As José Mourinho finds fresh conflict and conspiracy everywhere he turns, at least there is that lovely Jürgen Klopp to keep us smiling. Ah yes, the “normal one” with his cool jeans-jacket combo, his self-deprecation, the twinkle in his eye and stylish stubble on his rugged chin. Klopp is the future — bright, optimistic — like Mourinho used to be. Or so we like to think.
“They all end up paranoid and mad,” Gary Lineker once said when dismissing the idea that he would ever become a football manager. We have been so busy gushing over the latest, exciting addition to the Barclays Premier League soap opera that we have rather overlooked that Klopp will not always be grinning. Paranoid and mad? Klopp does that bit, too.
Blaming his woes on referees? Klopp can resort to that cheap tactic along with the worst of them. A check of his misdemeanours shows that he has been sent to the stands at least eight times for volcanic explosions.
Patronising to journalists? Klopp can charm but he can also pull off a world-class sneer. You might think that is no bad thing — the media dish it out, we should take it too — but belittling hacks does not tend to play well beyond a club’s supporters.
How long before Klopp is snapping like he did at Borussia Dortmund in a press conference when it was pointed out by someone from the club’s website that he was on a losing run against Hamburg: “The last thing I need is for you to bring that up, a***hole”.
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Or reprising that moment before a Champions League tie, live on television, when a journalist from ARD, the state broadcaster, pushed him on the transfer of Mario Götze to Bayern Munich and he retorted, dripping with sarcasm: “Sorry, what department? Animal documentaries?”
His first press conference at Anfield has been hailed as the most alluring since a smouldering Portuguese charmed every housewife in Britain, and quite a few men besides. Yesterday Klopp was on full beam again, full of jokes about his “funny glasses” while talking seductively about “seeing more fun” in his players’ eyes.
But there will come a day too when he decides that he does not like the look of someone like Stephan Mai, a German TV reporter, who seemed to be around every time Klopp’s Dortmund stumbled on their travels, a coincidence that became particularly vexing after a 1-1 draw away to Kaiserslautern.
“Kiss my a***. Really, no joke. Giving you an interview now . . . that’s as much fun as toothache,” Klopp told Mai, ducking through a barrier with a dismissive “Du Seuchenvogel”, calling the journalist an “infected bird”, a bad-luck omen.
As one experienced German writer explained yesterday, Klopp’s natural demeanour is an eagerness to please and entertain but apply the pressure and he can quickly become cranky.
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We love his straight-talking but will it be so appealing if Klopp turns it on officials, using them as punchbags? He has plenty of form. In 2012, Lutz Michael Fröhlich, head of referees in Germany, accused him of inciting violence on amateur pitches by setting a bad example. “Even if he says ‘sorry’ . . . his behaviour was so aggressive that it could lead to violent excesses further down,” Fröhlich said.
The admonishment followed a number of bust-ups right back to Klopp’s early management days at Mainz, including a fine of €12,500 for yelling “you idiot!” at one official.
The rage did not die down when Klopp joined Dortmund, with his touchline explosions including a verbal tirade against Jochen Drees, a Bundesliga referee, and his assistants after a defeat by Hamburg. The abuse started on the pitch and continued as the officials retreated to the changing room, resulting in a €12,000 fine. “I do not know if we’ve ever scored a point with him [Drees]. Probably yes. But it was not because of his decisions,” Klopp said in fluent managerial paranoia.
At 6ft 4in, Klopp can be an intimidating man with a menacing teeth-bared snarl; once shoving his baseball cap right in the face of Stefan Trautmann so that it banged into the fourth official. Make that another €10,000.
Klopp has exported his rage on to the European stage, sent to the stands in Dortmund’s Champions League game against Napoli for pulling at the fourth official’s arm, towering over him and screaming in his face. He could count himself lucky to be banned for two games.
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Sent off in March last year for “repeated rudeness” during a game against Borussia Mönchengladbach, Klopp insisted that he was guilty of that “now world-famous look on my face. He can’t send me off for that.”
Klopp insisted then that he had been harshly treated but we should acknowledge that, in contrast to many contemporaries, he does admit when he has gone too far. Looking back at himself after that Champions League explosion, he confessed: “I made a fool of myself and it’s not acceptable. I went over the top, and it was completely stupid.”
Unlike Mourinho, for whom the Eva Carneiro moment is proving terribly self-defeating, Klopp does not regard “sorry” as the hardest word. He has offered apologies in the wake of some of his worst bursts of temper which, cumulatively, have worked out at fines of at least €58,000 (about £37,000) over the years.
Those penalties, of course, mean nothing except loose change and Klopp has shown that he is a recidivist, like most of his dugout colleagues. Football’s ridiculous tolerance of abuse of officials will ensure that he slips into old habits sooner or later.
He will explode here, and it will be a shame when he does. There are many reasons to welcome Klopp as a fresh, charismatic voice and galvanising coach. But another manager raging at officials? We have too many of those already.