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A mere nine months after his last match on the sidelines as the manager of Borussia Dortmund, Jurgen Klopp returns to where he had the most successful period of his managerial career to date, Dortmund‘s famous Westfalenstadion.
His return as the manager of Liverpool FC will be a grand occasion given the merits of his eight-year spell at the BVB.
Borussia Dortmund’s former Swiss striker Alexander Frei had the honour of doing the draw for the Europe League quarter-finals in Nyon back in mid-March.
The fact that he ended up pairing his former coach, Klopp, with his former club, Borussia Dortmund, seems to be just a minor bit of irony in that fateful plot. A plot that saw Klopp and his club of nearly a decade become almost synonymous with each other, only to end up being pitted against one another not even a year after mutually ending a uniquely successful relationship.
In 2008, when Klopp took over at the Westfalendamm, Frei was one of the few members of the squad widely considered a star player and a firm fan favourite. However that did not save him from being chopped on multiple occasions and fleeing Dortmund after only one season under Klopp.
Frei is a reminder of where Dortmund was before Klopp, and how the Stuttgart native reinvigorated the 1997 Champions League-winning club.
Dortmund had been saved from the brink of bankruptcy a mere three years earlier, in a last-minute debt-restructuring effort, hence Klopp had modest means at his disposal. Players that did not fit his very specific idea of football were either forced to adapt or leave.
Frei, widely regarded as a striker who loitered in the box waiting for his chances, was made to opt for the latter. It was a decision that spurred turmoil among the club’s supporters, with banners asking for a change in management being shown on the famous yellow wall.
However, despite such early setbacks, Klopp’s changes were soon paying off.
The manager’s radical ‘counter pressing’ approach took the league by storm, and Dortmund achieved qualification for the Europa League in Klopp’s second season, a German championship in his third, another championship and a cup triumph in his fourth, and reached the Champions League final in the fifth.
All that while constantly loosing vital cogs of the team like Mario Götze, Nuri Sahin or Shinji Kagawa to better paying rivals.
Within only a couple of seasons, Klopp had totally transformed Dortmund from a side facing relegation, to being the undisputed number two of German football. How that extensive history between he and his former club will affect the outcome of the crucial quarter-final tie remains to be seen.
When asked about his emotions regarding his return to the stadium of so many of his past successes, Klopp discussed his astonishment about the lack of traffic on the city’s usually clogged highway B1, the quick ride giving him some extra 20 minutes to reflect. Ultimately, he emphasised that this was about football and football only.
For a hugely emotional man like Klopp, such an indifferent answer is remarkable.
Also acknowledging the development Dortmund team has undergone since his departure, Klopp unequivocally put the favourites burden on his former club. According to him, no one questioned Dortmund’s role as the favourite in this tie. While he considered basically everybody at the club his friends, he also maintained an undeniable desire to beat them.
Dortmund’s current coach, Thomas Tuchel, praised Klopp’s successful spell at the helm, then explained that even in the approach to this very special match, nothing had to be changed in terms of preparation. His team was hellbent on winning the match and sufficiently concentrated.
For Tuchel, all this is familiar territory, already having succeeded Klopp at his former club, Mainz 05.
The ease with which Dortmund cruised through the previous two knockout rounds against considerable opposition, coupled with their recent run of form in the German league, suggests Dortmund are slight favourites against their Merseyside opponents.
However the circumstances of these matches are different from anything that the Borussia squad are used to.
Bar Julian Weigl and Gonzalo Castro, Jurgen Klopp knows each and every one of Dortmund’s players. How that fact and the emotionally charged atmosphere in the Westfalenstadion’s stands will affect the outcome of this quarter-final remains to be seen.
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