Our first port of call is, inevitably, the Liverpool Echo who are quite rightly milking every last drop out of this unexpected bounty and throwing all of the sh*t at all of the walls.
Jurgen Klopp has picked ‘definite’ future Liverpool manager and it’s not Xabi Alonso
Mediawatch’s Spidey-sense is tingling at that headline. The word jumping out there is ‘future’. Notice how that word is not ‘next’.
Klopp, due to leave Liverpool this summer, previously said he believes a club legend will one day take the hot seat at Anfield.
Now the alarm bells are really ringing. ‘Previously’ is a big word here, isn’t it? Also ‘one day’. We all now also now precisely which ‘club legend’ he’s talking about, don’t we?
Back in 2021, Klopp himself hailed then-Aston Villa head coach Steven Gerrard for the work he had done at Rangers and made a bold prediction about his future in management.
Back in 2021? Oh, for… Even “then-Aston Villa” tells you all you need to know about the current relevance of this Klopp judgement. This is not Ferguson anointing Moyes. So what did Klopp actually say, anyway?
“I think that Stevie is doing really well and he’s very young from a manager’s point of view so it’s just when is the right moment for him to take the job. Yes, I believe it will definitely happen and be good for everyone.”
Even if he still believes the gist of this, we’d be very, very surprised if Klopp feels this is ‘the right moment for him to take the job’.
A lot has changed in the two years since those comments with Gerrard ultimately getting sacked by Villa in October 2022 before the move to Saudi Arabia in July.
Is one way to put it, yes.
As good as a Rest
Sticking with the Echo – and we will be, for quite some time – there’s also this one.
Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer have already named next Liverpool manager after Jurgen Klopp
Baffling and anarchic behaviour from Liverpool to turn such a vital decision over to a couple of former strikers turned podcasters and pundits, but never mind. Who have they picked? It’s Xabi Alonso, putting them instantly at odds with Klopp of course who is as we know Team Gerrard. Or was in 2021.
“The Match of the Day pundits have outlined who should take over from Jurgen Klopp amid his shock Liverpool departure at the end of the season.”
Ah there it is, just one of so, so, so many examples today of football journalism’s extremely elastic definition of the word ‘amid’. To the Oxford English Dictionary it means ‘in the middle of or during something’. To football journalists it means ‘a couple of months ago’. For that was when, on The Rest Is Football, the two England greats praised Xabi Alonso and idly speculated where he might end up, with Liverpool touted as a possibility. Lineker’s direct quote – remembering here that he and Shearer have apparently ‘named the next Liverpool manager’ – is this.
“He could possibly follow Klopp further down the line.”
Done deal, clearly. Lineker also said in the exact same podcast: “I think there’s every chance that once Carlo Ancelotti walks away or is pushed out as is often the case at Real Madrid, he might end up there as manager of a certain Jude Bellingham.”
In fairness, there is still just about time for Alonso to be both the next Real Madrid and Liverpool managers if he gets his skates on.
The sound of silence
What does Xabi Alonso himself think about it all, one might reasonably ask. Fortunately for us all, he had a press conference on Friday afternoon, about two hours after the Klopp news had broken, and in which he was inevitably asked about it. He gave precisely the thoughtful, intelligent, respectful and carefully-keeping-all-options-open reply you might expect, speaking as he was at the very earliest opportunity for him to speak about such barely broken news.
How did the Echo headline that response?
Xabi Alonso breaks silence on replacing Jurgen Klopp as Liverpool manager
Alonso may or may not be Liverpool’s next manager, but if nothing else he can revel in his position as a tough-to-beat new clubhouse leader for the shortest silence ever to be broken at the very earliest opportunity.
Local angles
We all know this January window has been a challenge for the football media given the distinct lack of activity. It’s therefore understandable and inevitable that those regional outlets who don’t share the Echo’s good fortune of being able to just gleefully fill their boots have had to be slightly creative and find the local angle.
The Birmingham Mail take a straightforward approach:
Aston Villa rivals Liverpool make huge Jurgen Klopp announcement
The straightest local angle bat you could wish to see, that. The Manchester Evening News are slightly more daring.
Erik ten Hag was right about Jurgen Klopp – but Man United’s position means it doesn’t matter
So how exactly was Ten Hag ‘right about Jurgen Klopp’? Because when praising Pep Guardiola and the Liverpool boss in his very first United press conference, Ten Hag said:
“In this moment I admire them. I admire them both. They play, in this moment, really fantastic football, both Liverpool and Manchester City. “But you will always see that an era can come to an end.”
Unless you allow for the possibility that Klopp was going to be Liverpool manager until the end of days, it was always a pretty safe bet that Ten Hag would be ‘proved right’ on that one at some point. And you know what? We’d wager he’ll be proved equally right about Pep Guardiola one day. He also went on to say “I am looking forward to battling with them and I am sure all the other clubs in the Premier League will want to do that.” Which isn’t going quite so well, as the MEN themselves acknowledge.
Unfortunately, United are not in an ideal position to capitalise on the monumental shift at the top of the league table. The Reds are currently 16 points behind Liverpool in the Premier League table and will not be expected to be part of the title race next season.
Still, at least he was proved right. Best/most baffling of the lot, though, might be the galaxy brain thinking going off at Football Londonin which Jurgen Klopp is turned into Tottenham news by pretending it has huge implications for someone who no longer plays for Tottenham.
Harry Kane may have perfect chance to win Bundesliga trophy with Jurgen Klopp Liverpool decision
Pretty sure ‘joining Bayern Munich’ was ‘the perfect chance to win Bundesliga trophy’
Harry Kane left Tottenham in the summer to join Bayern Munich in the search for trophies and he may have just been handed the perfect piece of news to make that happen
Bayer Leverkusen have been disbanded? No, but they might be distracted you see. Because their manager will be linked with Liverpool, won’t he?
Alonso’s name will surely be at the head of the list, given his Liverpool background and his impressive form as a new manager. He is the early bookmakers’ favourite for the job and if speculation around his future does affect his Leverkusen team, Kane’s Bayern will be poised to swoop and give Kane the one thing his career has so far lacked – a trophy.
It could and it might. But we’re sticking with ‘joining team that has won the last 11 Bundesliga titles’ as the ‘perfect piece of news’ for helping Kane win it. This feels like a bit of a stretch. Of course, what makes this convoluted thought experiment even more curious is that the Spurs angle here is already right there in the shape of Ange Postecoglou. Football London, to be fair, are all over that one as well:
Ange Postecoglou already made major Liverpool admission as Tottenham sweat on Jurgen Klopp exit
That ‘major Liverpool admission’ came after the uncontroversial league game against the Reds earlier this season.
“Like any kid, I had the posters up on my wall, so Liverpool was my team.”
Of course, there was quite memorably a second and far more Angeball half of that quote.
“But you grow up, things change. I used to love Happy Days back then too but I don’t have pictures of Fonzie on my wall today either!”
BREAKING: Ange Postecoglou already made major Happy Days admission as Tottenham sweat on Henry Winkler exit.
Eagle eyes
This Klopp news has been a shock to us all, so it’s no surprise really to see many outlets retreat to their happy places. Places of comfort and familiarity. It’s an understandable way to anchor yourself when the world seems to be drifting inexorably toward chaos. For the Mirrorthis means noticing things at training sessions.
There are six of them in all here. Six things the Mirror noticed from Liverpool’s training session after today’s bombshell news. Let’s go through all six of the things the Mirror noticed, remembering as we go that these are things they noticed at the training session.
1. Klopp all smiles
Jurgen Klopp was smiling on the training pitch. Obviously, in medialand, nobody is ever just smiling. They are all smiles. The reasons why this is the only accepted description of a smiling person have been lost to time, but it’s particularly apt for Klopp as it goes, a man whose smile really does take over his entire face to the point where he becomes all smiles.
2. A sombre atmosphere among youngsters
No all smiles here.
3. A leader for the future
During the training session, Jurgen Klopp spoke to Trent Alexander-Arnold. We’d argue that ‘manager speaks to senior player during training’ is about as unremarkable an event as it’s possible to imagine. The Mirror would argue that this is evidence Trent will “no doubt have a huge leadership role for Liverpool in the coming years once the manager has left”
4. Loss of the brains trust
This is where things really start to unravel. Pep Ljinders and Vitor Matos will also be leaving when Klopp does. This is significant, sure, but not in any way something the Mirror noticed at Liverpool’s training session.
5. Business as usual
The Mirror by now not even pretending they noticed this at the training session, simply reporting Klopp’s own press-conference words. “It wasn’t like the players were having a party when I told them, but they were out training as normal.” So this one is at best actually something Klopp rather than the Mirror noticed.
6. Man-management skills on show
He put his arm around Nat Phillips. We truly shall never again see the like.
Succession
Still with the Mirrorthis headline:
Jurgen Klopp successor immediately rules himself out of Liverpool job after shock exit
So… not his successor then.
Major Misunderstanding
Mirror headline:
Jurgen Klopp drops major hint Liverpool job won’t be his last as a manager
Klopp quote:
“If you ask me, ‘Will you ever work as a manager again?’ I would say now no. But I don’t know obviously how that will feel because I never had the situation. What I know definitely – I will never, ever manage a different club in England than Liverpool, 100 per cent. That’s not possible.”
We’re just in oppositeland by this point, aren’t we? Unmoored from reality. No amount of noticing things at training sessions can save us now.
