Quite interesting article in the Athletic about Tim Hoogland, a not particularly signifcant player you may say
But he played under Kloppo, Tuchel and Rangnick.
Anyway, some interesting bits about Kloppo, mostly off the field anecdotes:
The Athletic recently ran a series about Mr. Ferguson, in celebration of his 80th birthday last month. One of the themes that kept coming up, when speaking to his contemporaries, was that Ferguson would always make time to help out other managers, no matter what his personal connection to them. That’s a quality Klopp seems to share.
“Even now, we are still in contact,” says Hoogland. “We send messages — not often, but this is one of the things that is unbelievable, and I’ve never seen it before (from one of my former managers). When I text Klopp, he will always answer within an hour.”
It’s worth reiterating at this stage that Hoogland only worked with Klopp for a single season, 14 years ago, in what was not the most glittering campaign of his career. Mainz failed to win promotion from the second tier and Klopp left the club that summer. You would understand it if now, as manager of Liverpool, he didn’t really bother with a player who, in the wider scheme of things, was a relatively minor character in his story.
“His empathy, his human nature is unbelievable. That’s something that hasn’t changed from when he was my coach in 2008 to now. His human skills were way above everything I’ve ever seen in football. It’s not something you see very often.
“A few days before the Champions League final in 2019, I was still playing but I was keen to move to Australia. I wanted to see something different, like Australia or MLS. I knew Robbie Fowler was the head coach of Brisbane. I was sitting with my wife having a coffee, and I thought, ‘Maybe I can ask Klopp if he would ask Fowler if he needs a player’. It was just for fun, talking with my wife. I wrote Klopp a message, he replied directly and said, ‘I will talk to him now’.
“It’s why he’s in his position and why everyone loves him, why everyone wants to work for him, and everyone wants to work their ass off for him.”
“He has a good balance. He can be really serious and really hard in training, but on the other hand, he gives you so much fun. Maybe if you take a shot and the ball goes 30 metres over, he starts to laugh so loud. He has a nose for these situations. And he delegates perfectly. Everyone in his coaching group feels they are needed. Everybody has their own responsibility. That’s why they grow as a group.”That is just a very small part of the article, because it’s paywalled of course, the
full article is here.
