I like to imagine somewhere in Merseyside this week, Brendan Rodgers and Jurgen Klopp met at Liverpool Lime Street, at the train station, and had a cup of coffee. In my head the conversation was light and mostly not about soccer. Something like this:
Klopp laughs a shushed laugh at one of Rodgers’s stories about Jose Mourinho from his time at Chelsea, and then there’s a natural pause in the smooth, flowing conversation. This is uncomfortable for both men.
Rodgers: “This is a really good club, you know.”
Klopp: “I know.”
Rodgers: “Yeah. One of the best.”
Klopp: “You’re going to latch on somewhere else and be great. You know that, right?”
Rodgers: “Oh, yeah. I’ll be fine.”
Rodgers looks around wistfully
Rodgers: “I’ll miss it here. Kick ass, man.”
Is it really a twist if everyone in the world - even us! - predicted it months before it happened? Brendan Rodgers has been replaced at Liverpool by former Borussia Dortmund manager and great-man-at-press-conferences Jurgen Klopp. I don’t even really feel anything about this, though. It just feels like the inevitable result of hubris-driven expectations, tradition (which only means, “We were good once! We should still be as good as we were then!”), and losing Luis Suarez to Barcelona.
Brendan Rodgers is a very fine manager. That much is clear. He took Swansea to unprecedented heights and came within a few points of a remarkable title run at Liverpool just two seasons ago. Rodgers will go somewhere else to manage, and he will succeed. But…he and the LFC “transfer committee” bought the wrong players for his system last year when they had the money to make smart moves. This season’s transfers haven’t had time to gel and very well might be just fine under the new regime, but Dejan Lovren, Mario Balotelli, and Alberto Moreno have been disaster, disappearance, and disappointing, in that order. He lost Suarez and then lost Daniel Sturridge to prolonged injury and then lost Steven Gerrard first to father time and gravity and then mercifully to MLS. Not many managers would have survived that onslaught of misfortune, but as I’ve written before, he had some room for better results. His firing marks another day when we look at the revolving door to the Premier League, and we see that just in front of the building the machine cranking it is gaining power.
As for the timing, as Grantland’s Mike Goodman astutely pointed out, I don’t think it’s strange at all. From all accounts, Klopp wasn’t ready to jump back into coaching after leaving Dortmund in the spring - everyone needs time to themselves…like, have you even seen Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt? - and if you’re Liverpool’s brass and you have the chance to upgrade your manager, you take the opportunity, no matter when it happens. Their statement that Rodgers would have been fired even if he had won at Everton this past weekend makes it obvious that Klopp said “I’m ready” very recently. I actually think the Fenway Sports Group played this one pretty well. They didn’t make Rodgers out to be a lame-duck late last season. They didn’t abandon him and let him flounder out the remainder of his contract. They backed him financially and verbally, but faced with the obvious choice, they went for it.
The move leaves me wondering, though, if Klopp’s gegenpressing style - pressing immediately after losing possession - can work with Liverpool’s current roster of players. I’ve mentioned before that Klopp is a bit of a stubborn tactical manager, and a bit of the antithesis of the ever-tinkering Rodgers. I mostly liked that about Rodgers (if it’s not working, don’t waste too much time changing it), but few of his tinkerings caught on. Now, the club is within striking distance of the Champions League places. They’re only three points out of fourth, somehow, in a suddenly wide-open race for that final spot. The Reds can boisterously thank maniacal Chelsea for that.
On paper the learning curve should be shallow. Rodgers’s preferred style of attack is very similar to Klopp’s - think about Barcelona’s midfield hounders and you have the idea. But the Liverpool players haven’t seemed willing to press hard for 90 minutes, and when they do, they haven’t been very good at it.
(Plus, the team sacrificed Raheem Sterling, its best presser, in a very ugly, very telling divorce this summer. The 20-year-old got his revenge for a tumultuous Liverpool tenure, which started poorly with his being embarrassed on the horrific Being: Liverpool TV show and ended just as badly: Sterling is out there starting in the Champions League for a title contender, and Rodgers got the boot.)
This Liverpool team under Rodgers has at times looked out on its feet; the second half at Everton was particularly lethargic. Emre Can seems to have regressed. The defense remains Martin Skrtel and an adjacent three-ring circus. And where on Earth or Mars has he buried Adam Lallana?
Klopp's Dortmund. Photo: @MAIKERZAVALA
There’s a chance, certainly, that a managerial change will spark the players into the best versions of themselves. Klopp is a notorious man-motivator and inspirational figure, so that should help. Plus, he’s phenomenally fun. Like, really, really fun. Liverpool need some fun, because right now, they’re stuck in the mud playing a joyless game. But Klopp’s Dortmund teams had Robert Lewandowski and Marco Reus and, most importantly I think, Mats Hummels. They are top-five players in the world at their positions. Those guys aren’t walking through Anfield’s doors anytime soon.
Klopp walks into a revitalization project, not a rebuilding one, but one that will be under pressure to be done quickly and without misstep. He faces a roster of unknowns and unfulfilled promise and a front office with a not-so-great recent transfer record. He now manages one of the most lackluster defensive units of any top-half team in the Premier League. And he inherits expectations of Champions League qualification and, in future seasons, the elusive Premier League title. He’ll need front office assistance, he’ll need player buy-in, and he’ll need the fortune that Rodgers never got.
Grant Burkhardt is on Twitter @grantburkhardt and you can email him about the footie at burkhardt@the18.com
