There was a time in Andy Robertson’s career, not all that long ago, that he was considered too small for professional soccer and released from a club in Scotland. There was a time, not long after he got back in the sport, he was pleased to have a job with a club shuttling between the first and second divisions in the English game.
Now, Robertson is a Champions League winner, an automatic starter on one of the best teams in the world.
Robertson’s rapid ascent is a product of his own perseverance, his underrated skill and a bit of serendipity. He found the ideal home at the perfect moment in his career. He found that home, though, because Jurgen Klopp found him. And it’s ideal for him because Klopp is the man in charge.
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Jurgen Klopp has changed Liverpool Football Club’s horizons, just as he has Andy Robertson’s.
“I think he’s taken me to a whole new level, maybe a level that people didn’t think I could get to,” Robertson told Sporting News. “Which is pleasing for me, and hopefully pleasing for him, as well. He’s been fantastic for me since I came in, and it’s been a wonderful two years working under him, and I hope that continues.”
Klopp is at the beginning of his fifth season at Liverpool, and this one will be different than those that preceded it. There are challenges that remain, but he no longer carries the burden that greeted him when he arrived in the fall of 2015: to make the club elite again.
The victory over Tottenham in June in the final of the UEFA Champions League, the glorious comeback at home against Lionel Messi and Barcelona that made that possible and the dogged pursuit of Manchester City through an historic Premier League title race, all of that combined to establish Liverpool as one of the world’s best teams and to obliterate the string of six consecutive trophy-game defeats that haunted Klopp personally.
Klopp, 52, arrived in England known for his charm, charisma and character. He arrived known for coaching his teams to play with the passion and flair he exuded from the sideline. Now, he has something concrete to confirm his status as one of the preeminent managers in world soccer.
“I think he brought the passion to the club, and he brought the style of play. I think it’s very exciting, and was even more exciting the year before,” former Liverpool captain Sami Hypia told Sporting News. “But I think the manager has learned that you can’t go 100 miles an hour all the time. But it’s a great way to play, the 10 boys high, and I think it’s exciting to see Liverpool Football Club on the field, to play. That’s what all the fans want to see, that you play good football and that you get results. Of course, the results are the most important thing.”
Klopp has reinvigorated the Reds, reinvented them, and now the trick is to remain at their present station. Liverpool began its season with five consecutive victories in the Premier League, the only team to keep a perfect record that long, and Tuesday it will begin its defense of the European Cup with a Wednesday visit to Napoli, as group play in the 2019-20 Champions League commences over the next two days.
“We played at a specific level last year, which will be the basis for what we expect from ourselves,” Klopp said. “It’s not about results; it’s about performance. And there is still space for improvement.”
There was plenty of room to improve when Klopp arrived at LFC in October 2015. Although the team had narrowly lost the 2014 Premier League title to Manchester City, a slip by legend Steve Gerrard that led directly to a devastating goal by Chelsea as its defining play, LFC fell to sixth after selling off star striker Luis Suarez. Gerrard was leaving the league, not far from retirement. There was no apparent direction.
Hiring Klopp did not lead to an immediate revolution. It was, instead, a quiet, steady evolution. His first team finished eighth in the league; but they did reach the finals of the League Cup and Europa Cup, which injected hope and promise into the rebuilding project. In the summer of 2016, the club brought in forward Sadio Mane, defender Joel Matip and midfielders Georginio Wijnaldum and James Milner. The next summer, it was Robertson and forward Mohamed Salah.
The most crucial pieces came last: defender Virgil van Dijk in the middle of the 2017-18 season, and goalkeeper Alisson Becker last summer. Each player’s transfer broke a world record at his position. But van Dijk was named UEFA player of the year for last season, and Becker won the goalkeeper award. Liverpool improved from 42 goals allowed in 2016-17 to 22 conceded last season.
The season before Klopp arrived, Liverpool compiled 62 points and a plus-4 goal differential. In his first full season, 2016-17, it was 76 points and a plus-36. The defense was the final piece. Last year, with Becker and van Dijk in place, the goal differential soared to plus-67.
“He can spot a player. He can spot the guys he wants,” ESPN analyst Steve Nicol, a former Liverpool player, told Sporting News. “Since he came, he’s pretty much brought most of the players who are playing now. He’s got a puzzle in mind before he starts, and then he starts putting the puzzle together, and he knows what he needs for each part.”
Robertson is an ideal example of Klopp’s eye for talent. He was cut from the youth team at Celtic United in Glasgow at 15 but given another chance by amateur club Queen’s Park. He needed only a year at Dundee United in Scotland’s Premier League to earn a move to England, but even then it was at Hull City, which was relegated twice during his time there.
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Klopp and his staff were impressed, though, and grabbed him for $12.5 million. He quickly forced his way past perennial disappointment Alberto Moreno and into the lineup. Robertson hasn’t just been a replacement or upgrade. He’s been a sensation for Klopp.
“I’ve been fortunate to work for some fantastic managers … I think he’s just quite special in his ways,” Robertson told SN. “He’s quite unique in the way he managers players, and you can see that. All of us are happy playing or him, and training. You see how hard we work for him. You want to run through a brick wall for him. That’s what kind of person he is.”
Klopp has been so successful there was agitation around Liverpool in the summer to extend his contract, even though it does not expire until 2022. Klopp expressed amusement that this would be a concern at this juncture, but it is rare for a club to find a manager who, as Nicol says, is able to succeed both in demanding respect and loyalty and in establishing effective tactical plans.
“The first thing is, he knows his onions. You can’t fool players when you don’t know what you want on the field. They have to believe you know what you’re talking about,” Nicol told SN. “After that, clearly he cares about his players. You’ve got a guy who you know wants you to succeed, he wants the best for you, he wants to help you … And he’ll also, when you need it, kick you in the backside and, when you do well, put his arm around you.”
Klopp also has been loyal to those who’ve occasionally needed his support, such as midfielder Jordan Henderson, a longtime Liverpool player who was presented the burden of following legend Steven Gerrard in the role of team captain. Henderson is not an elite creator, not a natural destroyer in midfield and does not score many goals. His greatest values are the ability to craft accurate long balls and an unceasing willingness to work the full length of the field. These are not the traits of a superstar, and so he sometimes has been punished by fans for being, well, not Gerrard.
“He’s a special person, a special manager,” Henderson told SN. “He’s got a perfect balance of being close to the players but also having that, yeah, he’s still got to be ruthless. He’s still a manager, at the end of the day. He’s got a very good balance with that. And obviously the knowledge of the game and what he does in training, and how we learn from that speaks for itself, really, as you can see how we’ve performed over the last few seasons.”
Trying to match or improve on those performances, particularly last year’s, may be hard to manage. Not only did Liverpool win its sixth European Cup, it also compiled the third-best Premier League season ever (97 points) by winning 30 games, drawing seven and losing just once. They were unfortunate Manchester City compiled the second-best points total in history (98) and thus claimed a second consecutive league championship.
Even on the way to the Champions League title, though, there were losses to Paris Saint-Germain, Napoli and even Red Star Belgrade. In the final group game, in the final minutes of that game against Napoli, Liverpool needed a spectacular save from goalkeeper Alisson Becker to advance from its group into the knockout rounds.
In Premier League play, there was a six-week stretch when they were held to one or no goals four times, each of those games ending in draws. That’s where Liverpool gave Man City an edge it refused to surrender, and that was the difference in determining the champion.
This is why Klopp believes the team can be better.
“The first thing we have to learn, and maybe you have to learn: It makes no sense to compare seasons,” Klopp said. “If we lose two games and win all the others, we have more points than last year, for example. To win the league, to achieve whatever, you have to be in the end the best team. We finished last season with a massive high. It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. It will stay with us forever.
"But apart from that, it’s a new season and we know that. We achieved what we did last year by working hard on all the things we had to work on. That’s what we have to do again.”
