IT WAS THE longest of waits, lasting three decades and one lockdown but within a day of securing the club’s first League since 1990, Jurgen Klopp was already speaking about adding to Liverpool’s collection of titles.
The German has helped Liverpool win four trophies in the last 13 months and plans on smashing the record points tally set by Manchester City in the 2017/18 season. But it is next season that he is already thinking about. “We will not stop,” Klopp said yesterday. “We will stay focused and we see the opportunity. But ‘will not stop’ does not mean we will win everything, we just want to improve because the other teams are good already and will improve.
“City are exceptional. I can’t promise we will win something but we will try everything to improve and I think that is possible. The consistency is difficult to improve – if we could keep that it would be nice because even the games we lost were not bad.
“I am nothing without my coaches and even less without my players. We have a common idea and common dream. We have big dreams and the more people dream, the more important and stronger it gets.”
Klopp added: “The boys are in a good age group, more experienced, more confident, more convinced and we should use that as much as we can.”
When he arrived at Anfield in October 2015, he landed in a club with a rich tradition but little recent success, just the 2012 League Cup troubling the dusters in the trophy cabinet since 2006. But Klopp was prepared to be patient.
He said yesterday: “I knew about the expectations but I felt immediately the people wanted to give us time. I love the way they see life. I love the way they want to be different, are different but in a very good way. I see a lot of Scousers and they are really, really good people. We both come from regions where we speak a pretty strong, strange dialect — where I come from [in Germany] nobody understands a word outside that! Scouse is pretty similar.
“If I didn’t like the people here I would not stay for nine years or whatever, that’s what we agreed on.”
Meanwhile, Everton manager, Carlo Ancelotti, has also heaped praise on Liverpool, telling Sky Italia: “I have a great relationship with Jurgen. We already met last week when everything was pretty much already decided, I already congratulated him even before this week’s events.
But really, Klopp is the architect behind the success of this team, not only in the Premier League – but also for what he managed to do during these five years since his arrival.
“With a lot of patience, he was able to build a perfect machine.”
