The inside story of how Liverpool won first title in 30 years
Liverpool’s coronation was delayed by coronavirus but now the wait is over — this is how Jürgen Klopp steered the club back to the pinnacle
By Paul Joyce (The Times)
The precious time that Jürgen Klopp craves is always the week in pre-season when Liverpool decamp en masse to the sleepy French town of Évian.
There are no distractions or commercial obligations. Just him, his staff and his players, and triple training sessions split between 7am, 11am and 5pm during which the foundations for the coming season are laid.
When Liverpool arrived late last July at the lavish, five-star Hotel Royal, with its panoramic views over Lake Geneva, Klopp was sure of what he wanted his overriding message to be.
In the afterglow of the Champions League final victory over Tottenham Hotspur, the Liverpool manager had spent much of his summer sprawled out on a sun lounger studying videos and flicking through images of that heady triumph.
As he reviewed the pictures of the giddy night in Madrid, a victory which had prompted 750,000 supporters to pour on to the streets of Liverpool the following afternoon, Klopp came to the conclusion that his squad was capable of more and wanted to draw a line under the success. It was time to move on.
At their training ground, Melwood, reminders of that 2-0 win at the Wanda Metropolitano were modest. Yes, where the club’s past achievements were recognised in murals, that sixth European Cup was added, but it was not singled out or marked apart.
The implications of that were clear: everyone at Liverpool was aware that the Premier League title was now the priority. Having been pipped by Manchester City just a couple of months earlier, Klopp was of the opinion that his players were good enough to be crowned champions for the first time since 1990, providing they could deal with the setbacks that he felt would inevitably present themselves. The speech that he delivered in Évian hammered home that point.
It was an indication of Klopp’s thoughts that he invited the German surfer Sebastian Steudtner to speak to his “mentality monsters” during a camp where the onus is purely on hard work (for all that the annual table tennis tournament, won by Mohamed Salah and Jordan Henderson, lightened the mood). Steudtner is regarded as one of the world’s best big-wave surfers. No sooner does he conquer one, then the search is on for the next.
Klopp saw obvious parallels between this and his team and believed a different voice from outside football’s bubble, someone who boasts an “anything is possible” outlook, would prove positive. The surfer had the players conducting an exercise in the hotel swimming pool focusing on holding their breath underwater. They duly turned it into a competition. Who could commit to 30 seconds? What about 40 or 50?
Steudtner then explained how to cool down your mindset by thinking of a happier place. By the end, some squad members were completing three minutes with their head immersed after half an hour of teaching. It taught the players they can perform at higher levels than they had previously imagined while dealing with stress. The session was so enjoyable that Steudtner, accepted by the group, stayed with the team for two extra days.
To the outside world this title success has perhaps seemed to be a procession. However, that is a misconception; Liverpool’s great strength has been to create that illusion.
Alisson was injured after 39 minutes of the opening game of the new season, sidelined for two months and replaced with a goalkeeper, in Adrián, who had been discarded by West Ham United and a week earlier had been without a club. Little changed.
Fabinho, the perceived metronome in midfield, damaged his ankle ligaments in late November and was also out for eight weeks. Liverpool won every game in his absence. There have been 14 victories by a single goal and numerous matches in which the players have displayed resilience to come from behind and prevail.
For all their victories, the glint in Klopp’s eyes was first seen in defeat. Liverpool’s warm-up games had been problematic, with players missing due to international commitments and losses against Borussia Dortmund, Seville and Napoli.
After the celebration of victory in last year’s Champions League died down, Klopp turned his attention to the next target — the Premier League.
The first game after returning from Évian was the Community Shield curtain raiser against Pep Guardiola’s City. Their rivals won on penalties but there was a period in the second half of the game — as Liverpool dealt with the disappointment of falling behind and hauled themselves level — that they were relentless, intense and clearly the better team.
City left Wembley with silverware, but Klopp departed with a prize of his own. Belief was written all over his face. “We’ll be OK,” he said. They have been much more than that.
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Anfield was not even full on the day Liverpool clinched the title for the 18th time with a 2-1 victory over Queens Park Rangers on April 28, 1990. Thirty years on and Klopp has mobilised an army of supporters as well as a team. There has been no particular Hollywood moment, however, behind the club clambering back on to their perch.
November was a key month, with the 3-1 victory over City representing another sign that the balance in their rivalry with Guardiola’s side was shifting. As the Catalan raged about the perceived injustice of the opening goal — Trent Alexander-Arnold was not punished for handball in his area and seconds later Fabinho slammed in a shot at the other end — Liverpool calmly stuck to their principles.
“There’s no hiding from the fact it did feel big,” Jordan Henderson, the captain, said. “When you go head-to-head with your title rival and win, it does feel like a double hit. It was a big result.”
A week earlier, Andrew Robertson’s late equaliser and Sadio Mané’s 94th-minute winner in the triumph over Aston Villa underlined the strength of character that has typified their season and overwhelmed the rest of the Premier League.
That Robertson’s intervention should be followed by a deft header by Mané from an Alexander-Alexander set piece underlined once more the importance of Liverpool’s full backs in the final third of the pitch. But for Klopp, and his coaches, the secret has not solely been the attacking raids from those two players, or the work rate of Mané, Roberto Firmino and Salah, but the team’s sense of togetherness. This is not about dressing-room harmony, but tactical synchronicity. “Wherever we are on the pitch, we are together,” Pepijn Lijnders, the assistant manager, said.
There have been times when it has felt as if Liverpool press less as a team and have moved away from the “heavy metal” approach that Klopp’s side were associated with in the past. Yet this is only because they are better at those situations. When their formation was open, they had to press more often. When the spaces are smaller between the players, it means they can circulate the ball quicker and win back possession immediately.
The perfect example of this was Mané’s winning goal against Bournemouth, which calmed the nerves of their first league defeat of the season at Watford in February. Virgil van Dijk picked off a pass on the halfway line and stepped forward before releasing the Senegal forward to score.
A freeze frame of the exact moment the defender pilfers possession shows all ten of Liverpool’s outfield players within 20 metres of each other. Similarly, one of the causes of the 3-0 reverse at Vicarage Road the previous week was that they had been too far apart.
One of the key elements of the side which lifted the Champions League was the deliberate positioning of the midfielders. That has been improved again.
“Focus on speedy attacks and you go fast towards being a successful team, but to go far you have to focus on really good organisation,” Lijnders said. “If you want good counter-pressing then having shorter distances between the players is important. So, if you lose the ball to the opposition, you can give a very intense moment to win the ball back and create chaos.
“If the distances in midfield are quite wide, then it is difficult to put pressure on when you have lost the ball. If the distances are close [when you are attacking] and they play with each other, then the way the ball moves can create surprise and space for when the opposition reacts.”
The adjustments made this season may only be a matter of metres, but it allows for further dominance and reverts back to the maxim which lies at the heart of Liverpool’s sharp ascent: our way but better.
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Against the top teams, Liverpool can make it so intense that they become impossible to handle. The win over Leicester City on Boxing Day is arguably the best example. They hit the heights that evening.
Just a few days earlier they had triumphed in the Club World Cup final against Flamengo in Qatar and, if there is one image that defines the professionalism that Liverpool have cornered, it came in the aftermath of that success.
On the flight home, there was Henderson in his underpants receiving a massage at 33,000ft from one of the club’s masseurs on a specially constructed table on board the aircraft.
Henderson was a world champion, the first Liverpool captain to lift that trophy, but straight away the focus had shifted on to the next game. Perspiration, then preparation.
“Set a standard, meet it, then look to exceed it,” he said. “Never stop focusing on what we can do better. That’s our mantra.”
All the talk was how a punishing schedule would catch up with Klopp’s side at the King Power Stadium against their former manager, Brendan Rodgers, whose buoyant team were seeking to upset the natural order.
Leicester City were, in fact, undressed 4-0. Liverpool showcased the best of themselves to leave their opponents disorientated by their speed, power and poise. They were unstoppable. The phrase “intensity is our identity” had been coined by Klopp after the win over Arsenal in August, but the performance on December 26 offered the perfect illustration of what he had meant.
Before the game, Liverpool’s routine had changed. For the first time they travelled on the day of the match — they have since done it for West Ham — with staff puzzled as to why the usual formula had suddenly been discarded. Normally in the immediate build-up to matches, Liverpool will schedule training to reflect kick-off times to ensure that the players’ bodies are attuned to working at the same time of the day.
But they deviated, too, from that plan. The players trained on Christmas morning and went back home, reporting on the day of the game to travel. It was a big call from Klopp and his coaching staff. Any flight disruption and it would have meant three hours on a bus.
Yet having just travelled to the Middle East, it was felt that Liverpool’s players would benefit from an extra night at home in their own beds.
Some of Leicester’s backroom staff had also worked with Rodgers at Liverpool and, as acquaintances were cheerily renewed with former colleagues, there was a barrage of inquiries about whether the visitors felt jet-lagged. They discovered the opposite was true.
Freshness is fundamental to how Liverpool play and that was the motivation for ripping up the prescribed plan.
One of the key attributes of Liverpool’s core group lies in their ability to repeat game after game after game. Van Dijk, for instance, has missed 35 minutes of his past 83 league matches.
This is partly down to good recruitment. The squad carefully pieced together by Klopp, the Fenway Sports Group (FSG) president Mike Gordon and sporting director Michael Edwards could be a template for the perfect transfer model. Invest cleverly, sell high — in the case of Philippe Coutinho — reinvest: it is a self-sustaining outlook that is the envy of all others.
Yet once inside the building, Liverpool go to great lengths to ensure that their players are available. There has been more time off this season because Lijnders believes it frees the mind and allows the players to recover quicker emotionally. Under Zeljko Buvac, Klopp’s long-time assistant who left before the end of the 2018 season, this would not have been the case. It was his way or the highway.
Lijnders has taken the lead on players being allowed to do the first day of recovery at home to maximise days off and be with their families. The day after a game would normally feature those who played undergoing a 45-minute massage, bike and core work, a jog around the pitch and a session in the swimming pool.
Many players now have access to pools at their homes, or elsewhere, and it is common for some of the club’s staff to go to a player’s house and give a massage. Masseurs like Paul Small and the head physio Lee Nobes are the unsung heroes in lots of ways, reacting to timetable changes without quibbling.
The second reason why more time off has been afforded is that Klopp trusts his players implicitly. That trust has been earned.
Klopp could walk around Melwood at 9.30am and see 20 players working in the gym for 20-30 minutes with Liverpool’s physical department before the actual training session begins. “Pre-activation” is not compulsory, but is self policed. If someone does not go in for a couple of days, it does not go unnoticed.
When this commitment is evident Liverpool’s coaches know the team is focused. Just as when it is cold, raining and windy outside and, on the training pitch, the players put in a session that is more intense than the game they have just played.
What was akin to a school sports hall has been converted into a gym and is a vibrant, bright hub of activity every morning. The basketball boards have not been taken down and the players will shoot hoops as a way of relaxing and fostering camaraderie.
On the wall at one end of the complex is a fans’ mural — “MAKE US DREAM”— and the other is adorned with four trophies. When the refit was first taking place before the 2017-18 season, the picture was of Liverpool legends holding the trophies the club had most recently won: the Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup and Uefa Cup.
Everyone was proud of the facility but Andreas Kornmayer, head of fitness and conditioning, wanted the emphasis to be on the future and for the players to visualise that every day.
The past was literally erased overnight and images of the four trophies Liverpool set out each season to try and win — Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup — were displayed instead. Two years on and the big two have now been ticked off.
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So attuned to the task in hand have Liverpool been — indeed so intent on cementing themselves as one of the best sides in this club’s rich history — that they have seldom stopped to praise themselves during a hectic nine months.
If you were parachuted into the dressing room in the immediate aftermath of a game before the music goes on, unaware of the result, then it would be difficult to work out whether the group had drawn or lost. That demonstrates how much effort is required to perform to the standards that they do.
There have only been three times this season — before the trophy being clinched — that exhaustion gave way to exhilaration. After the 5-5 Carabao Cup tie with Arsenal, which Liverpool won on penalties, it was as if a firework had been let off in the dressing room. The senior players who had not featured took the lead in congratulating those, many of them youngsters, who had prevailed in such dramatic fashion.
Similarly, after the FA Cup replay victory over Shrewsbury Town there was a spontaneous round of applause for Under-23s manager Neil Critchley, now head coach at Blackpool, who had taken the team as Klopp enjoyed a winter break.
In between, came the Club World Cup success when they allowed themselves to make history. Later on a party had been hastily arranged by staff at the team hotel, but the celebrations did not last long into the night. Some players had a beer and went to bed. Many others do not drink alcohol.
They are in many ways the anti-Crazy Gang. A team meal in London after the 1-0 victory over Tottenham Hotspur in January was similarly low-key. “It was magnificently boring,” one player said.
Liverpool’s squad is not without egos, but they do not detract from the overall aim. Sometimes the majesty with which they have performed is best described by their opponent. “You can focus on stopping Firmino dropping deep and picking up the ball,” one Premier League manager said, “but then there are the full backs to stop. So you look at that and then there are the rotations in midfield from the likes of Henderson and [Alex] Oxlade-Chamberlain.
“They have so many ways of attacking, it is just hard to stop them. No one wants to just defend but if you try and go at them they’ll pick you off. And, don’t forget, all that’s before you try and work out how you are going to get past Van Dijk and Alisson to score yourself.”
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Lijnders has a saying. “Ninety per cent of the points you win are made on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Play as you train.”
This is non-negotiable and one of the reasons why the changes Klopp has made to his team, although not as widespread as anticipated, has not stymied momentum. It is hard to think of a player who has not contributed in some way.
Small adjustments have been made to training this season, with the rondos, a possession based drill, tweaked to maintain the interest of the players, while also ingraining the counter-pressing principles which they then rely upon on a match-day.
There has been the introduction of a set of goals to one exercise with the aim to score after ten successful passes, while a six pass rule has been applied to a five-versus-two rondo.
Should the two players in the middle win the ball in the first six passes, both are replaced so they chase like mad hoping to grasp the incentive on offer. It has been christened the “Milly rondo” by Lijnders because James Milner invariably intercepts the ball in the first few passes.
“You’ve teed up the animal,” Oxlade-Chamberlain laughingly complained to Mané during a recent session when a wayward pass was inevitably picked-off by Milner. The 34-year-old’s professionalism every single day sets a standard others know they must match.
Interestingly, the rondos usually see many of the British players in one group. There are cliques at Melwood but Klopp does not see these as negative. Nor does he believe in trying to force a group dynamic.
For example, when Alisson and Fabinho signed it was natural that they ate, and spent time with fellow Brazilian Firmino and that helped their acclimatisation. Mané, a joker in the pack, helped Naby Keïta to settle because they have the same agent.
If you really wanted to measure Liverpool’s development, then it would be letting the team play without the coach present. Klopp has created a team that lead themselves. There is a clear pattern in their way of playing and in adversity — in those setbacks he had mentioned in his address back in July — they stick to those tenets.
Of course, Klopp’s presence on the sideline still ekes out more. “You would get similar performances if he were in the directors’ box, but there is definitely that extra couple of percent that you gain off him being close to you,” Adam Lallana said. “Sometimes you make a tackle and hear and see his reaction. He celebrates that more than a goal, at times, and that all filters back to how he wants to play.
“Even him watching the warm up of the opposition team. It must be a little bit intimidating — the opposition manager just stood there watching you. A lot of the other managers don’t even come out for the warm-up. He is always there. He is hands on. He is very passionate and emotional. Those extra two percent he gives you count for everything, especially when you are playing at the highest level.”
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Rewind to January 20, 2020. The morning after the victory over Manchester United and Klopp was in no mood to kick back and admire the landscape that his meticulous work had shaped.
The previous day those inside Anfield had finally released their pent-up emotions with the gleeful chant of “We’re Gonna Win The League,” and the players responsible for bringing supporters to that state of frenzy were on a well-earned recovery day.
Klopp had described the 2-0 win over United as “brutal,” typified by the spell at the start of the second half-time when nine minutes and 45 seconds elapsed without a visiting player touching the ball in the hosts’ half. Let that sink in.
Yet rather than organising a low-key session of five versus five, he sought to send a message to his entire squad. On the main pitch at Melwood, Klopp and his coaching staff arranged a practice match between those players who had not started in the success, such as Fabinho, Dejan Lovren and Takumi Minamino, and the Under-23s.
The session, screened off from prying eyes as if they were preparing for a cup final, was fast-paced and electric, the coaches screaming for those involved to work on pressing high and winning the ball early.
The FA Cup tie with Shrewsbury Town was looming and, later, there was even focus on what type of throw-ins the League One side would attempt.
For the manager and his assistants, Lijnders and Peter Krawietz, plus the goalkeeper coach John Achterberg nothing had changed, regardless of the feeling outside the club. They wanted that sense to resonate from Monday morning’s exertions.
Klopp, so long viewed as the nearly man after six successive final defeats with Borussia Dortmund and then Liverpool, has embraced winning. Being crowned coach of the year at the Best Fifa awards in Milan last September meant a lot to him. That he has moved on from being an insurgent illustrates the breadth of his talent.
It is not too long ago that the departure of Buvac, who Klopp had nicknamed “The Brain”, was perceived to have left him exposed. The answer to that has been emphatic, with the 53-year-old embracing the freedom that the exit of Buvac, who had become increasingly detached and distant, has afforded him.
Klopp has become more authoritarian and decisive without the Serb, who is now the sporting director at Spartak Moscow, by his side. Always the first to any of the meetings he meticulously planned, which reflects his studious nature, he is hands-on in training, and has proved he is a mastermind in his own right.
If the door to Klopp’s first floor office, which overlooks the lush green playing surface at Melwood, is closed then it means one of three things: he is making a private telephone call, holding a private meeting or reading something upon which he needs to fully concentrate.
The rest of the time he migrates from room to room of Melwood’s “nerve centre” whether to speak to Ray Haughan, the operations manager, about travel or to chat to Edwards.
After a game he may have a beer (he also likes red wine) and a vape, but he does not get drunk very often because he likes to remain in control. And on those occasions when he erupts, one of his strengths is to move on within half-an-hour of the row. There are no lasting recriminations.
Off the pitch, he is a private man. He plays paddle tennis — Klopp’s father was a keen tennis player — most days against Lijnders in a court that was specially built at Melwood with the winner being the first to two sets. It is his chance to decompress before the pressure of leading the club forward kicks in once again and the games will continue when the club moves to a new £50 million training base at Kirkby.
He is happy going out on walks with his rescue dog, Emma, listening to audio books and watching sport or crime documentaries. Klopp also loves holidays and usually goes away with another German family either skiing or renting a house in Spain. During the winter break he went to Majorca.
FSG always regarded Klopp as the best-fit for Liverpool, even when Guardiola was inspiring City to back-to-back title successes, and the importance of him committing to a new contract cannot be overstated.
The renewal had been a long-standing topic first mooted in November 2018 and which would be picked up again when the timing was right. Klopp had never doubted he was at a special club, but there had been suggestions that the draining nature of modern-day management could result in a sabbatical when his existing deal expired in 2022. He has also been linked with managing the German national team.
He had spent seven years at both his previous clubs, Mainz and Borussia Dortmund, but the plan is to go beyond those tenures on Merseyside.
Once Klopp’s wife, Ulla, gave her blessing, negotiations were straightforward. Liverpool bought the house in which Klopp lives in Formby from his predecessor, Brendan Rodgers. Rodgers had previously purchased it from the former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard.
Gordon flew over on a private jet to complete the discussions on December 11 and a new deal, running until 2024, was announced on Friday 13. The bad luck belongs to Liverpool’s adversaries.
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Claiming the title was rarely mentioned as the wins were ticked off. If there was a slip of the tongue then, as Oxlade-Chamberlain confessed, Henderson would bite a team-mates’s head off or offer a piercing glare. There was the moment during a post-match interview when Mané started to broach the subject after his winner in the 1-0 victory over Norwich City on February 15. Alongside him, the skipper immediately interjected and changed the subject.
Yet the club’s executives, such as Gordon and Edwards, cannot operate like that and be blinkered until the ticker tape comes down. They have to look ahead. Organisation and the successful execution of a vision have underpinned Liverpool’s evolution.
Remember, this has been a squad that was not strengthened with senior talent after the Champions League success. The view that the squad was “complete” and could be nurtured more was taken towards the end of 2018 with Klopp fundamentally believing in pursuing progress by training rather than just signings.
Conversations took place on possible transfer targets this summer, such as RB Leipzig’s Timo Werner — but the financial repercussions of the coronavirus scuppered that interest.
The decision had already been made to give youngster Curtis Jones the opportunity to step into the void which will be created when Lallana’s contract expires at the end of the season and England’s player of the year in 2016 leaves. Harvey Elliott, who turned 17 in April, and Neco Williams are others who will have the chance to progress.
That these talks were taking place in the new year says everything about the modern day Liverpool. It is not about winning title number 19, but pushing on for No 20 and 21.
“We will — and we have to — make the next step, never forgetting why we came in this position,” Lijnders said. “Other teams will improve and are improving. The way to keep beating them is training with more passion and ambition than they are doing, each single day, each minute of each session. Beat them in the week not at the weekend.
“In modern football, it doesn’t happen much anymore that you can keep a group of super pros together, especially after a successful period. Can we keep this passion? Yes! Can we keep this ambition? Yes! Can we keep this hunger for more? Yes! Why?
“Because of Jürgen.”
