The rockstar has arrived at the national team: Will Jürgen Klopp save Germany?
In a country where football is a religion, Jürgen Klopp could be a god. He is charismatic, an expert in nurturing players, a sweeping motivator, and he will be the biggest star on the German national team. The big question is whether he still has it.
During the World Cup matches, Bastian Schweinsteiger, a former player and commentator for the public television network, got caught in a public storm. Before Germany's match against Ivory Coast, Schweinsteiger referred to the opponent and used the sentence: "They have an African style, African football, unorthodox, a bit wild. Not a game that can be characterized as tactical. We must prepare for the unexpected." These remarks were perceived by the sensitive German public as racism, another expression of the colonialist attitude of a white man on a public network towards an African team. After the match, Jürgen Klopp (59), then the World Cup television commentator for the "Magenta" network and since the weekend the new coach of the German national team, was interviewed by several reporters. Within a short time, he was required to answer for Schweinsteiger's statement. Klopp politely and firmly refused to enter into a situation he could not come out of well. He stopped the interview in the middle, turned on his way, returned, looked at the microphone, saw from which country the reporter who asked the question came, and then snorted with disdain and deep anger: "You are from Germany, I should have known that."
Apparently, this was an almost marginal event. A flash on the sidelines of the World Cup. But it was a moment that remained. Klopp, the proud German, disparages German-ness, the ability and the need to emphasize the negative, to deal with the trivial, he twists his face and mouth almost in disgust. You are from Germany, I should have known. I will lead, I will navigate. German football is no different from the other platforms that make up German society. It is at a low point. After winning the World Cup in 2014, the team was eliminated twice in the group stage and in the last World Cup was eliminated in the first knockout stage by Paraguay(!) on penalties(!!). In many respects, Germany is also a country in collapse, living on the past. Politics is busy with internal quarrels and is unable to promote any policy, the economy is on the way to collapse, the right is rising, immigration is running wild without restraint, there is an energy crisis, and Russia, again, is on the fences. But unlike these platforms that continue to live in denial and think that something will change if they continue to do the same thing, the signing of Klopp is an admission of a mistake, of failure. Of the immediate need to change the way. The German Football Association has put all its cards on him. He will dictate the way. He will lead and navigate. He will appoint. The keys are in his hands. If anyone tries to interfere with him, Klopp will go home.
Superstar on the sidelines
This is a big gamble by the association. It is paying a high amount as compensation to the previous coach Julian Nagelsmann, and Klopp is not a cheap coach, his signing for four years will cost the German association at least the same amount he received as a senior consultant for the football department of Red Bull. Two of Klopp's regular assistants are coming with him and also a close friend who will be employed as an external consultant. Per Mertesacker, the defender of the national team that won the World Cup in 2014, was pulled from Arsenal and appointed as the sporting director of the national team. Klopp and his team will be asked to bring achievements in a fairly quick time. Germany's talent is enormous, but the demand is for much deeper plowing. The models of France and Spain are in front of the eyes. Klopp will need to translate the successes of Germany's youth teams into a combination of their ambassadors in the senior team.
In addition, Klopp comes to the position as the biggest star to arrive at the coaching chair of the German national team. He is a bigger superstar than any player in his squad. This is good, because he will take the attention away from the players, mainly from the media, and give them industrial peace, and it is good because he won everywhere he coached. Players will die for him. No player was willing to die for Nagelsmann or Hansi Flick.
"Already threatening to resign"
Klopp comes to this mission out of a sense of mission. He is giving up a lot. At the press conference on Friday that announced his appointment, he even hinted, partly in jest and partly in seriousness, that if the media does not leave his family alone, he will leave. But this statement can also be read differently: the national team is Klopp's family. No one, including no one from the suits of the association, can interfere in its affairs. But there are many who wonder if Klopp, the only candidate for the position, is even the right candidate. In their eyes, he has been out of football for too long, who knows if he still has it, will he succeed in the transition from a club coach to a national team coach. In the time that has passed since his retirement from Liverpool and his being a national consensus, he has lost many supporters because he became an employee of the Red Bull corporation, which is hated by German football fans. He has undergone cosmetic changes, he appears in countless advertisements. He dared, God forbid, to translate success into money and fame. In the eyes of many football fans, he has lost much of the "Klopp-ian" authenticity of the cheerful Dortmund days. Klopp must succeed. He will return to the team its intensity, his famous Gegenpressing, he will reorganize it, and he will give it a familiar philosophy. "I have seen three times how football can change cities, I think football can also change a country," he said at the press conference, "we will turn every stone to fix what needs fixing." Klopp did not come to do cosmetic work. He came to destroy and rebuild. He must succeed in returning prestige to German football. This is the first, and most available, correction that this country has to offer right now. The last time the football association gave such power and authority to a coach, it was to another Jürgen, Klinsmann. It happened in 2004 and Klinsmann changed German football. Jürgen Klopp is responsible for the change in each of these cities (Mainz, Dortmund, Liverpool). On Friday he started his new era as a coach, and moved from the local to the national. Germany is currently ranked 12th in the world. All conditions are ready. Now remains hanging the big question: does he still have it. Can Klopp still do the "Kloppo".
