There are only two types of football manager, the famous line says, those who have been sacked and those who are about to be sacked.
Add to that is a rare third type of manager who calls time on himself.
In that gravity-defying list is Jurgen Klopp who has left Liverpool after nine years with a Premier League, Champions League and five other cups.
He is an astonishingly good communicator but what makes him so good?
I thought I’d look at two set piece pieces of communication that bookend his time at Anfield. His first press conference and the Instagram post he made before leaving.
In football, there are three key audiences for a manager. The fans, the players and the board of directors. Perhaps uniquely, so much internal communications at a football club is done publicly. Tony Pulis was a master at this.
The start: the first press conference
The new manager press conference is one of the traditions of football. An introduction to the new man at the wheel and a mix of easy and hard questions. Brian Clough used to talk about making all the hard decisions in the first three months because that’s when you are most powerful.
Let’s look at what Jurgen Klopp said in his first press conference.
“I’m not a genius. I don’t know more than the rest of the world. I need other people to get perfect information,” straight away he was calling from help from those inside the club.
“It’s important that the player feels the difference from now on. They have to think they can reach the expectations. You have to change from doubter to believer,” he addressed the players.
“It is the biggest honour I can imagine. It is one of the biggest clubs in the world. It is a good moment to come here. How the people live football here. It is not a normal club it is a special club,” straight away identifying the fans.
“I’m a football romantic. I love all the stories and the histories. Anfield is one of the best places in the football world I thought about how it would be. We start to play emotional football. That’s important at Anfield, it has to work together,” he was sealing the deal with fans and those who love the club.
Merseyside is an emotional city. My Mum was from Liverpool, so I know this. It is also a city where community is at the heart. You work for each other not for yourself. Their club anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ underlines this.
A Hillsborough disaster campaigner described their fight for justice as ‘they picked on the wrong city.’ It points to the emotion and working together to support in adversity as well as success.
“I’m the normal one. I was an average player, I was a trainer at a special club in Germany,” in perhaps his most famous line.
Football clubs are weird. Some managers fit and some don’t. I was a student on Tyneside when Kevin Keegan first became Newcastle United manager. His success was built on football knowledge plus the foundation of knowing how the fans thought. They were passionate and wanted a fighting spirit.
Barcelona’s slogan is ‘more than a club,’ because it represents Catalonia.
Same for Newcastle United and Tyneside.
Keegan got this. Others haven’t.
The end: The Instagram post
It’s telling that one of his last pieces of communication was an Instagram post on a freshly created @kloppo account. He wanted to create an account to stay in touch, he said, and gained more than a million subscribers in less than 24-hours.
He shot the video as a selfie alone in his office overlooking the training ground surrounded by boxes of things he was moving out.
“So, here I am. Last day in the office. Last session done. It was kind of strange, I would say. A few coaches got emotional. I didn’t. I told myself ‘tomorrow is a game and then it is holiday.’
“Obviously, I decide what I think until I get overwhelmed tomorrow. So, I will leave this place today which is… an interesting experience I would say.”
There is a pause as he dwells on the emotion of leaving Liverpool.
“Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye… See you tomorrow.”
The audience is primarily those who love Liverpool. He addresses those inside the club but makes it far wider. It’s the merging of the audiences here that’s most powerful. The fans and the players and the board are as one.
He sets up the game ahead beautifully. He hints at bigger emotions and a bigger message but first there is a football match to play and a job to be done.
Without him knowing it, Klopp has actually mimicked an earlier Liverpool manager in his pioneering use of communications channels. When he was starting out as a manager at Carlisle United in the 1950s Bill Shankly would use the tannoy to address the crowd to tell them what his plans were.
For all Jurgen’s Klopp’s communications skills, it’s important to say that he also needed a football brain and an ability to communicate to his players and coaches what he wanted.
The announcement of his departure three months before the event was made by an emotional video.
His last days was a full on communications campaign from long form interview on the club’s YouTube and Facebook to a letter to fans in the Liverpool Echo a last press conference and of course programme notes.
In his first press conference he spoke about the stories, the histories and the emotion of playing at Anfield and now it has come full circle and he is part of those legends.
If you can learn anything from Jurgen Klopp it’s the emotion and the story telling.