Cool, crazy and emotional... how Jurgen Klopp won over the people and turned from average footballer to one of Europe's most wanted managers

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Jurgen Klopp was appointed the new Liverpool manager on Thursday
Klopp spent 19 years as a player and then manager at German club Mainz
Klopp was an enthusiastic, but ultimately limited, defender and striker
The 48-year-old captained Mainz in the second tier of German football
In 2001, in a surprise move, Klopp was appointed player/manager
The cub won promotion to the Bundesliga for the first time in 2004
Former team-mate Guido Schafer describes Klopp as a visionary
Klopp transformed Mainz and the club shaped him as a manager

Published: 16:31 EST, 10 October 2015 | Updated: 04:34 EST, 12 October 2015

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In Mainz’s main square they had congregated, dejected, outside the historic state theatre. The day before, the small-time club — a semi-professional, non-league team as recently as 1988 — had missed out in agonising circumstances on an extraordinary promotion to the Bundesliga top-flight.

It felt even worse because a similar fate had befallen the second-division club a year before and now it seemed that unlikely dream would never be realised. Onlookers remember that the mood was one of gratitude for an amazing season but a clear sense of resignation.

But then Jurgen Klopp, standing in front of 15,000 fans, took the microphone. ‘I’ve been thinking about yesterday and decided that it must have happened for a good reason,’ said Klopp. ‘And I’ve decided that someone, somewhere wanted to show to the world that when you get knocked down, not once, not twice but even three or four times, that you can get up again and keep fighting. And that person decided there is no better town to show this to the world than Mainz.

New Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp (right) beams with delight after being unveiled by the club on Friday

The 48-year-old poses for photographs with chairman Tom Werner (left) and chief executive Ian Ayre

Klopp (right) alongside Academy Director Alex Inglethorpe as he watches Liverpool Under 18s on Saturday

It all started for Klopp at Mainz where he played in the German second tier for the club for 12 years

‘Which club experienced what we did last season? Which club have gone through what we’ve been through this season? And now which club are going to have the story we’re going to have next season when we come back even stronger?’

Later, Klopp would tell colleagues at the club: ‘I didn’t know what I was going to say when I got up there. I just said what came into my head and spoke from my heart.’ Unplanned it may have been, but it was a turning point, not just in the afternoon’s proceedings — ‘the mood changed instantly and it felt like a celebration and a rally,’ said a colleague — but also in the club’s history.

Mainz were promoted the following season in 2004, an astonishing feat for a small city with no football tradition and with no rich owner funding it. It was the early sign of the charisma Klopp possesses and which Liverpool now hope will revive their club and restore former glories.

For Klopp has a gift not just for inspiring his players to perform above their ability but also for carrying entire cities with him. His ability as an orator was as important as his tactical innovations. As such, he should be made for Liverpool.

Today Mainz sit eighth in the Bundesliga, play in a 34,000-capacity stadium on the outskirts of town with an average crowd of 30,000. Everyone agrees that without Klopp none of this would have happened.

When Klopp played for them at the old Bruchweg Stadium as a workmanlike and enthusiastic but ultimately limited defender and centre forward, and when he took over as manager in 2001, they were attracting crowds of a few thousand and about to fall into the third tier of German football again. Mainz are the club that Klopp built but also the club that formed him, where he played for 12 years and then spent seven years as manager.

Klopp was an enthusiastic defender and centre forward but had limited technical ability

The new Liverpool manager captained Mainz and his forward-thinking helped shape the side

Guido Schafer, who played alongside him for six seasons in the German second division and who remains a friend, said: ‘He was very quick, very emotional, good in the air and he never gave up, but he was not a technical player. I would say to him: “You can run fast but you have no technique”.’ Fans loved him but one remembered: ‘Whenever the ball came to him you were thinking: “Oh no! What’s going to happen now?”’ That said, during his stint as centre-forward, he did once score four in a game against Rot-Weiss Erfurt and briefly attracted the attention of Bundesliga giants SV Hamburg.

But it was his leadership which always distinguished him. And he was at the centre of an unlikely tactical revolution under revered Mainz coach Wolfgang Frank. For years German football had been about the sweeper, as epitomised by Franz Beckenbauer. Frank was the first in professional football to play with a back four.

‘He was a visionary, said Schafer. ‘And Jurgen was his captain and the righthand man of Frank. They would speak about the tactics and the new 4-4-2. It was a kind of revolution for a team that played in the second division but it worked and Jurgen was an important man in the strategy as an emotional leader. Wolfgang Frank inspired him to be a coach.’

The former Borussia Dortmund coach was appointed manager of Mainz in a surprise decision back in 2001

Klopp was adored by fans and led them to promotion to the Bundesliga for the first time in their history in 2004

Klopp was a popular captain. ‘We would almost always lose our away games and then we would be on the back row of the team bus on the long way home to Mainz,’ said Schafer. ‘In those days I was a little bit crazy with girls and alcohol and I would tell him stories about my night life. Klopp loved my stories and laughed at them and would ask me to tell them again and again. And he was a great listener.

‘He was married at 21 and I would say to him: “You’re a professional footballer. You shouldn’t be married at 21! You need nightlife.” He is a religious man, very Christian. Before the games, I think he would pray and he would want to be alone in the dressing room.’

Schafer added: ‘He’s a happy person but if you make a crazy pass he’ll be one centimetre before your nose and it’s like Alex Ferguson’s hairdryer. He would change colour and be like the Hulk but the next moment he would be the lovely Jurgen Klopp again.’

With Mainz heading towards the third tier in February, 2001, sports director Christian Heidel took an enormous gamble. Klopp, out injured, was made player-manager.

‘It was a great surprise,’ said Schafer. ‘People thought it was crazy.’ On a Wednesday evening in February 2001, in front of 4,576 spectators Mainz took on MSV Duisburg in a drab fixture and Klopp sat on the bench as coach. They returned to the 4-4-2 beloved by Frank and won 1-0. They were then unbeaten for the next six games, winning five, and a managerial career was forged.

Klopp shakes hands with Mainz supporters as they celebrate their promotion to the top flight

The emotional Klopp, who suffered releagtion with Mainz in 2007, barks orders at his players from the touchline

The following season they played 4-3-3 and instituted the very aggressive pressing tactics, even chasing down the opposition goalkeeper. ‘The crowd loved it,’ remembers a colleague. They missed out on promotion on the final day of 2001-02, needing a point and letting in two goals in the last 10 minutes of their game at Union Berlin. There were tears in the dressing room. ‘With Jurgen there were always tears,’ said the colleague.

When they did finally win promotion in 2004, Klopp sprinted up and down the pitch hailing the crowd at each end in celebration. Crowds were now a regular 20,000 in the old stadium with a high proportion of female fans. ‘We always said he could have been a TV game show host, he was so good at talking,’ said Schafer.

And he was a people’s coach. At the old stadium, there is a small pub run by the club just outside the main stand. After every game, Klopp would go there with club officials and drink with the fans, fielding questions and posing for pictures.

Heidel, the sports’ director who made that momentous decision to make Klopp coach, beams: ‘I am just extremely happy about the fact that this guy, who kicked the ball around in Mainz and later became our coach, will now get to work in one of the most famous stadiums in Europe. I am sure that the fans will love him.’

Klopp is now tasked with turning Liverpool's fortunes around after a disappointing 12 months

Klopp was straight down to business as he watches some of Liverpool's young stars in action on Saturday

Even Klopp’s exit from Mainz became him. After three seasons in Bundesliga 1 they were relegated in 2007 and, having failed to take them up the following season and with bigger clubs clamouring for him, Klopp and Heidel decided it was time to call an end to the fairytale in 2008.

An emotional Klopp addressed the fans after the last game of the season. ‘Everything that I am, everything that I can be, you have allowed me to be,’ he said before finishing his speech with a characteristic rhetorical flourish: ‘Today is not just any day/We will be back, come what may!’ As the crowd roared and cried, the PA played ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ which is sung at every Mainz home match.

And last month when Mainz played Hoffenheim at their modern, new stadium there was familiar face in the directors’ box, ignoring the protocol by jumping up and down and cheering wildly when Mainz scored. It was, of course, Klopp.

‘He’s the biggest thing to happen to Mainz since Gutenberg,’ said one journalist, referring to the 15th century Mainz citizen, Johannes, who invented the printing press, thus changing the face of European history. That may be pushing it a bit. In the heart of Mainz, stands a statute of Gutenberg. Perhaps, if Klopp wins the Premier League with Liverpool, then he will get to stand alongside him.