-
The coach Jurgen Klopp smiles during A Liverpool training session prior to the Champions League final, at the training center.
You are a leader who beats his chest He waves his arms and shows emotions, whose high-energy team style is on point. made in his own image.
The other is serene, unflappable and so light-hearted that he almost doesn’t seem to care, calming everyone around him with his “seen it all and done it all” approach.
Somehow, Jurgen Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti they are polar opposites as soccer coaches. What unites them is the ability to use their own inimitable style to lift the biggest trophies in the sport.
It is yet another reason why Saturday’s Champions League final between Klopp’s Liverpool and Ancelotti’s Real Madrid is so intriguing. Simply put, neither club would want to be guided to the biggest game of club tournaments by anyone else.
Apparently, Klopp was made to be the manager of Liverpool. He is the Bill Shankly of the modern era, the legendary club helmsman and man of the people of the 1960s and early 1970s who set the Reds on the path to becoming a European giant.
Liverpool loves Klopp and Klopp loves Liverpool, so much so that he recently signed a new contract that will keep him at Anfield until 2026, beyond that a decade with the club. No manager has been at Liverpool this long since… Shankly.
Klopp is not “the normal”, the label that he gave himself. himself in his presentation as manager of Liverpool in October 2015, referring to the self-styled description “Special One” of José Mourinho. won The Champions League in 2019, the Premier League in 2020 — to end Liverpool’s 30-year wait for the trophy that used to belong at Anfield, and he has just spearheaded what could be the best season of team history.
League Cup winner, FA Cup winner, Premier League runner-up — by one point — after losing just two games, and potentially a Champions League winner. No previous English club has come so close to quadrupling.
Klopp’s appearance has changed — he no longer wears glasses after eye surgery in the summer of 2021 and turned white. the teeth at the end of 2017— but his unwavering passion and fierce determination remain from his first days in office. The fans of Mainz and Borussia Dortmund, the teams he coached. in Germany, they can attest to that.
After every win, Klopp walks onto the pitch, addresses the Liverpool fans and celebrates with them raucously.
It’s something that Ancelotti would never do.
Ancelotti goes with the flow, he adapts to the circumstances. Cristiano Ronaldo said of the Italian when they were both at Madrid: “From the first time I met him, he made me feel very comfortable.”
Klopp, in his own way, is the same. He has become more of a tactician in recent years, reining in his notorious “heavy metal football” by adding an element of control to Liverpool’s game.
At heart, both Klopp and Ancelotti are compassionate people, “people” and outright winners.
And that is why they are in the Champions League final once again, Ancelotti for a record fifth time and Klopp for the fourth time in nine years .