Хозяева Ливерпуля не покрыли себя славой приобретя Энфилд- сможет ли назначение Юргена Клопа главным тренером клуба изменить ситуацию и быть успешным.
Liverpool's owners have hardly covered themselves in glory since taking over at Anfield - could Jurgen Klopp be the appointment to turn the tables in their favour?
Brendan Rodgers did not know it yet, but he would soon discover his fate. Labouring under the illusion he would continue as Liverpool manager, he said a series of things that soon proved utterly untrue. “I have never felt anything other than secure,” said a manager who was accelerating towards the exit, but just did not realise it.
Yet one comment had a pertinence long after his sacking. “There are new players,” he said. “We will have to build something. That will take time, whether that is me or someone else.” Rodgers didn’t have time. Liverpool’s owners Fenway Sports Group evidently disagreed with much of the rest of his analysis, but do they share that view? Or do they think that with this mismatched, unbalanced, underachieving squad that their now-departed coach and their transfer committee compiled, they will waltz back into the Champions League?
Because now is an examination of FSG, of both their ambition and their realism, of Liverpool’s pulling power and their predicament. Rodgers has been on trial; now FSG are. Their decision to give Rodgers £88 million to spend in the summer seems all the stranger now that he is gone after eight games. The critics say that, after the departures of Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling in successive summers, they are now a selling club. Can their owners sell Liverpool to a superstar manager?
The two most desirable candidates are A-listers and Liverpool are a Europa League team, below FC Sion in their continental group, behind Leicester in their domestic competition. Whether or not they want Carlo Ancelotti, a triple Champions League winner has too few reasons to set his sights on the Anfield hotseat. He could have his pick of jobs next summer. He has had back surgery, which explains why he planned to take a sabbatical until then.
The other name to top many a wish list is Jurgen Klopp. Charismatic and dynamic, he has the personality to lift a depressed club. A double Bundesliga winner and a Champions League finalist, he has the pedigree Rodgers lacked. After reviving and resuscitating Borussia Dortmund on a budget, he has the credentials to appeal to Liverpool. One job seems to equip him perfectly for another, if FSG can be persuasive enough, flexible enough, humble enough, clear enough and clever enough.
Because FSG have to compromise. Klopp worked with a sporting director, Michael Zorc, before but few high-grade managers will relish joining Liverpool’s increasingly infamous transfer committee. Not with their record. Not when FSG have spent £420 million on 42 signings and only got four definite successes: Luis Suarez, Jordan Henderson, Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho.
If Klopp’s criteria for joining Liverpool includes disbanding the transfer committee to give him control, they have to do it. The concern may be that Klopp would be too individualistic or too dictatorial but his CV gives him more credibility than some of FSG’s faceless failures.
While sacking Rodgers has been a populist gesture with much of Liverpool’s fanbase, the reality is that FSG’s decision-making has been poor for too much of their five-year reign. They have chosen two managers, Kenny Dalglish and Rodgers. The Scot won the League Cup but his appointment was a mistake. The Northern Irishman nearly won the title and just about justified his appointment, but only brought a fleeting glimpse of the glory days back to Anfield.
FROM SHOCK TO KLOPP | REACTION TO RODGERS SACKING
Rodgers may have alienated Anfield’s decision-makers by suggesting he was not given the tools – in the form of top players – he needed. With their dodgy defence, their inadequate goalkeeper and their lack of attacking width, no successor may have the tools straight away. Liverpool have played with pace and intensity too rarely in the last 14 months. They have not played Klopp’s heavy metal football as much as strange blends of impromptu, meaningless jazz and dull soft rock, sometimes using the wrong instruments.
Liverpool cannot do better than Klopp. Perhaps he, should he wait, can do better than them. That would be a further test of FSG’s judgement. Who is next in line? Frank de Boer has a compelling case, but is untried in major European leagues. Unai Emery and Walter Mazzarri have never managed in England. Ronald Koeman has shown tactical nous and motivational prowess with Southampton, but Liverpool is an altogether more pressurised place. Garry Monk and Eddie Howe are promising thirty-somethings, but FSG plumped for one of those last time.
But if Klopp is the best-case scenario, Andre Villas-Boas is the worst-case one. FSG’s blueprint in 2012 was for a young, visionary manager. If that experiment seems to have been abandoned for now, like many outsiders-turned-owners, they seemed to think they could discover a budding great. It doesn’t always work out that way.
This interview process should not involve 180-page brochures or philosophies or the sort of vocabulary that sounds impressive in the corporate boardrooms of Boston. It is about football, and the question if FSG know enough about it, and if not, if they listen to those who do. If they can find a manager with the talent to reinvigorate a fallen giant without burdening him with the expectation of doing so straight away. If FSG have the nous to get this right.
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