da aviator aposta： English football hipsters are waiting impatiently for a Premier League side to make a move for Jurgen Klopp. City and Liverpool both seem to be in need of a manager, they think, so why not the shaggy-haired, bearded German?
da cassino： The thing is, Klopp is tactically astute, he wears his heart on his sleeve, and he ticks all the right boxes to coach a big club. And he’s very suited to the English league. So really, why not the shaggy-haired, bearded German?
Those glasses, that smile, that look – surely that’s enough to tempt managerially-promiscuous club owners in England into taking a chance on Jurgen Norbert Klopp?
But it’s not what’s on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. And Klopp’s inner-beauty is a perfect match for the rough and ready style of the English Premier League.
Dortmund have, over the years, challenged the dominance of Bayern Munich with a spring in their step and an ultra-high press in their minds. And this is something that will translate well into the Premier League. In fact, Liverpool are already doing something similar.
It’s called gegenpressing and you’ve probably heard it used by your hipster mates down the pub as they gush about Dortmund. It’s devised as an antidote to tiki-taka, a way of reducing the time and space that players like Xavi have on the ball, and therefore stopping them picking their passes as easily.
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It’s also effective at winning the ball back just after you’ve lost it. If Busquets tackles you and three of your teammates close him down then he doesn’t have time to orientate himself and pick a pass easily. So it’s about speed of foot from your team necessitating speed of mind from the opposition.
As Jack Charlton would say: ‘Put ‘em under pressure’.
Thankfully it’s a little more sophisticated than the Republic of Ireland circa 1990, but there’s a similar motivation – being competitive and winning the ball back.
There are so many managers who we hear are linked to English clubs and who like to play passing football. Or players who come to the Premier League and realise that you don’t get time on the ball to do as you please with it very often. Usually there’s someone charging at you like a headless chicken. It’s rare to see teams with 70% possession week in and week out in England. United this season and Arsenal do it a fair amount, but even then, they’re guilty of dallying on the ball too often. And we criticise their ‘one-pass-too-many’ approach.
Klopp is one manager who won’t fall into this trap. Last season he told journalists that he likes Arsene Wenger and Arsenal, and that they play good football. Yet he could never set his team up like that. Wenger, he says, likes ‘serene’ football.
A piece at the time from the Guardian says this:
“For me, he is Sir Arsène Wenger, he is really something, I love him,” Klopp adds, before miming a polite handshake. “But I’m this guy, with high fives. I always want it loud. I want to have this … ” Klopp makes the sound of an exploding bomb.
And that’s why the media think that Klopp would be a good fit for an English side. Especially Liverpool.
Because Liverpool have done something similar over the last few months. They’ve experimented with passing football, and they still do like to pass it about, but they’ve also started using this high press. Where the pace of Sturridge, Sterling, Markovic and co is utilised by trying to win the ball back from the opposition deep into their half.
When Liverpool tried to pass the ball around their own half last season they sometimes looked like they were in danger of losing it and conceding. Sometimes it’s a dangerous game, and that slip from Gerrard shows it. If you mess up once they can score. So Liverpool have a game plan of trying to do just that to their opponents. And they were unbeaten from December until late March doing it. So it can’t be all bad.
It’s probably not time for Liverpool to end their Rodgers experiment just yet. And so it’s probably not quite time to see Jurgen Klopp in England. But the fact that he’s available makes it interesting. He’ll leave Dortmund at the end of the season and doesn’t want a year out. So if Liverpool think he’s their man then they need to act quickly.
Klopp is a heavy metal manager and England is a heavy metal league. His style of playing isn’t an overly sophisticated passing game that’ll be picked apart by the speed and physicality of the Premier League. It’s a style that will suit the rough and tumble well, and may cause a few teams even more problems than they had before.
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