Home from home for Klopp
Jürgen Klopp's last visit to Anfield, for a 2014 summer friendly match, ended in a 4-0 defeat. Hardly the kind of result that managers savor, yet the cameras caught Klopp fondling the Anfield sign on his way onto the pitch.
You can almost feel the love. "Echte Liebe," even? Afterwards, he stood in the middle of the pitch, hands on hips, surveying the sellout crowd.
The bespectacled bundle of touchline energy "outed" himself as a Liverpool follower on this visit. Even BVB managed to look on the bright side of a humbling pre-season defeat, back when Liverpool's ex-manager, Brendan Rodgers, was still considered hot coaching property.
Jürgen Klopp could not have gone to Manchester City, or Chelsea. At every home game, he'd be wondering if all those songs from the Südtribune had damaged his hearing. "Where's all the noise?"
Anfield can provide the kind of cauldron Klopp craves at home games, no doubt Klopp's first personalized chants are already being composed in Merseyside bars. What's more, its fans will even thunder "You'll Never Walk Alone" before kick-off every other week, just like the yellow-and-black army in the Ruhr. Despite the Premiership's exorbitant ticket prices, a true contingent of local "Scousers" from the ship-building port city in England's north-west still fill the seats. The regulars at Kop End demand the same sort of total physical commitment from players that Klopp does, and just like the Südtribune, they will help deliver it.
Making amends for Magath
The English Premiership's no stranger to imported talent on and off the pitch. But Germany has never been that well represented, especially not in the dugout. So far, only Felix Magath has presided over Premiership matches, in his failed attempt to rescue Fulham from relegation. As German debuts go, Magath's seven-month stint was calamitous, most famed for his curious cheese-based miracle cures, which didn't work.
The odds look more favorable for Klopp. He's not inheriting a team in any real danger of the drop, and expectations should be realistic for his first season in charge.
Liverpool is not known for a managerial merry-go-round either; the Reds might have abandoned their old "Boot Room Tradition" of promoting from within their own coaching staff, but longevity remains a key feature on Merseyside. Rodgers had three seasons in charge. The club's famous foreign masterminds, Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez, managed Liverpool for six years each.
On the personnel side, Klopp will also immediately be able to bond with freshly-capped German international Emre Can - Liverpool's first active player to don the German jersey since Dietmar Hamann. Former Bayer Leverkusen youth product Samed Yesil speaks Kloppo's language, as does Firmino, once Hoffenheim's star attacker. After a slow start to the season for the pricy new Brazilian signing, the introduction of a coach, system and language he knows could prove invaluable.
Only one target, but is it attainable?
As at Dortmund, and Mainz before that, Klopp will have time to bed in and to build. But, sooner or later, he has a curse to lift. Borussia Dortmund's faithful had waited nine years when Klopp delivered his first of back-to-back Bundesliga titles in 2011. The Reds, once England's most successful club of all, have gone a quarter of a century without a league title. When Liverpool last won the "Barclays Premiership," it was still called the First Division - Klopp, aged 22, was in the process of moving to Mainz to start his second-division playing career.
Since then, Liverpool have won cups galore - Champions League included - but the truly grand prize has eluded them, with historic rivals Manchester United taking control of England's all-time leaderboard.
If he can dispel this 25-year jinx - and many good men have tried - Klopp would witness a street party to rival even Dortmund's merry shenanigans of 2011 and 2012. Crack that nut, and Anfield would be his home-away-from-home for life.
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