Jurgen Klopp Shows Us How To Quit

Why the German's announcement was a masterclass in jacking it in.

Well done Jurgen Klopp: that’s exactly how to quit a job.

Not because you ‘need a fresh challenge.’ Not because ‘you have taken the club as far as it can go.’ Not because ‘the project has reached a natural conclusion.’

But because you’re knackered and you can’t be arsed any more. Or, as he put it:

“I am running out of energy…I cannot do it again and again and again.”

Klopp has always had the bollocks to swerve the tedious, increasingly corporate sounding language of the footballing world. People have often exaggerated just how witty or ‘left-field’ the German is. The truth is that he is just more willing than most to speak plainly about his feelings, responding to questions in a pretty straightforward and honest way, without fear of being exposed as a normal human being. Sometimes he loses his temper. Sometimes he responds to opaque journalistic questions by saying ‘sorry I don’t understand.’

This, in a world as riddled with cliche, claptrap and platitudes as football, makes you stand out as some sort of maverick firebrand. In normal life, I think Klopp would just come across as what he is: a pretty intelligent, averagely amusing, very decent, occasionally grumpy bloke. I think we’d all be more than happy to be regarded that way.