Jurgen Klopp has given detailed answers as to why he will step back from his role as Liverpool manager at the end of the season.
The German confirmed on Friday morning he will leave the club at the end of the season, much to the shock of football fans around the world.
Liverpool announced the news with a video on social media, with Klopp talking in depth about his decision to leave Anfield after nine years.
When asked if he would like to share a message to Liverpool fans, Klopp replied: “Yes, I have to. I will leave the club at the end of the season.
“I can understand that that’s a shock for a lot of people in this moment, when you hear it for the first time, but obviously I can explain it – or at least try to explain it. I love absolutely everything about this club, I love everything about the city, I love everything about our supporters, I love the team, I love the staff. I love everything.
“But that I still take this decision shows you that I am convinced it is the one I have to take. It is that I am, how can I say it, running out of energy. I have no problem now, obviously, I knew it already for longer that I will have to announce it at one point, but I am absolutely fine now. I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again. After the years we had together and after all the time we spent together and after all the things we went through together, the respect grew for you, the love grew for you and the least I owe you is the truth – and that is the truth. That’s it, pretty much.”
It was put to Klopp that fans could be concerned at his wellbeing due to this sudden news, but he moved to alleviate any fears in the health department.
“I am OK. I am healthy, as much as you can [be] at my age,” he continued. “Little bits and bobs, stuff like that, but nothing anybody has to be concerned about, so that’s absolutely fine. I told the club already in November.
“I have to explain a little bit that maybe the job I do people see from the outside, I’m on the touchline and in training sessions and stuff like this, but the majority of all the things happen around these kind of things. That means a season starts and you plan pretty much the next season already. When we sat there together talking about potential signings, the next summer camp and can we go wherever, the thought came up, ‘I am not sure I am here then anymore’ and I was surprised myself by that.
“I obviously start thinking about it. It didn’t start [then], but of course last season was kind of a super-difficult season and there were moments when at other clubs probably the decision would have been, ‘Come on, thank you very much for everything but probably we should split here, or end it here.’ That didn’t happen here, obviously.
“For me it was super, super, super-important that I can help to bring this team back onto the rails. It was all I was thinking about. When I realised pretty early that happened, it’s a really good team with massive potential and a super age group, super characters and all that, then I could start thinking about myself again and that was the outcome. It is not what I want to [do], it is just what I think is 100% right. That’s it.
“In an ideal world I wouldn’t have said anything to anybody until the end of the season, win everything and then say goodbye. That’s not possible. In the world we are living in, it’s not possible to keep things like this secret; it’s maybe a surprise that we could keep it [a secret] until now. There are so many things which are influenced by it, especially personal situations. People from my staff need to know early – and especially the club needs to know early and needs to plan. You cannot plan anything and you cannot really start. You can do a lot of stuff with knowing it but not making it public, but the decisive things, a lot of things, you cannot do. That means the club needs time.
“Over the years my role was a pretty dominant one. It was not intentional, but it happened. There were a lot of moments where I wished that I didn’t have to do that again [leave a club] – it is the third time I have to do something like that and I really don’t want that. But in the end I have to because one thing I am really convinced of [is] if you have to make a decision like that, it is better you do it slightly early than slightly too late. Too late would have been absolutely the worst thing to happen [if], I don’t know, next season in September I realised, ‘Oh my God, that’s it – I cannot do it anymore’ and then we are in the middle of a season and everything.
“This club, everything we built in the last years, is a wonderful platform, a wonderful basis for the future and the only thing that could disturb that now is pretty much that you cannot make the right decisions because you are running out of time, and that’s what was very important to me: that I really inform everybody as early as somehow possible.”
