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Sunday, 15 March 2020

Jürgen Klopp, Competence Pornstar


I grew up in the Wirral, a peninsula best described as being "near Liverpool." I can't pretend that I've been anything more than an occasional fan of my local football team, but even on the far side of the Mersey I was still bathed in Liverpool FC's endless travails; the years of bad management, the near-misses, the sense of hurt as various Manchester teams rose to the throne, and lately, the ascendence of Jürgen Klopp.

On the face of it, Klopp's no-nonsense manner seemed at odds with Liverpool's sentimentality, but both have always been exaggerated. You can't be completely unemotional if you want to be a successful manager, and you need more than a little ruthlessness if you want to succeed as a team. And now everyone knows the result – a Champion's League win last year and game-breaking dominance of the Premier League this year.

But the most surprising thing for me remains Klopp himself. I don't get how he always say the right thing at the right time, his public and private statements going viral like clockwork despite being, well... obvious? Maybe it's just a novelty to have an overwhelmingly successful leader that seems decent and honest and intelligent.

Maybe it's easy to be humble yet loved when you're winning games, to say that football isn't all that important when you're standing in front of a bursting trophy cabinet. But hey, it's a heck of an improvement from the way some Liverpool fans excused Luis Suarez's racism in the 2010. To fans today, Klopp has been a welcome corrective.

Jürgen Klopp has today issued the following message to supporters following the Premier League's decision to postpone all football activity until April 3 at the earliest. 

I don’t think this is a moment where the thoughts of a football manager should be important, but I understand for our supporters they will want to hear from the team and I will front that.

First and foremost, all of us have to do whatever we can to protect one another. In society I mean. This should be the case all the time in life, but in this moment I think it matters more than ever.

I’ve said before that football always seems the most important of the least important things. Today, football and football matches really aren’t important at all.

Of course, we don’t want to play in front of an empty stadium and we don’t want games or competitions suspended, but if doing so helps one individual stay healthy - just one - we do it no questions asked.

If it’s a choice between football and the good of the wider society, it’s no contest. Really, it isn’t.
And now Klopp's celebrity has inevitably metastasised into a commentary on the comparative uselessness of straight men:



On the one hand, surely this is the least we would expect of men. On the other hand: look at men. So maybe, in 2020, Jürgen Klopp is the best competence porn we're going to get. We could do an awful lot worse.

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