Children's 'EAT Sleep Football Repeat' Hoodie

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The first thing that defines the Klopp culture is that it is inclusive and this approach goes a long way beyond the first team. It’s hard on substance to criticise Pep Guardiola but his formers players often seem keen to unburden themselves of their reservations of his approach. Former Bayern player Bonfim Dante In an analysis of 50 global companies, consulting firm Towers Watson found that companies with low engagement scores had an average profit margin of just under 10 percent. But those firms with high engagement had a slightly higher margin of 14 percent. The superstar firms with the highest engagement scores had an average profit margin of 27 percent.

In the higher pressure environment at Dortmund Klopp realised the value of instructing his teams to live in the moment. His philosophy was about never focussing on the end of the season goals, just on the next game. Training had a fixed pattern being competitive and importantly incredibly focussed on fun. To consider how he does that lets consider the next element in the Klopp approach and that it is being inclusive. Former Bayern player Medhi Benatia described Guardiola as distant from the players he manages. Alexander Hleb went one further, saying “I don’t think Guardiola was the best coach in the world; he trained the best team with the best players,” Of course what managers often miss is that if we want our teams to be creative we can’t punish them for mistakes. Klopp goes out of his way to show that no one will pay the price for making mistakes. Of course the allure of the story of football managers is that somehow here’s someone who’s able to get a 10 out of 10 result from a 6 out of 10 team.

This approach hasn’t always won praise – especially when Liverpool extended their seasons without winning anything. The Irish Independent newspaper spoke for many when it wrote that “Jurgen Klopp must be wary of owners’ reliance on analytics to assess players”

Klopp himself is dismissive of him having any strategic mastermind. Gary Lineker for BT Sport asked him what his management philosophy is. Its clear that Klopp knows that once a game begins it is simplicity that helps players get through. He knows that infront of 30, 40, 50 thousand fans complex tactical changes are lost on players. This use of energy is why some around Klopp suggest that he’s not always a strategic mastermind. Pepijn Lijnders who returned to Liverpool to become Klopp’s assistant after a brief spell as a manager in his own name, suggests the Reds boss places more importance on what happens off the field rather than specific details of a plan. Lijnders told the Dutch newspaper De Volksrant. quote “Jurgen creates a family. We always say: 30 per cent tactic, 70 per cent team building,” The other thing is that Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski tell us that despite the romance that we bring to the stories we tell, usually managers matter very little to the success of a club. Probably the football fairy story of our lifetimes will be Leicester City under Claudio Ranieri winning the Premier League in 2016 but Kuper and Szymanski say that Ranieri’s firing ⅔ into the following season with only 5 wins on the board was the reversion to the mean. Freak successes like that are just statistical aberrations against the norm.Watching Klopp’s interactions with his team it would be easy to say the secret is his charisma. But it’s not that. As we’ve said before he values entertainment and is no fan of hierarchy. Said “There are coaches that are world class in terms of tactics, but on the human side of things aren’t that good,Pep Guardiola doesn’t talk with the players so you never know what is going on.” Creating that sense of inclusivity, a sense of family is critical to the Klopp approach. Sometimes when we are hatching business plans and models we can forget that we’re not taking about metal hammers and metal nails, we dealing with people with anxieties, emotions and feelings. Klopp more than anything excels at these soft skills. To try to change this leaving mentality after one game Klopp took the team out to take a bow and salute the Kop at the end of a 2-2 draw with West Brom. It was intended as a thank you to those who stayed. Some saw it as revelling in taking a point from the Baggies. Jurgen Klopp finished last football season on top of the world. While his Liverpool side missed out on winning the English Premier League, finishing a single point behind Champions Manchester City, Liverpool did manage to win the most coveted cup in club football The Champions League Trophy. Klopp himself is a rare breed. A man whose force of character has made him transcend the interest of those who follow football. Ask most people who don’t even have an interest in the sport – definitely in the UK and probably even further astray – their opinion of Klopp and you’ll almost certainly get a positive response. Why is he so popular?

One of the challenges of this engagement industry is that once something is measured and the benefits of it are identified it becomes a business KPI. Enter Goodharts LawThis psychological safety is reliant on honesty and candid discussion. One Dortmund player who Klopp was trying to woo reported that unlike other managers Klopp didn’t over promise. He didn’t make empty promises. Asking what a player expected from Dortmund the player said ‘to play as much as possible’, the manager replied ‘That’s not possible. I can’t promise you’ll play that often, but you’ll learn an incredible amount’. This brings us on to our final part of the Klopp formula. We’ve looked at Data, a clear plan, inclusivity and finally psychological safety. PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY Of course after the drama Karius saw the data of Ian Graham suggest he should be displaced by a record signing of the Brazilian Allison and then sent on a 2 year loan to a team in Turkey. Goodhart’s law is an adage named after British economist Charles Goodhart. Goodhart’s law says that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” A boss decides that when his team makes more calls they generate more revenue. So he sets the goal to double the number of calls. Sure enough the number of calls double but business falls, why? Because low quality easy calls are prioritised rather than the lengthier calls that end in business. Targeting engagement doesn’t always achieve the right result. It was at Dortmund that Klopp realised the importance of culture to creating his vision. The Dortmund team spent a lot of time together building sync. Both in person and notably he also encouraged them to connect with each other at night on their games consoles.

Hans-Joachim Watzke at Dortmund said that of Klopp: “his punchlines are perfect. Jurgen is never monotonously or predictable, that keeps everyone’s attention”. The book Bring the Noise by Raphael Honigstein reports that Klopp had loved how “everybody had to go where the ball was. The aim was to create numerical superiority to win the ball, then sprawl out, like a fist that opens.”Let’s make a contrast at this point. It is not the norm to have such a close bond in a team of football players. In fact even the most successful manager of the last decade Pep Guardiola doesn’t get close. A few of Liverpool’s longest-serving employees have commented that the culture of closeness and excellence fostered under Klopp in West Derby has never been stronger during the modern era. When Frank was forced to step down in 2001 the club struggled to find anyone who understood the gegenpress, and reluctantly asked Klopp to manage them until the end of the season. He was under clear instructions that he couldn’t do the role as a player manager so he retired from his playing. He goes on: “Of course he has learned. In 2. Bundesliga he seemed to be sent to the stands [by referees] every four weeks because he often had no control over his emotions. Now he has them mostly under control. He is sincere and honest”. Here’s Virgil van Dijk after the Champions League final when asked about the impact of the manager.