In the next week, Manchester City and Liverpool face each other twice – in the Premier League and FA Cup – in matches that will stop the football world. What is it like to play for Jurgen Klopp against Pep Guardiola? Former Melbourne Victory and Socceroos goalkeeper Mitch Langerak explained to David Weiner …
Days before the 2013 UEFA Champions League final, a 24-year-old Mitch Langerak suspected he might be about to be thrust onto football’s biggest club stage, at Wembley Stadium.
He approached Borussia Dortmund No.1 Roman Weidenfeller.
“Mate, are you going to be alright,” Langerak asked him.
“Because if you’re not, let me know and I’ll get my parents on a flight over!”
Weidenfeller was inevitably fit to play, but Langerak’s frame of mind two days out from possibly starting in club football’s showpiece match, gives you a glimpse into the culture of a Jurgen Klopp environment.
He was ready. And he was confident.
“Whether he believed it or not, you had the feeling, it didn’t matter who was playing,” Langerak reflected, reminiscing with KEEPUP over his five years at Dortmund.
“He was calm in his mind.
“Some of the biggest games we played, a player who hadn’t played for four or five months would come into the starting line-up and kill it.
“No one saw it coming – even the player – but he had something in his mind … and nine times out of 10 it would pay off.
“There is an intrinsic x-factor, with guys like him. It is why they are where they are, at the top because they have this ability to be world class managers.”
The history books show that Bayern edged the popular Dortmund side 2-1 thanks to an 89th minute Arjen Robben winner.
Despite the defeat, the world was taking notice of Jurgen Klopp, the great disruptor in German football. Under him, Dortmund had been two-time Bundesliga champion, and came so close to conquering Europe.
He has done that since, with Liverpool, as well as changing the shape of the Premier League with his extraordinary work at Anfield. This term, the Reds already have the League Cup in the cabinet, and are still deep in contention for the league, Europe, and the FA Cup.
But there’s the small matter of Manchester City to come, which will be pivotal. There is another date with Pep Guardiola, on Monday AEST, a veritable title decider, and then in the FA Cup semi-final on the weekend.
Few people have experienced playing for the German in the lead-up to such a big game.
Fewer have been witness to Klopp before facing Pep Guardiola.
Langerak is one of them, and tasted success in the 2015 German Cup semi-final, where he was the penalty shootout hero.
“The way he coaches and his man management, it is all very relaxed; a lot of laughing, before training, in and around the group,” he explained.
So relaxed, Langerak recalls, that when the chefs got the times wrong before the Champions League final for their pre-match meal, Klopp didn’t lost his temper, or composure.
“I was thinking Klopp could lose it, but he starts laughing.
“We’re all waiting for 20 minutes before the biggest game of our lives, you expect your coach could get rattled, but it didn’t faze him in the slightest.
“Those sort of situations do pass onto the team.”
He continued: “Players at that level understand when it’s time to work; there’s no mucking around, it’s nothing but full serious.
“Leading into these games, he wouldn’t be stressing the importance or anything like that. It would be completely unnecessary. Everyone is aware, there’s no need to emphasise it.”
He continued: “Looking back at the meetings, the night before the game, we’d watch video for 15 minutes, max, on the opposition, things they do and that we need to be aware of.
“(For example) we played Real Madrid a few times. Most of the guys are thinking ‘we’re playing against (Cristiano) Ronaldo!’
“He’d say ‘don’t worry about Ronaldo he can do everything, we need to watch Xabi Alonso, he’s the one we need to watch.’
“And we’d watch him (on the video and he’d tell us): if we nullify him, we can control one aspect of it. I imagine that would be what it would be like against Manchester City although obviously they’ve got quality all over the pitch; he’d be looking at (Kevin) De Bruyne and ways to keep him quiet.”
There was nothing Churchillian pre-game either.
His intensity came on the training park, and in his actions.
“I can’t ever recall us ever needing a rev up, never that sort of way.
“The day to day, what you see in training (is where that came): he demands the intensity in what we’re doing. A lot of that was the gegenpressing – full intensity, that’s where you’d feel it, on the sidelines, in the middle of the game.
“You’d sense him pushing the game forward, with no doubt in your mind.
“(It was) not so much a meeting, before the game, it was almost the opposite: very calm, clear and concise.
“Once that kick off went, it was full power, he would exude as much energy as those on the pitch.”
When you work with someone for five years, you tend to pick up their idiosyncrasies; quirks that can give away their mood or feelings.
How’s Klopp feeling now, then?
“He’d be loving it,” Langerak exclaimed.
“Loving it. There would be the good stress; but no doubt, or concerns.”
Indeed, Langerak can still see those same traits now as he experienced in his early years, watching from Japan.
“I can almost see what his emotion is, what he’s saying.
“His energy level is massive and that filters through.
“I swear, you feel his energy levels whether it’s in training, or around the group, and you feel as a player: how can I give anything less than he’s giving in terms of output?
“That’s one of the biggest things: I don’t understand when he allows himself to rest, because even in a general conversation, you’ve got everything, every ounce of his energy.
“I recall in my last season, I asked to have a chat with him because I had an opportunity to go out on loan and play.
“He said ‘let’s talk’; we literally spoke for two hours, more than anything I expected.
“He said: ‘no I don’t want you to go on loan, I want you to stay here.’
“I went in thinking I 100% need to go on loan, for my development, and I come out two hours later basically with a new four year contract and my whole world flipped upside down. Crazy the effect he could have on you personally as a person.”
