Big bull grin: head of football Jürgen Klopp (l.), technical director Mario Gomez (m.) and Brazil’s football legend Rai in Paris
Photo: imago/Cyril Moreau
When recently on New Year’s Eve there was an extremely exuberant atmosphere on Frankfurt’s Opera Square before dark and the first hits were played in the trendy bar “Papa Enj”, a colorful group of athletes celebrated almost unrecognized. Pascal Hens, the former handball star, was also present, as was Axel Hellmann, the current CEO of Eintracht Frankfurt. RB Leipzig’s coach Marco Rose and Sandro Schwarz, coach at New York Red Bulls, were also there. If only Jürgen Klopp, who will soon be living in his new home in Wiesbaden, joined them, then the troika with shared beginnings at FSV Mainz 05 would have been united at the turn of the year.
But it is only these days that what obviously belongs together is coming together. Klopp, as the new football superfigure in the Red Bull cosmos, exchanged ideas with Marco Rose on the club’s premises on Cottaweg on Monday and visited the academy. The day before, the 57-year-old had watched Leipzig’s 4-2 defeat in the Bundesliga game against Werder Bremen in the stands. Every news agency reported his presence in the opening credits, although the footballers’ successful start to the year would actually have provided enough to talk about.
But Klopp’s broad grin is in every commercial. On Friday the new Head of Global Soccer watched the ice hockey cracks from Red Bull Munich, the next day he was spotted at the French second division club FC Paris together with technical director Mario Gomez, who will be sharing an office with Klopp in Munich directly on the English coast garden.
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The cult figure will also be asked about how this will all work out in detail on Tuesday at a round of introductions in Hangar 7 in Salzburg. Of course, managing director Oliver Mintzlaff, who arranged the successor job for the successful Liverpool FC coach, which was viewed critically, especially in Germany, should not be missing from this media event. Of course, it helps the former athlete in particular that the RB Leipzig kickers have gotten back on track, at least nationally.
The failure on the international stage can no longer be corrected. Klopp arrived too late to avert the Champions League exit. Incidentally, the new pioneer and door opener is said to have worked hard for Rose to stay during the Saxons’ veritable creative crisis. The Leipzig coach and Schwarz will be Klopp’s important contacts in the future, although Rose would like to see some separation: “It would be important if we could do our work at the locations every day without constantly looking at what Jürgen Klopp is doing. I don’t think he understands his role either.”
The 48-year-old Rose and Schwarz, who is two years his junior, spent a formative time as players in the old Mainz stadium on Bruchweg, also under Klopp, and then became coaches, with Rose taking the springboard over Red Bull Salzburg while Schwarz was still there rose to coach a first division team with the Zero Fives. Probably none of this troika would have ever thought that their paths would ever come together like this through stations in Mainz, Dortmund and Berlin, Salzburg, New York or Liverpool.
The fact that the sports-oriented beverage company is now expanding to Japan, Brazil, England and Spain, because clubs like Omiya Ardija and Bragantino are owned by RB and clubs like Leeds United and Atletico Madrid have nothing against selling shares or sponsorship, makes Klopp’s area of responsibility global challenge. But if anyone can get people excited about an overarching theme, it’s probably this universal human catcher.
Klopp has not previously made disparaging comments about the football commitment of the Red Bull Group, which was founded over 40 years ago by Dietrich Mateschitz and Chaleo Yoovidhya and is now owned by their two sons, who each hold 49 percent of the shares. Both are hardly involved in day-to-day business, but the group, with annual sales of more than ten billion euros, is managed in the spirit of the founding fathers. Five years ago, around a third of total sales went into marketing. Then as now, sport is a way to get young people from all over the world excited about the sweet product. The Swabian-born Klopp is now taking part.
It will be exciting to see how his messages get caught up in German stadiums. Abusive posters hung not only in Kiel, but also in Dortmund and Mainz – where Klopp left a legacy for eternity. Nevertheless, the fans felt deceived. Maybe Klopp doesn’t want to win their sympathies at all, but simply wants to show that his knowledge, his conviction, his aura and his experience are so great that he doesn’t even have to be a coach anymore to achieve lasting success in international football. And then those who have now been reunited will celebrate together.
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