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“You should never separate that which belongs together.”
These were the words of Borussia Dortmund’s general manager, Hans-Joachim Watzke moments after Jürgen Klopp signed a contract extension that will keep him at Die Schwarzgelben until 2018. For many clubs, including Chelsea and Manchester City, who were vying for his signature that might have come as a blow, but for the Dortmund faithful, that would have come as a relief. Not that, it was ever in doubt.
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After all, Klopp’s connection with Dortmund is total. Every time he is asked about the club he swoons and begins to profess his love for the club, which feels like it was almost made for him. Every time, he is interviewed, he talks from his heart about how the club is “worth falling in love with because this is pure football” and, also about the inimitable buzz of emerging from the dark and narrow tunnel at the Westfalenstadion, before he finally emerges into a sea of yellow and Black, where the atmosphere almost swallows you in, and is unlike anywhere else in the world.
Klopp is the perfect fit for Dortmund, if only for the fact that his relationship with the club is one that exemplifies their motto, Echte Liebe, translated as True Love. As a coach, he is unlike any other thanks to his almost puritanical belief in continuity and team-building. Before the Champions League Final last year, in an interview with the Guardian about Dortmund, Klopp said “We are a club, not a company.” He went onto reaffirm his love for Die Schwarzgelben by saying “But it depends on which kind of story the neutral fan wants to hear. If he respects the story of Bayern, and how much they have won since the 1970s, he can support them. But if he wants the new story, the special story, it must be Dortmund. I think, in this moment in the football world, you have to be on our side.”
It is this unique love-affair that he shares with the club that makes him the cynosure of all the eyes whenever he steps into a room. As a person, he is the ultimate rebel. Aside from being the manager of perhaps the most entertaining club in Europe at the moment, he was a TV celebrity, who is a polyglot and has written a diploma thesis on walking and by every sense of the word, he is, the ultimate hipster. Whether it is his jeans, trainers and black-rimmed spectacle, his love for Heavy Metal or the fact that he sports a hair transplant and has an unkempt beard, on most occasions, an eccentric, he sure is, a clown, he most certainly is not.
After all, this is a man, who has over 80,000 supporters screaming his name, every time he enters into the Westfalenstadion. A true legend for the Yellow Wall, an incurable romantic, who is relentless in his pursuit of popular support, he is a cult, all of his own making. He defines his style of football as “energy, speed, aggressiveness, hard but fair duels and a lot of goal scoring chances. It’s so lively that the mistakes we make are whitewashed by the experience [of watching],” And anybody who has seen Dortmund play over the past few years will stand testament to that.
Whilst he might, be all that, for a journalist, he is one that nobody can tire of interviewing. Before the start of this campaign, Klopp was asked as to what it would take for BVB to be champions again, he said: “An incredible amount. Bayern were probably the best team in the world last season. But despite that they could not beat us in the two games we played in the league. And maybe we can grasp a certain energy and motivation from the fact that we did not win anything last season. We have bows and arrows. And when we aim precisely, we can hit the target. It’s only that Bayern have a bazooka. The probability that they will hit the target is clearly higher. But then Robin Hood was apparently quite successful.”
Whilst you can derive plenty of conclusions from that. One thing, which was very evident from that interview was his attitude and the fact that he was an eternal incorrigible optimist. At the moment, there is not much, Kloppo, as he is known by his players, can do wrong. He is at the right club, which fits perfectly with his style and one that he often calls “a very special club- a worker’s club”. The stadium, which is home to 80,000 supporters, who fill the place with energy and intensity, turns him into a high-octane individual who is filled with an overabundance of passion, is his home away from home.
And it will take something truly immense to bring him out of Dortmund, but one thing is for sure, wherever he ends up next, everybody is in for a treat. Like he always says, “You can speak about spirit — or you can live it,” and you can be damn sure that he will bring that spirit into the club.
