Sport

Parallels between Klopp’s end at Dortmund and now at Liverpool

Jurgen Klopp’s slow descent to his Borussia Dortmund exit in the summer of 2015 came out of nowhere, and that should be a cause of real concern for Liverpool fans.

The manner of his exit was very disappointing in the fact that it felt like the right thing for both parties. This is the man that only a couple of years earlier led the club to a Champions League final, as well as successive Bundesliga titles at the beginning of the decade; nobody expected it to reach the stage where the club would be happy to see the back of him.

But such was the drop off in output and form during the 2014/15 season for Dortmund, which saw them fall from being Bayern Munich’s closest rivals in Germany to lucky to qualify for the Europa League.

Nothing was particularly untoward from the outside; the departure of Robert Lewandowski to Bayern in 2014 will have stung, especially after losing young star Mario Gotze to their rivals a year earlier, but he was replaced pre-emptively by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. There was far too much quality in the squad for it to fall into midtable mediocrity the way it did. And yet, there have been worrying parallels emerging at Anfield all season.

So should there be genuine concern that the end for Klopp and Liverpool could be nearing? Or indeed, that an amicable split may be for the best?

It is true that similarities exist, and there is logic to drawing the same conclusions. Klopp likes to work with a small squad; his philosophy is best past on to a core group of lieutenants who act as the spine of the team and that rarely changes. But evolution is important; football is an ever-changing game, and refreshing things every so often is a necessary component of any successful team. Transition is an inevitability, but the trick is to make it gradual and contribute to build as you go; perhaps a sense of over-familiarity and mental fatigue set in. Couple that with key players ebbing away to join Bayern, and perhaps Klopp hitting a wall at Dortmund becomes a little easier to comprehend.

When things have felt stale at Liverpool, particularly this season, Klopp has been accused of being too loyal to undeserving players. But that has been with regards to ageing peripheral figures like Jordan Henderson and James Milner, rather than first team regulars. After the team’s nadir, a 3-0 loss at Brighton in January, Klopp said it was his organisation of the players that was the problem.

“How can you explain that?”, he told BBC Sport when asked what was going wrong. “The same players played outstanding football matches but if things aren’t properly organised then it can look like that.

“We were always a bit late and things like this. If you don’t win key challenges and lose the ball too easily they are the two worst things that can happen in football. There is no formation that can solve that.

“I had an idea to change the formation which was to try help the team. That was the idea. But we never did it properly. We were always a bit in between and that’s the worst thing you can do. We could have done better but we didn’t and that’s why I looked the way it did.

“We need to be creative with the options we have. What I saw today from my team was that they were not really convinced by it. That’s it.“

Like at Dortmund, any instant diagnosis and suggestion of a quick fix will be too simplistic. There are numerous complex reasons as to why things aren’t going the Reds’ way, and in them lie the differences between the situations.

Injuries have not helped Klopp’s cause. Because he operates with such a tight-knit group, depth isn’t always common, and one issue can spread across the team. It was evident when Virgil van Dijk suffered a knee injury two years ago and is so again now he is struggling with his hamstring. Luis Diaz’s absence is more than noticeable, too.

You should also factor in the not so smooth transition in attack. Sadio Mane has left a huge void, one that the immensely popular but incredibly popular Darwin Nunez is yet to fill, while Cody Gakpo is yet to get off the mark since his January move from PSV Eindhoven. Klopp says signings aren’t the way out of this predicament, but the ones that are made need time to develop and get up to speed.

Dortmund’s growth over the past 15 years is down to Klopp. While others have had their role at Liverpool, the team is very much built in his image as well.

Any manager who is at any club for as long as Klopp has been will run into issues, especially within wholesale changes along the way.

At Dortmund, the nature of the job and inability to stop direct rivals poaching key players meant he may well have taken them as far as he could.

Whereas at Liverpool, that isn’t the case. He’s earned the chance to lead them into a new era regardless of what happens this season.