‘I don’t want to be somewhere else’: Could Jürgen Klopp end up at Real Madrid? Probably not

It is unlikely that anything Jürgen Klopp says about his future will put a stop to rumours linking him with a move to the Real Madrid dugout next summer. 

Yet ,as the former Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool manager reflected on his first year as Red Bull’s head of global soccer, he did not sound like a man planning a career change. 

“I love it,” Klopp said of his stewardship of the Austrian firm’s international network of football clubs. “I love being part of it, not in the middle of it.

Jürgen Klopp: ‘I’m completely at peace with where I am’

“I’m in a place as a person [where I’m] completely at peace with where I am. I don’t want to be somewhere else.”

As a riposte to speculation that he could replace Álvaro Arbeloa at the Bernabéu come the end of the season, it felt barely less emphatic than Klopp’s remarks in the hours following Xabi Alonso’s exit as Madrid head coach last week.

“This has absolutely nothing to do with me, and it doesn’t affect me at all either,” Klopp told the Red Bull-owned ServusTV network. “Coaching jobs are always changing, and it’s fine to watch from the sidelines without worrying about what it might mean for you personally, because where I am now is the right place for me.”

Few appeared to heed that comment, just as few will probably take much notice of Klopp’s evident enthusiasm for a role he insists “could not excite me more”. Klopp to Madrid is too juicy a story for denials of interest to get in the way. So it is that we have been treated to numerous claims about his plans, from ditching the likes of Vinícius Júnior, David Alaba and Eduardo Camavinga to signing Bayern Munich’s Dayot Upamecano, Dortmund attacker Karim Adeyemi and Stuttgart midfielder Angelo Stiller. 

Why it is hard to imagine Jürgen Klopp at Real Madrid

If the past is any indication of the future, however, it requires quite a leap to imagine Klopp at the Madrid helm. At Dortmund and Liverpool, he became a figurehead for anti-establishment clubs with a similar working-class ethos. In the Spanish capital, he would become part of the establishment at a club where few managers have a lifespan as long as the seven years Klopp enjoyed at the Westfalenstadion, let alone the nine he spent at Anfield. 

Klopp’s evident disdain for the swiftness with which Madrid disposed of Alonso – “nowadays there is no time any more,” he mused following Alonso’s exit – raises the question of why he would wish to work for a club that would no doubt dispose of him just as readily if results didn’t come instantly.    

Neither is it easy to envisage a Madrid dressing room full of unchecked egos embracing the physical demands of Klopp’s high-octane, high-pressing brand of football.

Yet it is perhaps Klopp’s reflections on the lonely nature of management that militate most strongly against the idea that he might surface in the Spanish capital. His position at Red Bull enables him to offer coaches support of a kind he was never able to enjoy.

Klopp: ‘I sat in my office, very often, very alone’

“My idea with the coaches is to be the guy I never had in this business,” said Klopp, speaking at Saturday’s game between RB Leipzig and Bayern. “I sat in my office very, very often, very, very alone. 

“All my assistants were my friends. I never had to go through difficult times alone, but making decisions means you’re alone. Now, in moments when I know they are alone or feel alone in this moment, I want to be there. Talk to me! I will not judge – because I know.”

Indeed, Klopp probably knows far too much to be seduced by the allure of the 15-time European champions. Any yet, no doubt tantalisingly for the Madrid hierarchy, his refusal to rule out a return to club management has been barely less steadfast than his insistence that he has no desire to leave Red Bull.

“At the moment, I would say no,” Klopp said of the prospect of taking up the reins at another club. “But I cannot say never, never, never. All the things I did in the past have led me to being really well suited for this job. 

“At the moment, I’m completely happy with what I’m doing.”