Dreams and schemes

It is July 2016 and at the ritzy Four Seasons in East Palo Alto, Jürgen Klopp is sketching his long-term aspirations as he undertakes his first pre-season with Liverpool. There is one theme he lingers on more than most: creating a significant legacy.

“When you sit in the main chair like I sit, you have a lot of power, but even more than that, you have all the responsibility,” he explains.

“And responsibility for me means it never ends. You need to create something where you can really be measured by - even after you’ve gone.

“In football, it’s always about pressure and the next game, next game, next game. Somebody has to say ‘stop!’

“The next game will always come, but you need someone who thinks ‘what happens after the games?’

“It’s needs to be the manager, the man in the chair.

“You are so busy planning for the next game, but you also have to take the minutes to think and talk about changing the structure to make it more effective.

“Build this, improve that. I’m interested in everything, in the whole club and when I leave at some point, I don’t want people to celebrate me still, I only want that they can still feel the benefit of me being manager here.”

It is 12 May 2019 - 1312 days since Klopp was appointed Liverpool manager - and the club have concluded the league campaign on 97 points.

That is a larger figure than 116 of the previous 119 domestic champions - seven more than Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’, 21 better than the famed Manchester United treble-winning class of ’99 - but it is not enough to reach the finish line first with Manchester City, on 98, retaining the title.

While it will be gutting for the Reds to have been so exceptional this season yet end such a close second-best in England, one inheritance of Klopp’s tenure thus far is the club’s power of rising from disappointment to return a bolder beast.

There is no greater evidence of this than their resounding response to losing the Champions League final against Real Madrid in Kiev a year ago.

It has not been by accident that Liverpool have stretched Pep Guardiola’s juggernaut all the way in the top-flight, while securing another crack at continental glory despite being 3-0 down to Barcelona in the first-leg of their semi-final.

It is the result of rigorous planning to ensure they extract every possible advantage across every area, from training to staff acquisitions, player recruitment to set-pieces and variations in playing style - or as Klopp simply summarised “changing the structure to make it more effective.”

The 51-year-old, along with his backroom team, sporting director Michael Edwards and Fenway Sports Group president Mike Gordon, started shaping strategies last January to ensure Liverpool’s evolution for 2018-19, a process that was accelerated during the summer.

One element of improving the club on the pitch was to fortify off it. Pep Lijnders rejoined the Reds as an assistant to Klopp in June after a six-month stint at the helm of NEC Nijmegen and in the same month, Philipp Jacobsen was appointed to the new position of medical rehabilitation and performance manager.

During pre-season, Thomas Gronnemark was drafted in to minimise errors from and maximise the use of throw-ins, while head physio Lee Nobes was pinched from City in November after spending 11 years with them.

Adding to what Klopp already labelled a “world-class operation” at Melwood under his belief that you “cannot have enough specialists around you,” Liverpool got to work on gaining the edges required to eradicate the 25-point gap City held over them at the end of 2017-18.