With Jurgen Klopp expected on Merseyside to finalise terms on a three-year deal with Liverpool in the coming days, we round up Wednesday morning’s back pages.
It feels like a rollercoaster last 48 hours or so for Liverpool Football Club and its fans, from Brendan Rodgers being sacked just hours after Sunday’s Merseyside derby to a whirlwind of speculation about his successor.
Andy Hunter of The Guardian explains that talks progressed on Tuesday between Klopp’s representatives, Mike Gordon and Ian Ayre. He writes:
Talks have advanced to the make-up of his back-room team at Anfield – his former Dortmund assistant, Zeljko Buvac, and analyst, Peter Krawietz – and the thorny issue of Liverpool’s transfer committee has not discouraged Klopp from wanting the job. Personal terms have also been discussed. The former Mainz coach would earn significantly more at Liverpool than his £3.6m-a-year salary at Dortmund and is believed to have been offered a three-year contract.
Most of this morning’s papers agree that Klopp will be in Liverpool by Thursday, with an unveiling potentially taking place by Friday.
Klopp has received the backing of much of the football world as he looks set to return to football for the first time since leaving Borussia Dortmund at the end of last season.
The likes of Dortmund chief-executive Hans-Joachim Watzke and former Liverpool players and fellow-Germans Didi Hamann and Karl-Heinz Riedle have all come out in praise of the 48-year-old.
German football journalist Raphael Honigstein, who only weeks ago hinted at a renewed Liverpool approach for Klopp, is also a fan. He writes in Wednesday morning’s The Guardian:
At Liverpool, though, fans and boardroom crave the raw thrill of what Klopp has called Englischer Fussball, a 100mph tour de force with guaranteed action in the box. In Klopp, the Anglophile football romantic, they will bring in a prophet with a loudspeaker who is himself one of the converted.
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There’s similar romanticising from Simon Hughes in his description of Klopp for The Independent
Hughes concludes, like many, that there seems to be something of a good fit for Liverpool and Klopp to blossom an important relationship.
Klopp realises managing Liverpool will pose different challenges to Dortmund. He will arrive in a place that is certainly fragile and certainly fortunate, fortunate that at least one significant person inside the football world takes a sympathetic view of Liverpool’s continuing claim to greatness, someone who ultimately, is stirred by the nostalgic bonds of history.
Back at Melwood, Liverpool’s players not on international duty have been training with Sean O’Driscoll and Gary McAllister, though both look set to leave when Brendan Rodgers’ successor is confirmed despite only being appointed in the summer.
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