Forget Jurgen Klopp - this is why Liverpool legend will not be next England manager
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There he is, collar popped on his denim jacket, arm draped around the ginger inertia of Ed Sheeran, grin beaming like a set of LED headlights through the gloam of an autumnal dusk. There he is, pink cowboy hat perched atop his head, friendship bracelets straining against the flesh of his wrist, expression fixed in ligneous bemusement like a ventriloquist dummy laid down mid-act so that his puppeteer can fistfight a heckler in the second row, a latter day convert to the broad church of Swiftie-ism. There he is, behind the decks in a Berlin nightclub, hyping the crowd as if he has just masterminded a fraught 2-2 draw against West Bromwich Albion, hurling complimentary garments into the writhing throng like a big, bespectacled T-shirt cannon. This is Jurgen Klopp’s sabbatical, and he is making the most of it.
For how much longer this photo dump meet and greet tour will last, who can say? Since leaving Liverpool at the end of last season, the only thing the German has joined is Instagram, and there have certainly been few suggestions that he is nearing anything like a concrete return to management. Those rare whispers that have seeped out into the gossip-sphere have seemed more speculative than realistic - USMNT, anybody? - and the general consensus has been that Klopp could be wilfully and breezily unemployed for some time to come.
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Hide AdAnd then England pulled an England. On Sunday night, as you well know, the Three Lions lost the final of Euro 2024 to Spain, and as I write this sentence, Gareth Southgate has just announced that he will be stepping down from his role with the national team. Like, literally, two minutes ago. Suddenly, there is a waistcoated vacuum to be plugged, and the Ed Davey of elite football management might finally have an offer to consider that distracts him from his quest to meet every Madame Tussauds exhibit in real life.
‘Might’, however, is the operative word. Despite the protestations of an eclectic array of onlookers, Klopp is very much a fanciful outsider in the wacky race to succeed Southgate. Some of his advocates are easier to dismiss than others; Mark Goldbridge, a box room empty barrel who peddles the kind of faux outrage that only really works in front of a self-purchased green screen and who gives the distinct vibe of Statler and/or Waldorf from The Muppets if they exclusively bought their clothes through Jacamo (it’s not just for big fellas anymore!), has suggested that the FA should be going hell for leather to appoint the biggest name they possibly can. Next up, Keith Lemon explains the tactical merits of inverted full-backs.
But then, at the other end of the spectrum, we have Gary Lineker, a man who is actually allowed within 200 metres of a real television studio, also calling for the Three Lions to go ‘all out’ in their bid to lure Klopp away from the clutches of a daily routine that involves at least one episode of Homes Under the Hammer.
And look, I get it. In an ideal world, Klopp would put aside his international allegiances (the Scouse ones, not the German), tune up for an encore of heavy metal football, and drag the Three Lions stateside to end sixty years of hurt with a World Cup in a couple of summers’ time. But the likelihood of all that happening feels slim to minimal.
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Hide AdFor one thing, it would be a notable departure from the FA’s usual manner of conducting business. Internal hires and unattached convenience - your Carsleys, your Potters, god forbid, your Lampards - feel like much safer bets than one of the most illustrious names in global football.
Then there are Klopp’s desires to consider. For now, he is quite merry in his idleness, but will the international game be enough to scratch the familiar itch once games of KerPlunk with Stormzy and garden centre visits with Mr Blobby grow stale? Maybe not.
And that leads us onto perhaps the most pertinent point of all; club football is a different beast entirely to its international counterpart. It is less involved, less forgiving; disjointed and piecemeal and so often inanimate. It is a glorified watching brief for large swathes of the calendar, a supply teacher role in which everybody - pundits, players, fans - think they know the syllabus better than you do for the rest of it, and, when a tournament does eventually lollop over the horizon, it is a game of Russian roulette with five in the chamber.
In other words, there are reasons as to why managers who succeed at both club and international level are the exception, not the norm. You suspect it is for these very same reasons that Klopp and England will remain apart.
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