“The business part of football isn’t nice [for players] every single day,” the 50-year-old tells Goal.

“If you feel like a number, that you’re only liked when you’re at your best, it doesn’t feel good. That’s why I try to make them independent of criticism from outside.

“Criticism is important. But it has a tendency of being either too negative or too positive. You score three times, and everybody says, ‘Fantastic! How did it feel?’ and so on. Nobody is interested in the guy who played the pass or made the goal.

I, as a manager, already know that player won’t score three goals again in the next game. You have to deal with that. That’s why helping them to be an independent, confident person is a really important part [of working] with my team during the day.”

Blocking out the chorus of doubt or indeed cheers is something Klopp himself had to learn over the course of a 17-year-career on the bench that has brought many triumphs - a historic promotion with Mainz, back-to-back Bundesliga titles with Borussia Dortmund - but also a fair share of pressurised moments, like heading into the 2014/15 winter break with Borussia in the relegation zone. “It was awful,” he bristles.

But Klopp’s conviction in his own methods never wavered. “I said: ‘I don’t think I’ve made a lot of mistakes.’ People said: ‘Now he’s completely lost his mind’. I also said I was a better manager than three years ago. Nobody wants to hear that but it doesn’t matter. We were convinced [that what we were doing was right] and we stuck together until it clicked again.”