The makings of the Miracle Man…

Wagner is “at home” on the training pitch and in the dugout, but for a while, he had been lost to football.

“When I finished my playing career, my contract with Darmstadt meant I was able to join the management team for two years, but I didn’t use that as I wanted to study Sports Science and Biology,” he says.

“The fact that I had negotiated that deal means I had it in my head that I wanted to pursue coaching, but that I didn’t take it up shows I wanted to explore other options too. When you turn professional after being a youth player, you don’t have the opportunity to do anything out of the football environment.

“You think, ‘is the only thing I can do?’ and you try to get a job in the industry when you retire just as I looked to do with the post-playing contract.”

As Wagner undertook his final exams to earn a degree, Jurgen Klopp - godfather to one of his children - urged his best friend to get a Uefa Pro Licence.

He took that advice and cut his teeth with Hoffenheim’s under-19s for two years, but the desire to explore beyond the game was still intense.

“I needed to learn something else, to experience something else and to gain a different perspective," says Wagner, who went back to school.

“In Germany, to be a teacher is a good job - you usually work half a day, get lots of holidays, work to better young people and you can’t get sacked really as it’s a government job so I thought it would be a good option for me.”

Wagner labels this period essential to both opening his mind and helping him realise football was still his driving force.

“I needed the break to get a bigger horizon and see things independently from the game,” he offers.

“I had about two or three years where I was absolutely removed from this football circle and then slowly, I came back when I was close to finishing my practical studies to become a teacher. I felt I was missing something.

“For two or three years, I missed nothing as I was discovering new friends, new interests and that really helped me, as ultimately, it became clear that above everything else I did, it was football that I wanted to be involved in.”

Klopp, then at Borussia Dortmund, asked Wagner to coach their second team in 2011. He thrived there for four years as his methodology was crystallised.

“My philosophy got shaped at Hoffenheim, where I was a youth coach and then it absolutely became clearer at BVB. If I compare myself now to my starting point in 2007, the change is incredible,” Wagner reveals.

“I’m totally, totally different. I had no clue how to be a manager to be really honest. Being a player and a manager are two opposite worlds. I had no idea how the game worked from a tactical preparation and analysis point of view, no idea about the scope of the job.

“The biggest switch is being in front of the group - leading the team - than being part of it. You are responsible not just for yourself and your performance but for that of the entire squad and the health of the club as a whole.

“You have to create a culture where there is understanding and belonging. You have to realise there are different ways of management within a group and find the right channels: one player can take things on board by just listening once, another doesn’t need a lot of talking it just comes naturally, a different player may need the message repeated five times… There are so many details to managing a football club before you even can think about tactics or exercises in training.”

One of the core elements of the job is how to handle relationships with his roster and the press. “My way is to just be myself, not to play a role,” Wagner states.

“Whether people like it or not, it’s just me; I can’t be an actor for 12 hours every day. It takes too much energy, and trust me, there are so many things for a manager to worry about that you can’t waste effort on putting on a show.”

Wagner was born in Frankfurt, before moving to America for around three years during his formative period. “I was too young to remember that time, so it doesn’t feel like I ever lived abroad before Huddersfield,” he says.

“My mother and I returned to Germany as the relationship between my parents broke down. We came back to Frankfurt city centre and it was not the easiest time for my mum raising me alone.

“So we went to live with my gran, which is an hour away and it is proper countryside there. There is nothing - really nothing - and so to entertain myself, I’d play football non-stop. There were only 250 people and the next bigger village was seven miles away.

“This feels like a new world now, to be living in England. I couldn't have dreamed this, really,” Wagner adds. “I learn every day, not only as a manager, but as a person. I’ve grown so much in every way since leaving Germany as there are new things to experience, to enjoy or problems to solve.”

It unmerited that the man, who “as far as I can remember, always had a ball with me - in my hands or at my feet,” is primarily viewed through the prism of his friendship with the Liverpool manager.

Wagner may share similar ideals to Klopp and possess a comparable open and engaging persona, but he is not in anyone's shadow.

He has traversed his own path, hurdled divergent complications and been successful with his objectives in his way.

“What he's done for Huddersfield is no small miracle,” a long-time employee says. “Wagner is top class, as a man and as a manager.”