you're a younger man you weren't religious in the same way that you are now is that

accurate or i wouldn't even say i'm religious i i believe but i don't but i don't know 100 what religious means to be 100 honest but it's um this lady my mom um prayed every night before going to bed but the problem was that the one thing we prayed the other thing she said because she couldn't be hard with me she could she just had no weapons the only thing she could say don't forget if you do that again i will have to tell the dad at the weekend when he's coming back so it was like the only threat she had the only weapon she she carried around um and i obviously was smart enough to

realize that whatever i did she never told my dad um um from time that i went to church i had a short spell where i thought because sunday morning church was when i played games i have to go to church i'm not i cannot play football anymore but that lasted exactly one game so one sunday i thought god cannot be that hard he cannot think that i have to go to church when i love football so much it cannot that's just it can't be like that um and he isn't i'm pretty sure so um yeah i found my way

for me it's for me it's to live together we have to make sure that we that we don't think the only thing what is interesting is my own well-being we have to make sure that we really understand being alone in a good position doesn't help yes it's completely normal that we all try to get as far as we can in our career in our life and all these kind of things but it's really important that we make sure that we that we really try to to work properly together to live properly together and all these

kind of things for me this is my faith it's based on my this this this understanding is based on my faith so and and common sense obviously uh and that's the way i believe and um i think that's the best thing you can say about religion when it's like that that it keeps people in a good place if religion can't do that then that's not the right religion for me so it's really about that we have to be tolerant

we have to it's no problem it's a wonderful planet it's a wonderful world we are living in but it's not for one or two it's for all of us and we have to make sure that that works out and i think the right faith can help you with that but i don't i don't know what is the right face i only know what is for me so yeah for me it's the right thing to do and i never doubted it to be honest with all the information you get in life god is real for me and um and jesus of course um yeah what goals

have you got left to accomplish jürgen what it what's what is left on your list if anything at all because you've got you're right you're probably halfway through your life the way things are going in terms of people the life expectancy increasing halfway through 116 we have the next podcast yeah i want

to travel that's what we're doing started now i want to be together with ulla as much as i can but not not that much that she or i don't want to be around each other anymore because i really think you see people and think what is your husband doing is you at home oh god so no no i'm not that but i'm very busy so i'm a lot away so that's fine but i want to spend with her with the kids with the grandkids i don't have this kind of ambitions i want to do really well for red bull really well i i feel already responsible for all the people i work together with that's a very interesting thing for me that

i feel so quick really responsible but i do so i want to do it as good as we can have the best time possible let's see what happens then but on a private basis i can tell you with all the things happening around stay healthy and enjoy this part of life because you know now most things happened and most things were really good there was another time um your age when you're not sure where you want to go wherever i can what's possible how safe you will be and all these kind of things where

will you live in the future so i know where we will live i know how things worked out that's really good i'm not that old that i cannot move so move and try and do sports and travel and all these kind of things so i i'm more than happy with the things how they how they pan out how they happened i'm really really happy i'm surprised how my career was i i never thought that and you cannot plan it and stuff like this i'm super happy with my private life how it is super happy with the missus super happy with the

kids super happy with the grandkids it's all really good so what can you want more really without sounding ridiculous that you think oh you always live on that and the rest is job and the job i'd always want to do as somehow possible and that's still the case is he a man united fan

if you ever want a job at a football club manchester united would uh yeah yeah yeah after all the time

we spent together yeah you want to tell me that yeah no but you know it's um it's really it's really

interesting to me because i think there's always an assumption that people want to continue to

i don't and then i don't understand that do the same because that's what you are good at i know i'm good as a manager i know so why should i i don't have to prove that not even to me i have to prove that like i can raise my hand and tomorrow i can coach club x y and said clubs who are happy now with sector manager and i don't want that so so but to be my best friend that might come back that i say okay i'm ready that might i don't know today but in this moment it's not that i cannot

do what i do why i think with one leg being still there i was never like that i never looked right or left when i was at mines i could have changed the club every year for the first seven it was so obvious that something is going on there pretty special the clubs want oh we want to have him and i never thought a second that i want to go there i wanted to stay at mines to to to do what we do and to learn what i thought i have to learn same at dortmund same at liverpool until i thought it's

not right if that comes again let's see what we can what we will do that's what the decision i wanted i want didn't want to make the job until i barely can move i barely can travel i barely missus can you help me i don't want i didn't want to do that here we're sitting and yes i'm 25 years older than you but we both could probably run around the corner now and it would not be the biggest difference you're in great shape yeah that's it because i train that's how it is but i never did while i was a manager that's the next thing i just grew more and more and more and now

we have time for that as well so it's good how it is well you um even as a united fan you brought so

much to the premier league that it was it was weirdly sad also very happy when you decided that you were going to leave i i felt two feelings at the same time i felt very very happy that this was this liverpool era in my view was over because i thought there's no way uh you leaving that you're more than just a manager you're the spirit of the city you're the spirit of the fan base you're actually sort of personify the liverpool fan base in my mind extremely passionate all in togetherness and as you know your former i think he was your chairman or owner of mine said you did you brought you brought the team together you then brought the city together and that had a profound

impact both on liverpool but also on the premier league and on my enjoyment and my misery as a rival fan and that's a really really remarkable thing you've also inspired me as a lot on a personal level as a leader just about you know everything you said there about how important it is to focus equally on the people and the team and the togetherness and not just on the tactics and the strategy and how passion can be a wonderful accelerant for performance and for feeling like this is special and that's something that i think you've personified as a leader we um we have a closing tradition on this

podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for oh and the question is for me not a message yes question that's been left for you as you look back on your career is there a particular moment a particular conversation a particular day

that if you could you would go back and change or say something you wish you had said

i honestly the problem is i would probably would say no i don't i wouldn't go back and and and try to change because it wouldn't have a big impact the situations we had the big situations i could influence with the things i said the specific moments which were then decisive you just stand there and watch aguero in or not in we have the same problem with united you we have a thing that he's got the ball

goes in or the ball is over the line for 11 million or not that has nothing to do with what i say would i wish if i could go there and give it a little push yes would i wish james madison would block the shot of vincent company that he cannot score the goal against leicester yes but it had nothing to do with what i said and so the things i said i said in a moment for the right reasons um and sometimes they

had the impact i wished and wanted and sometimes not yeah i had to accept that that was the other

thing that um jamie carriker asked he said oh when you see when you see clock ask him how he feels about his former assistant manager pep lingers going and working going and working at manchester city

absolutely no problem i like it i like both peps that's how it is no problem uh with that um i work together with pep blinders he was an inspiration for me every day when we work together absolutely every day i learned a lot from him and and pep guardiola i couldn't respect the manager more

um and when they asked me like a bit what do you think can we of course you can pep liners i said come on find a guy who worked together with pep liners and emil pep guardiola and jürgen klopp who i would read the book

and yeah and pep knew exactly pep um guardiola knew exactly what he was looking for yeah he wanted to you know exactly this kind of um spark fire from and pep has that pep is pep blinders has that he's an extreme well of of energy and um so i'm happy for them both we're playing you guys um this week

this weekend on sunday what manchester united liverpool this sunday you didn't know

it's at anfield it's a premier league darby that's crazy that you don't know yeah but hopefully after so this will come out just after that so i'm hoping that's four losses oh we come after that yeah yeah when when do we go hopefully the day after but we'll see um so hopefully this is your fourth liverpool's fourth loss in a row and uh the fan base are growing increasingly impatient and annoyed and amrum is now one another another game in a row so this is this conversation will come

out straight after wow now we play in the anfield yeah yeah oh good luck

they have to strike back yeah you know that's a very good situation yeah you know the two days ago

or so i just in the morning i wake up pretty early in the morning so i i throw on youtube and have a look and then it says it shows me behind the scenes footage from the 7-0 the 7-0 oh gosh yeah yeah and i never saw that i never saw it but it's like the 7-0 obviously i know the goals and stuff but it's the camera difference in the stands it's really good so okay fine i watch it 19 minutes really good so all the goals again and you see players in the dressing room all the way to the dressing room really good the next day i i open and because you know how it is with the algorithm now i see the 5-0

at at manchester so and i watch that and today i come here and had no clue that you're a manchester united fan so i was really well prepared for that talk i have to say

without knowing yeah damn yeah thank you so much joegan thank you for taking the time thank you for being an inspiration to me but also thank you for all that you brought to the northwest and to liverpool

thanks welcome it was my pleasure honestly thank you so much and i i've i've learned so much from you as a leader and also as a man and in the lead up to this i spoke to so many people around you that have worked with you i contacted jordan henderson i spoke to um cariger who knows you through various people i think he managed him for one game he said yeah yeah in australia in the australia game and they all said the same thing they all said that you're the same man on and off the camera you're a person that brings people together you're extremely likable but you have high standards and are an incredibly passionate person and that the the narrative was consistently here's the same man on and off camera um which is a credit to yourself and no wonder why people were willing

to walk through fire with you yeah um it's it's incredible what you've accomplished and i hope selfishly as a football fan i hope we we see you back in the game at some point maybe real madrid or manchester you know whatever you never know you never know thank you so much