Jürgen Klopp reflected on his coaching journey that began at the age of 20 as he prepares to find out whether he'll be crowned Best FIFA Men's Coach for 2019.

The Reds boss has been shortlisted alongside Pep Guardiola and Mauricio Pochettino for the honour, which will be handed out at a ceremony in Milan later this evening.

Speaking to Liverpoolfc.com from the Italian city, Klopp looked back on his route towards becoming a Champions League-winning manager that featured spells at Mainz and Borussia Dortmund before taking over at Anfield in October 2015.

Read on below as the German paid tribute to his coaching staff and how he took fashion advice from Virgil van Dijk...

On whether he thought he would ever be considered one of the best managers in the world when starting out at Mainz in 2001...

No! That's true. But actually I started coaching much earlier. I was coaching when I was 20, the U10s of Eintracht Frankfurt. I'm blessed. I said a lot of times, I was lucky with having sensational clubs, sensational players and people with patience who always gave me time to do something and to work with the team for a while. I'm really thankful for that. Being here today, individual awards for managers, I played football and love football because it's a team sport. But I get it that I'm here as a representative for LFC and the way we choose, the things we reached and the games we played. I'm really happy about that.

On the support network that surrounds him on a daily basis...

We are not yet there, we are not at the Oscars and I have to thank my mum and my family and my coaches, they know how much I appreciate what they do. If something would happen tonight and if somebody asked me, then I have to mention them because without them I would not be here, that's clear. They know that. Yes, we have a special team at Melwood and we try everything to be as successful as possible. Obviously it worked somehow but there's still so much to do. It's always really difficult to be here and think about what happened because half of the brain is already on Wednesday, to be honest, so that makes it obviously a bit tricky. But all good. Virg told me I have to wear a tuxedo, so I tried to find one. Then we will see what happens.

On being alongside two nominees from the Premier League...

Not only us, there are a lot of very, very good coaches, very successful coaches. This is only a celebration of the last season. So let me say, Mauricio, awesome job, Champions League final. Pep, what do we have to say about Pep? Everybody knows it already, won pretty much everything. We won the Champions League, so that's how it is, that's of course brilliant. But there are many other good coaches out there and it's just good for the game. We always said that if people give us time to train, the game will improve. These three managers, I think Mauricio is longest [serving] and me and then Pep, so we are pretty long in the clubs already. We obviously try to improve a few things. If you give the right person enough time then the football game can look better than before, so I'm happy about that. That the Premier League is a very, very competitive league is not a secret anymore. This year we are here and we will see what happens.