Jurgen Klopp has provided an update on whether he will ever go back into coaching, 16 months on from his emotional departure from Liverpool.
Klopp bid farewell to Anfield after nine glory-laden seasons in 2024, guiding the club to their first Premier League title in 30 years as well as a sixth Champions League.
The German now serves as the head of global soccer for Red Bull, a strategic non-managerial role that sees him provide transfer and coaching guidance to its network of clubs such as RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg.
And in an interview with The Athletic, Klopp revealed that he is loving life away from the dugout and does not currently foresee a return to management.
“That’s what I think,” Klopp said, validating the insinuation that he will never coach again. “But you don’t know. I’m 58. If I started again at 65, everybody will say, ‘You said you’ll never do it again!’ Er, sorry, I thought 100 percent (when I said it)!
“That is what I think now. I don’t miss anything.”
Since embarking on this new chapter at Red Bull, former Borussia Dortmund and Mainz manager Klopp has come under fire from German fans for aligning himself with the conglomerate, one that is maligned in the Bundesliga.
RB Leipzig, who were only founded in 2009, are a point of contention due to the fact they conform to the Bundesliga’s 50+1 rule, which says 50 percent plus one share of any club’s voting rights must be held by its members.
Klopp has spoken out on the criticism he has faced from those in his homeland, saying: “I knew it (would come). I’m German. I know what people in Germany think about the involvement of Red Bull in football. They love Red Bull. In all departments. But in football? No. So whatever, they want to do it that way.
“Funnily enough, it was only in Germany where the reaction was like that. But that’s fine — no problem. Everybody can think what they want. You just have to accept that I do what I want as long as I don’t hurt anybody.
“By the way, I don’t expect people to remember what I did for a specific club. The people in Mainz in the stadium now… they were little kids when I was there (1990-2001 as a player, then seven years as a coach), so their parents had to tell them who I was. So that’s how it is, it is absolutely fine.
“I don’t expect everybody to like what I do. I have to do it for the right reasons — for my right reasons. By the way, in Liverpool, people are overly happy that I do what I do because I am not coaching another team.”
Klopp is nevertheless relishing a newfound sense of mental freedom that he never had in his over two decades as a manager, allowing him to live his life beyond the pitch.
“I missed nothing in my life because I never thought about it,” he adds. “So during almost 25 years, I twice went to a wedding — one of them was mine and the other one was two months ago. In 25 years, I have been four times at the cinema — all in the last eight weeks. It’s now nice to be able to do it.
“I was in so many different countries as a coach and I saw nothing of them; just the hotel, the stadium or the training ground. Nothing else. I did not miss it, but I would now.”
The 58-year-old shared a formidable rivalry with Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola during his Liverpool heyday, contesting over numerous top-flight titles ahead of the rest of the pack.
While both will be remembered as the two figureheads of that Premier League era, Klopp has outlined the key difference between himself and Guardiola that shows why the Spaniard was the true genius of the two.
He said: “I know how almost all football managers live. They live for the job, all-in. You can’t be successful in this business without doing it like that. But then I tell Pep (Guardiola) — he improved his (golf) handicap with age!
“I didn’t have a f***ing minute of time to play golf! So that’s why he’s a genius and I am not. When do you play golf? I cannot believe that.”
