International football’s expanded first break of the season has a box office opening.
Jurgen Klopp’s appointment as Germany head coach was almost two decades in the making but took a catastrophic World Cup exit to Paraguay this summer to finally deliver alignment. Since dramatically calling time on a glittering spell with Liverpool in 2024, many unsuccessfully attempted to coax him into returning to elite-level coaching. Supposedly, no job could tempt him back.
Retirement, however, lasted little more than two years as the self-proclaimed ‘Normal One’ answered the call to lead his homeland after Julian Nagelsmann’s resignation. A man who loathed international breaks with a passion in his time at Anfield is now living for them and could not have asked for a greater baptism of fire as Die Mannschaft take on old enemy the Netherlands in Thursday night’s Nations League opener.
Germany’s gamble on Jurgen Klopp may not pay off
The showdown at the Johan Cruyff Arena contains added spice with former lieutenants Virgil van Dijk, Ryan Gravenberch and Cody Gakpo likely to line up for the Oranje.
Meanwhile, Xavi’s bow in the home dugout has the potential to reignite the battle between tiki-taka and heavy-metal football that underpinned Klopp’s meetings with Pep Guardiola as the pair regularly duked it out for some of the game’s top honours in both the Bundesliga and Premier League. Fittingly, Germany’s most anticipated managerial reign since Franz Beckenbauer will also be marked in Amsterdam by the visitors wearing a replica kit synonymous with Der Kaiser's crowning moment at the 1990 World Cup.
Time away from the touchline has done little to dim Klopp’s front-footed nature; he confirmed as much by wading into thorny political discourse in a press conference earlier this month during which he outlined hopes of ‘reclaiming the flag’ from the country’s far right after it made sharp gains in regional elections. The German FA (DFB) knew it would be his way or the highway in their quest to reclaim a once rightful place at the pinnacle of international football. Hiring a unifier – or ‘Doctor Football’, as he was dubbed by Red Bull upon becoming their head of global soccer – is the first step towards that aspirational revival. It's a dance Klopp knows better than most, having transformed similarly fallen giants at club level in Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund.
A dream ticket appointment, on the face of it, but there has still been some early bumps in the road. Klopp was quick to make clear that leading the four-time world champions will be the final chapter in what has been an impressive managerial career. Unlike Beckenbauer, he will not be going back to the well once his time ends, currently after the 2030 World Cup. In the bluntest terms, it is as a moral obligation from which he is prepared to walk away if mutual respect is not afforded. The country's media is already on notice of a zero-tolerance policy towards the same mistreatment Nagelsmann and England's Thomas Tuchel both endured in North America.
The new Bundestrainer is under no illusions of the task ahead, having already used his platform as a TV pundit at the World Cup to outline the ‘need to change things fundamentally’. A different way of working has seen an enlarged sample size of 44 players, 16 of them uncapped, named in a maiden squad that will be split across their four Nations League fixtures. Yet focus is already gravitating towards the second half of that mammoth schedule and whether Klopp can successfully reframe the ongoing debate surrounding Florian Wirtz's luckless start to life at Liverpool.
As a longstanding opponent of eye-watering transfer fees, Klopp did not hide his dismay for the £116m paid to bring the Bayer Leverkusen playmaker by his erstwhile employers last summer; labelling it 'an insane sum' that would be writ large for the player 'if things don't go well for two or three games'. That premonition proved to be scarily accurate as market inflation has made Wirtz an easy target for the critics. He has become a disruptor for Liverpool in the worst possible sense; skewing a tactical dynamic that Klopp set down across nine years to great effect and served as a blueprint for his successor Arne Slot to deliver a record-equalling 20th title.
Ironically, Klopp's uncompromising system is the key to unlocking Wirtz's potential as roles are clearly defined rather than the horses-for-courses approach favoured by Nagelsmann during his time at the helm. He also has form with rejuvenating a fanfare arrival from the Bundesliga who initially struggled to adapt to life in the Premier League. Roberto Firmino’s move to Merseyside just months prior to his own felt like a preordained signing, but there were serious doubts over whether the Brazilian could attain the levels that the club’s talent spotters believed he was capable of.
Opportunities to reinstill enough confidence in Wirtz on the training pitch to make him a potent force once more are far more constrained at international level than the daily interactions he enjoyed with Firmino but it is already seen as being make or break to his continued prospects for country as well as club.
Limitations extend to Klopp’s plans to wrestle with an identity crisis that has hung over Germany at successive tournament exits since their World Cup defence crashed and burned in 2018. Gary Lineker’s adage of football being a simple game of 22 men chasing a ball for 90 minutes which ends in the Germans always winning has not been the case for some time.
As the godfather of Gegenpressing, Klopp already accepts that he will not be able to ‘turn the footballing world upside down’ overnight but translating successful methods from club level to the international stage is by no means a flawless methodology, as predecessors Nagelsmann and Hansi Flick can fully attest.
A two-year countdown until Euro 2028 should afford Klopp the time and freedom to break the current cycle. His entire CV has been gearing up to this moment. But the danger of ideology and reality failing to coalesce is still very real for Germany.
