Jens Haas still remembers the first time he suspected his schoolmate Jurgen Klopp had the mind of a football manager.
They were 11 years old, being driven to play football for SV Glatten’s youth team, listening to their beloved Stuttgart’s latest Bundesliga match on the radio.
Young Jurgen began to analyse Stuttgart’s tactics – and suggested a couple of substitutions to alter the course of the game. Moments later, the commentator confirmed that Klopp’s suggested switches were being made.
- Podcast: Klopp‘s journey – Black Forest hills to Anfield thrills
“I was amazed by his knowledge and understanding of the game,” recalls Haas. “Sometimes I thought he was already a coach.”
Klopp’s school days in the Black Forest offer the first clues as to how he grew up to become the ultimate modern football manager.
He is revered at Mainz, where he went from player to head coach overnight and took the club into the Bundesliga for the first time; at Dortmund, where he toppled Bayern Munich; and now at Liverpool, with a sixth European Cup and a march towards a 19th league title before coronavirus intervened.
Equally at ease with players, fans, executives and journalists, this smiling, gesticulating, bear-hugging coach seems to embody these clubs whose supporters demand an emotional investment from the man in control of their dreams.
There’s plenty more on Klopp’s personality and methods to come as we speak to some of the key figures in his journey to Anfield. The story begins in Glatten, the idyllic Black Forest spa village where he spent his formative years.
We meet Haas opposite the bakery, beside a fountain that flows into the River Glatt from which the village takes its name. This is where Jurgen, Jens and their SV Glatten team-mates would gather before travelling to away matches.
A short stroll along the river’s grassy banks, where the boys used to ride their bikes, takes you to Klopp’s childhood home, a large white-fronted house where his mother still lives, opposite the shiny new town hall and less than a corner kick away from the primary school that Klopp and Jens attended.
Klopp, pictured far left on the back row, with the captain’s armband. SV Glatten are lining up against Stuttgarter Kickers and among the opposition is Robert Prosinecki (first row, fourth from left)
It is here, among the hills of Swabia – a land of cuckoo clocks, traditional costumes and hearty foods in south-west Germany – that Klopp developed his sense of freedom, a far cry from the industry and intensity of Mainz, Dortmund or Liverpool.
“People here are very quiet and solid,” says Haas. “They are cautious with money. They like to work and they judge people on what they do.
“Swabian people take a little while to warm up, but once you are friends you are friends for life. It’s a really good place to grow up. You have time for yourself and you can focus on what you want to do.”
Klopp has two older sisters who he says were like second mothers to him, but it was his father Norbert – a travelling salesman and former amateur goalkeeper – who encouraged him to take up sport.
“Norbert had a big influence on him, he shaped him,” recalls Klopp’s first coach Ulrich Rath, who founded the Glatten Under-11s team in 1972 so that his two sons Ingo and Harti could play for a team alongside Klopp and Jens.
“It’s important to know that Norbert Klopp wasn’t born here in Glatten. He’s from Rhineland-Palatinate, close to Mainz. The people from that area celebrate carnival. In Glatten and in the Black Forest, we don’t,” he adds.
“Norbert was very active here in this club, first in football and then later in tennis. And Jurgen got his father’s eloquence, enthusiasm and vigour.
“His mother is originally from Glatten, from a long-established family. The people from the Black Forest are quiet, laid-back people. They always had to work hard. They were always strong-willed.
“When Jurgen is jumping up and down, I can see Norbert in him. But when he closes the door behind him at home, he finds peace and quiet and collects his strength. That’s his mother.”
Klopp was a midfielder and captain for SV Glatten’s youth teams until he switched in his late teens to TuS Ergenzingen, a bigger team in a town 15 miles away. Rath describes him as a “bad loser” but a “natural leader”.
“He was always right at the forefront and he spoke up when something was not right,” says the 79-year-old Rath. “We had a good relationship. He was ambitious. And he would always tell his team-mates ‘Let’s go’ and push them.”
The pitch where Klopp used to play has tall pine trees along one touchline and a stream along the other, from which Haas remembers retrieving many a stray ball.
In 1981, matches moved across the village to a new sports club, where the yellow and black colours of the local team are an uncanny match for those of Borussia Dortmund. A photo of Klopp in his Dortmund prime, signed and dedicated to the people of his home town, sits proudly among the other trophies and memorabilia.
This was also the venue for a celebration to honour the village’s most famous son when Klopp led Dortmund to the Bundesliga title in 2011.
Klopp’s first major title as a manager was cause for special celebration in his home town
As the cheering and chanting subsided, Klopp went on stage to make a speech before mingling with the people of his childhood home.
“It was amazing,” says Haas, over a local wheat beer in Glatten’s nearest thing to a sports bar, a smokey wooden den with TV screens where the local bikers’ club have taken up residence for the afternoon.
“One minute he was the professional coach of Dortmund and then the next he was an old classmate. He was interested in the village, in who everyone was, and he spoke to people in the local dialect.”
Rath rarely sees Klopp these days but becomes emotional when he recalls a surprise phone call from his former pupil on his 75th birthday.
“He congratulated me and wished me all the best,” says Rath, choking back tears. “This is his home. And he has never forgotten that.”
After leaving Glatten, Klopp played for several amateur clubs, including Rot-Weiss Frankfurt, while studying for a degree in sports science at the city’s university.
In 1990, at the age of 23, he moved 30 miles west to sign a semi-professional contract with second division team Mainz 05, under the watchful gaze of club captain Michael Schumacher.
“Klopp was a typical student at this time, in both looks and personality,” laughs the 62-year-old, sitting in a corporate suite at Mainz’s new 34,000-seater stadium, a gleaming symbol of the club’s dramatic rise under Klopp’s management.
“He was always wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was really easy-going with no stress.”
Life on the pitch was to prove rather more traumatic for Klopp, who has always confessed to having second division legs but a first division brain.
“When he came to us he was a forward,” adds Schumacher. “He was fast and good with his head but he struggled with the technical side of the game.
“It was hard for him. When they announced his name, the fans would whistle and boo. I remember after a game we were sitting in the hydro-massage pool and Klopp said to me ‘What can I do? The coach always wants to bring me on.’ He knew he wasn’t the greatest player, but he did what he was told.”
A switch to defence under the tutelage of influential coach Wolfgang Frank turned the 6ft 4in Klopp into a success at Mainz, where he played 325 games in a decade-long career. But it was the sudden decision to install him as manager that really brought out his strengths.