Not long before, Manchester United executive vice chairman Ed Woodward had flown out to see Klopp in Germany. David Moyes’s short tenure at Old Trafford was coming to an end, and Klopp was United’s favorite to replace him, to bring back a sense of adventure to the Red Devils’ game. Woodward told Klopp that the Theater of Dreams was “like an adult version of Disneyland,” a mythical place where, as the nickname suggested, the entertainment on show was world class and dreams came true. Klopp wasn’t entirely convinced by that sales pitch—he found it a bit “unsexy,” he told a friend—but he didn’t dismiss the proposition out of hand either. After almost six years in the job at Dortmund, perhaps the time was ripe for a change of scenery.
Aware of United’s interest, Watzke had intended to insist that Klopp honor his contract, which had been extended to 2018 only the preceding autumn. Sensing that the 46‑year-old was quite conflicted, Watzke changed tack and opted for a very risky strategy. If Klopp wanted to go to Man Utd., he wouldn’t stand in his way, he told him, playing on their mutual trust and a connection that had long since crossed from business into the territory of friendship. After some deliberation—and the conversation at Watzke’s kitchen table—the BVB manager came to the conclusion that his work at the Signal Iduna Park was not yet done.
Almost exactly one year after Klopp had said no to United, his bond with Dortmund turned out to be breakable after all. He announced he would resign at the end of the 2014–15 season, making sure to add that he didn’t intend to take a sabbatical.
In an Art Nouveau villa in Bremen’s leafy Schwachhausen quarter, the phone started ringing a few weeks into the new Premier League season. As Brendan Rodgers’s time at Anfield came to a slow, drawn-out end, a number of people contacted Klopp’s agent, Marc Kosicke, promising to make an introduction to Liverpool. One, a German football agent, said he knew Kenny Dalglish really well. Kosicke preferred to wait. Eventually, somebody purporting to be Liverpool FC chief executive Ian Ayre called. Could they have a conversation about Klopp coming to Anfield? They could, Kosicke replied, but only via a video Skype call. While Ayre hung up, ahead of calling again over the app, Kosicke did a quick image search of the Liverpool official. Just to be sure. Too many pranksters and time wasters out there.
Klopp’s name had first cropped up at Anfield in the spring of 2012, as possible successors to Dalglish were being sounded out. A middleman got in touch with the Dortmund coach but was told in no uncertain terms that Klopp had no intention of leaving. He was on the way to winning a historic double.
A meeting was scheduled in New York on Oct. 1. Klopp’s and Kosicke’s attempt at secrecy got off to a very bad start, however. In the Lufthansa lounge at the Munich airport, one of the staff asked Klopp—whose baseball-cap didn’t make for much of a disguise—why he was going to JFK. “We’re watching a basketball game,” he replied. A plausible explanation, except for the fact that the start of the NBA season was another four weeks away.
An hour after their arrival in Manhattan, the two Germans were rumbled again. As luck would have it, the receptionist at the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue hailed from the coach’s footballing hometown. “My word, it’s Kloppo!” he exclaimed in broad Mainz dialect. Somehow, news of the clandestine trip never leaked.
Klopp told the FSG executives that football was “more than a system,” that it was “also rain, tackles flying in, the noise in the stadium.” Most of all, he said, the Anfield crowd had to be “activated” by the style of performance, to spur on the team and vice versa in a self-amplifying cycle of exuberance.
While Kosicke continued to discuss remuneration, Klopp walked around Central Park. The stroll would last longer than anticipated. Both sides were initially rather far apart financially, but the outline for an agreement was eventually found.
From the book Bring the Noise by Raphael Honigstein. Copyright © 2018 by Raphael Honigstein. Reprinted by permission of PublicAffairs, an imprint of Perseus Books LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group Inc. New York. All rights reserved.