The Wall Street Journal - 08.11.2019

A12| Friday, November 8, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

SPORTS

FROM TOP: JOSE BRETON/NURPHOTO/ZUMA PRESS; DAVID J. PHILLIP/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Warriors coachSteve Kerr,left, is one of several high-profile leaders who admire the style of Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp.

Why Steve Kerr Loves a Coach in Liverpool

NBA coaches quote him. SEC football coaches study him. The sports world has a manager crush on Jürgen Klopp.

potentially landing a young fran-

chise quarterback. But both teams

already have young franchise quar-

terbacks. Maybe it’s for bragging

rights. What is the brag?My New

Jersey-based football club is mar-

ginally not as horrible as your New

Jersey-based football club?

Best case scenario: We get more

Football Cat, running on the field.

But I just heard from Brian, the cat

who famously disrupted “Monday

Night Football,” who tells me he’s

instead going to see Frankie Valli

in Red Bank that day, and he’s not

going to make it to the game.

“I’m not going to waste one of

my lives on Jets-Giants,” Brian

said.

So the Football Cat is out. My

recommendation to all football

New Yorkers would be to spend the

day outside. That’s right: that

home of yours has a door, and it

actually opens on Sunday after-

noons. Step outside, feel the

sun on your face, enjoy

the beauty of the natu-

ral world. Then get in

the car, drive to the

sports bar, and watch the

Bears-Lions game instead.

I hope this isn’t coming

across as mean-spirited. I

don’t want to just pile on. The

Giants and Jets indeed have

some young, talented players, and

there’s a chance that the pendulum

is going to eventually swing back

in their direction. I just don’t think

the pendulum is going to swing

back by 1 p.m. on Sunday. I really

think you need an alternate plan.

Do something more productive

with the time, like sit stiffly in a

hard-backed chair, and stare at a

blank wall for 3½ hours.

If you’re a fan of either one of

these clubs—believe me, I am sur-

rounded by Giants and Jets fans—

keep your head up. We may have

crummy football, but New York is

still incredible. We have restau-

rants where you can eat at 4 a.m.,

and parking spaces that cost more

than a million bucks. If you’re re-

ally lucky, and you time it just per-

fectly, you can walk down into the

subway, and discover a pigeon and

a rat sharing a cold plate of onion

rings.

It really is the best city on earth.

If you hit rock bottom, and can’t

believe this football nightmare, re-

mind yourself of this, Giants and

Jets fans:

At least you’re not the Knicks! WILFREDO LEE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

No place on earth is as

full of itself as New

York City. This town is

noisy, messy, crowded,

obnoxious, and outra-

geously expensive. At

least a few times a month, New

York will take you to the brink of

tears, make you question the mean-

ing of your own existence. I love it

very much. I never want to leave.

But we need to talk about the

football.

On Sunday, the New York Jets

will “host” the New York Giants in

a regular-season NFL “football”

contest. I put “host” in quotes be-

cause the Jets and the Giants play

in the same stadium. I put “foot-

ball” in quotes because these are

the Jets and Giants, and I am not

sure what either team is doing this

season can be considered football.

Have you ever watched a squir-

rel try to lift the lid off a garbage

can, and insteadfall intothe gar-

bage can? It’s more like that.

Let’s go over the numbers. The

Giants—Super Bowl winners as re-

cently as the 2011 season—are cur-

rently 2-7. The Jets—Super Bowl

winners as recently as the 1968

season—are 1-7. That means the

teams are a combined 3-14; yes, I

did all that math by myself.

These clubs have met 13 prior

times in the regular season;

only once (in 1996, when they

were both 0-3) have they entered

this joust as such a combination di-

saster. I guess you could say that

makes this game almost historic.

Somebody alert the Football Hall of

Fame. And the Smithsonian.

I should not tell you this, but

this contest is actually supposed to

be on television. To watch it is a

cry for help. I’d pre-empt it with an

infomercial for a yam spinner. I

don’t even know what a yam spin-

ner is. Better yet, the Jets-Giants

game should be a “Reverse Pay-

Per-View”—the network, Fox,

should cut you a $40 check for tun-

ing in. Terry Bradshaw should

come over and wash your car.

I’m not sure who attends this

tire fire in person. I’m not sure the

Giants and the Jets themselves

want to go. Nothing’s really on the

line. I’d rather sit on the tarmac at

LaGuardia.

OK that’s a lie. I’d rather go to

Jets-Giants than sit on the tarmac

at LaGuardia.

I guess you could say the loser

of the Jets-Giants game has a bet-

ter shot at a high draft pick, and

New York: The City

Of Football Losers

after the victory over Barcelona.

And he immediately gravitated to-

ward the one aspect of the sport

that he did know something about.

“I started to notice Jürgen

Klopp,” Kerr said. “You could just

see what a bright guy he was, his

emotional intelligence and his love

for his players without sacrificing

that competitive fire—in fact actu-

ally fueling it.”

Kerr is still waiting to meet

Klopp. Which makes him like

pretty much every member of

Klopp’s fan club. But until they can

meet him, they have to set-

tle for pretending to be

him.

Liverpool’s wild 4-

win to erase a 3-

deficit in their Cham-

pions League semifi-

nal against Barça hap-

pened on May 7. The

Warriors, without Kevin

Durant, came from behind

to beat the Rockets on May

8—one of the most satisfying wins

in Kerr’s coaching career.

Kerr decided this was the per-

fect time to channel his inner

Klopp. Klopp had given himself

permission to swear after deter-

mining that children were proba-

bly asleep by then. Kerr made sure

he apologized to his mother before

calling his players bleeping giants.

Three weeks later, Kerr was

coaching in the NBA Finals once

again, and Klopp was dealing with

some business of his own: Liver-

pool was busy winning the Cham-

pions League.

—Sara Germano contributed to

this article.

That philosophy demands total

commitment from his players.

While soccer’s attacking ideal in

the late 2000s became the intri-

cate passing play of Pep Guardi-

ola’s Barcelona, Klopp was devel-

oping a violently athletic approach

based on fast breaks and high

pressure. The battle between the

two styles is now playing out in

the Premier League, where Klopp’s

Liverpool and Guardiola’s Man-

chester City are battling for the ti-

tle for a second straight year—

they’ll meet for the first time this

season at Anfield on Sun-

day.

And there will be at

least one coach of a

championship team

watching from eight

time zones away.

Kerr, whose sister

lives in England and

whose nephews are Ar-

senal supporters, had al-

ways enjoyed English soccer

even if he didn’t know much about

it. But he knew enough to know

that he needed to adopt a team for

himself. He’d been captivated by

Egyptian star Mo Salah in the

World Cup. Salah played for Liver-

pool. Kerr was suddenly a Liver-

pool fan.

“I randomly (or not-so-ran-

domly) picked them because of one

player,” Kerr said. “But it was, like,

oh my god, there’s all this other

stuff that’s so awesome to follow.”

He quickly learned about the

show tune fans sing before kickoff

whose refrain has become Liver-

pool’s mantra. ”YOU’LL NEVER

WALK ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!” Kerr tweeted

Klopp is the latest in a series of

highly successful coaches over the

last decade—Pete Carroll, Joe

Maddon, Kerr himself—who have

reimagined their position of au-

thority for the 21st century. They

are highly respected but not tyran-

nical. They have a metronomic

pulse of their locker rooms.

They’re not necessarily strategic

geniuses, but they have an un-

matched ability to unlock talent,

and they maintain their own power

by empowering their players.

“You can sometimes feel a

coach’s influence,” Kerr said.

“When a team takes on the person-

ality of a coach, you feel this con-

nectedness and this collective will,

and then magic happens.”

Klopp’s players feel it more than

most. As they come off the field,

their 6-foot-3 boss doesn’t bother

with a formal handshake. He wraps

them in bear hugs.

A touchy, feely cheerleader is

not what you would expect from a

manager in the most cutthroat

league on earth—let alone a Ger-

man one. But even Germany can’t

get enough of Klopp’s schtick. At a

time when the nation’s economy is

screeching to a halt, he is seen as

a model of modern management:

Klopp recently posed for a national

magazine called Manager under

the headline “Der Feelgood-Boss.”

Alexander Stöckl, Der Feelgood-

Boss of Norway’s powerhouse ski-

jumping team that dominated the

last Olympics, is not a soccer fan

so much as he’s a Klopp fan. “He

has an aura that fascinates many,”

Stöckl said. “It seems to me has a

fantastic philosophy of coaching.”

with a thick beard and hipster

glasses.

“Everybody’s gotta have their

statement thing,” said Florida foot-

ball coach Dan Mullen, a Liverpool

die-hard and Klopp admirer. “I

wear my visor. He’s got his little

beard-glasses look.”

But the way Klopp handles him-

self—not how he looks—is the rea-

son he’s adored. Mullen gushes

about how he adapts his system to

his players. Claude Le Roy, the

French manager of Togo’s national

soccer team, envies his ability to

sidestep the shenanigans of many

other coaches in the game. “He’s a

natural leader,” said Le Roy, who

has never met him. “He proves

that you don’t have to insult peo-

ple, that you don’t have to cheat,

that you don’t have to constantly

repeat, ‘I’m the boss.’”

Gregg Berhalter, the head coach

of the U.S. men’s national team,

played in the German second divi-

sion when Klopp was starting out,

but he could already tell that the

intense, sometimes maniacal young

coach on the sideline had a special

quality. “He gives a sense of being

a real person,” Berhalter said.

“People relate to that.”

S

teve Kerr watched the

most stirring comeback

in European soccer his-

tory from a plane. But he

was equally captivated by

what happened after Liverpool

shocked Barcelona in their Cham-

pions League semifinal one day

last spring. That’s when Liver-

pool’s exuberant German manager

Jürgen Klopp extolled his players

with high praise in his second lan-

guage.

“These boys are f—ing mentality

giants,” he said.

The very next night, when the

Golden State Warriors pulled off

an epic win of their own, Kerr

couldn’t help himself.

“Our guys are f—ing giants,” he

said in a much less German accent.

It wasn’t long before Kerr’s

homage to Klopp’s poignant ob-

scenity traveled halfway across the

world via a mutual acquaintance.

Klopp’s texted reply was classic

Klopp. “A bunch of flexed bicep

emojis and smiley faces,” Kerr

said. “It was just like a nod—like,

‘Hell yeah!’ ”

Kerr is not the only

coach who would be

flattered to receive the

emoji approval of Jür-

gen Klopp. The Univer-

sity of Florida’s football

coach is a huge fan. So

is Norway’s ski-jumping

coach. At the FIFA

awards in September, 90

of 180 national coaches

voted Klopp the best in

the world. He has such

universal appeal that

he’s even bringing to-

gether bitter enemies:

Klopp was the No. 1

choice of the managers

from both Israel and

Iran.

You’ve heard of the

man crush. This is the

manager crush.

Klopp has been a

forcefully endearing fig-

ure since long before he landed in

Liverpool. As a player at Mainz in

the second tier of German soccer,

he described himself as having

fourth-division skills but a first-di-

vision brain. Those skills still made

him one of the club’s all-time lead-

ing scorers, even as a defender,

since he would routinely shift into

attack when Mainz badly needed a

goal, which was often.

“I was watching, but not specifi-

cally him,” said Andi Herzog, a for-

mer Austrian star now managing

the Israeli national team. “Nobody

knew that he would be the best

coach in the world.”

Klopp was so popular at Mainz

that the club made him its man-

ager immediately after he quit

playing in 2001. Over the next 14

years, first at Mainz and then at

Borussia Dortmund, he refined his

coaching style. Klopp called it

“heavy-metal football.”

His personal style is more dad

rock. While the top European man-

agers wear tailored designer suits,

Klopp dresses like he’s taking his

kids to kindergarten in Brooklyn.

His take on sideline couture in-

cludes tracksuits, baseball caps

and running shoes, all topped off

A Jets fan wears a paper bag during a 26-18 loss to the Dolphins on Nov. 3.

BYBENCOHEN ANDJOSHUAROBINSON

90

of 180 national

team coaches voted

Jürgen Klopp the

best in the world.

JASON GAY