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April 2013 was quite a month for Jurgen Klopp.

It contained arguably the most famous win of his career – the Champions League semi-final first leg thrashing of Real Madrid – and certainly the most dramatic.

Dortmund’s late, late show against Malaga has already passed into club folklore. Nobody who was there, nobody who saw it, will ever forget that night.

But for Klopp, the memory is tarnished somewhat by what happened immediately after the game.

“I had one day of happiness,” he reflected. “And then somebody thought ‘enough, go back down on the floor.’”

The reason? Mario Gotze.

Klopp, still riding the emotions of the previous night’s triumph, had arrived at Dortmund’s Brackel training ground the following morning to be greeted by Michael Zorc, his sporting director.

“He looked like someone had died,” he recalled. “He said....I have to tell you something.”

The news was a dagger blow. Gotze, Dortmund’s bright young thing and the home-grown beacon of an emerging force, was leaving. For Bayern Munich.

The Bavarians had activated a €37m release clause in Gotze’s contract. He would move to Munich that summer, having been at Dortmund since the age of eight. It was, Klopp, said “like a heart attack.” He would later compare Bayern to a James Bond villain.

“Michael asked if I wanted to talk and I said: ‘No, I have to go',” he added. “That evening my wife was waiting because there’s a very good German actor, and a good friend, Wotan Wilke Möhring, in a new film in Essen and we were invited to the premiere.

“But I walked in and told her: ‘No chance. I cannot speak. It’s not possible to take me out tonight.’ There were all these calls from the club – we should meet in a restaurant and speak. I said: ‘No, I have to be on my own.’ Tomorrow I’ll be back in the race – but not tonight.”

Klopp revealed that after the news broke, he spoke to “six or seven” Dortmund players who were “damaged in the heart.”

“They thought they were not good enough,” he said. “And they wanted to win together. That’s the reason it hurt them so much. But Bayern told Mario: ‘It’s now or never.’

“I told him they will come next year. They will come in two years, and then three years. But he’s 20 and he thought: ‘I must go'.”

Go he did. But the grass is not always greener, even in Munich. As Klopp himself says: "It's OK that they want to go to different places. But they get there and, s**t, it's not the same!"

Now, three years later, Klopp is ready to fall in love again with the man who broke his heart. He’s identified Gotze as a key target as he looks to rebuild Liverpool this summer. He’s increasingly confident of a reunion.

And if they can forge the same kind of relationship as in Dortmund, then Reds fans will be in for a treat.