As Liverpool meet Huddersfield this weekend, two of English football’s most successful clubs take to the field. Even if the Terriers haven’t won a major honour since 1926.
Managers Jurgen Klopp and David Wagner don’t quite go back that far, but they do go back a long way. And their shared German lower league background, and path to Premier League management seems to hint at a new breed of coach that’s come into vogue.
Neither man played to a particularly high level, but Wagner has the better playing CV. Both men played together for Mainz in the German second division, but Wagner’s performances in attack saw him snapped up by Schalke 04, historically one of Germany’s biggest clubs.
Indeed, it was in Gelsenkirchen that Wagner won his only major honour: the 1997 UEFA Cup. The Huddersfield manager was part of the last German team who weren’t Bayern Munich to win a European competition, as Bayern’s dominance has continued for more or less two decades.
Wagner’s impact was fairly minimal, however. He was an unused substitute in the second leg of the European final, and sat out the first leg altogether. He scored one goal in the whole competition, coming in a 2-2 draw against Dutch side Roda JC in the second leg of the first round, by which time Schalke had already won the first game 3-0 and were more or less assured of progression.
That Bayern dominance, however, wasn’t total and undisputed for the entire two decades. The Bavarians have won the league 13 times in the 20 years since that Schalke triumph, but have only once failed to win the league two years in a row. That was when Jurgen Klopp led Borussia Dortmund to two Bundesliga titles in a row.
Both coaches, then, have come from nothing to really break the mould of football management, but he more interesting question is why players like these – and there are plenty of other modern examples – who haven’t made a name for themselves at the biggest clubs in Europe could become such good managers.
It’s a well-known quirk of football that the best players rarely become the best managers, and that has applied as far back as you care to go, but it’s also surely unique that players who barely made a dent in the German lower leagues in the 1990s could become revered managers in the Premier League, the richest football league in the world.
It does seem, though, that a reasonable standard of playing is still a prerequisite. It seems it’s best to have, naturally enough, at least played the game before: you have to understand dressing room dynamics, learn how to deal with situations. But it also seems good to have been playing at a lower level.
Maybe that’s because you can’t compare your current players to your own former ability, or even the level of the stars you played with. It allows you to focus more on the ability of your group, and that helps when it comes to getting the best out of them.
That’s ultimately in evidence when you look at what Wagner has done at Huddersfield. Whether they can continue their good form all season remains to be seen, but whether they do or don’t is almost irrelevant: it is already an amazing achievement, and a stunning feat of turning a team into more than the sum of its constituent parts. It’s all about the team spirit and the system they play. Both of those, taken together, make any side hugely dangerous no matter how good the players themselves are. But although the Terriers have bolstered their squad in the summer, it’s worth remembering that this is a squad which was tipped to struggle in the Championship last season. That shows something quite amazing.
The system and team spirit are the two pillars to what Jurgen Klopp was trying to do at Liverpool, too. And although recruitment over the last two years has been questionable in the defence, it’s clear that it’s the system that’s his overriding success: it all works as a whole, even if better defenders are a must very soon.
Where Klopp looks in trouble up against his old friend, though, is in the other pillar: the team spirit angle. Last weekend, after seeing his side humiliated against Tottenham Hotspur at Wembley, Klopp criticised his defenders with such brutal harshness as to make Dejan Lovren look like a scapegoat for everything that’s wrong with Liverpool’s defence. Whatever the truth behind Lovren’s abilities, however, it’s clear that Klopp is unable to make him part of a whole that seems to function at a level higher. Just like his Dortmund side did, and just as Wagner’s Huddersfield do.
That doesn’t bode well for the Liverpool coach.
For Wagner, two wins in two games against Manchester United and Liverpool would bring Huddersfield to heights they haven’t reached since the 1920s.
The similarities in their philosophies and their backgrounds are matched by the contrasts in their current situations. Liverpool seem to be missing exactly what Huddersfield have shown in the last few weeks, and that should be very worrying for Klopp. In the end, it could be defeat to his old friend that shows how much he’s struggling as the Anfield boss.
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