'I was at telling Klopp and Guardiola meeting - it was a psychologist's dream'
It was fascinating to observe Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola at a Northern Football Writers’ dinner in Manchester a few years ago.
Psychologists would have had a field day and while Klopp dominated the room, drawing everyone towards him like some sun in the universe, Guardiola virtually hid in the corner.
Performing for the media, unless he is being paid to, is not for him and it’s no coincidence that he has not been back, despite leading Manchester City to an historic Treble last season.
The experience confirms that while Klopp is the guy we’d most like to go for a drink with and talk football, Guardiola is this pensive, almost bookish, man, who is obsessed with tactics. Sunday at Anfield will be their 30th and potentially last meeting.
They first met in Germany in the 2013 DFB Super Cup when Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund beat Guardiola’s Bayern Munich 4-2. It says it all about Klopp as a manager that of their 29 meetings, he shades it with 12 wins, 11 defeats and six draws with Dortmund and Liverpool.
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He is Guardiola’s Kryponite and the Catalan may have managed two of the best teams in the world in Bayern and City, but he has had his struggles against the German. Klopp is a lightning rod for harnessing the huge energy at an emotional club like Liverpool and directing it onto the pitch.
He is at the top of his game in terms of game management, substitutions and tactics and he demonstrated this in Liverpool’s against-the-odds wins at Newcastle and over Chelsea in the Carabao Cup Final. These were not flukes and he knew exactly what he was doing as he made changes to turn the games Liverpool’s way.
Imagine what he would have won at Liverpool if he had not been up against Guardiola and City and he comfortably sits beside Shankly, Paisley and Dalglish as one of the club’s greatest managers. The thoughtful Guardiola can see the bigger picture and he knows Klopp has driven him to new levels of brilliance to beat him to the title by a single point in 2019 and 2022.
They are the McEnroe and Borg and Coe and Ovett of our era. Guardiola admitted as much when he reflected on Klopp’s departure from Liverpool. He said: “I have a feeling that at the end of the season when he is leaving, part of us, Man City, is leaving too.
“They have been our biggest rival, Liverpool, in these years. Personally, in Dortmund and here, he’s been my biggest rival, so he will be missed. Personally, I will miss him.”
That perhaps is Klopp’s biggest legacy and it’s not all the trophies he won at Liverpool, including ending their 30-year title wait and delivering their sixth Champions League, it’s his part in Guardiola’s story.
If it weren’t for him, Guardiola would not have scaled the Olympian heights he has as a manager. Guardiola will eventually retire as the world’s best manager, the greatest of his era, and Klopp will have helped him achieve that.
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