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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Sport
Paul Gorst

'He found out I was an Everton fan and told me I had to leave!' - Inside Jurgen Klopp's first day at Liverpool

It was around 9am on a Friday morning when the Mercedes V-Class pulled up at Anfield carrying its precious German cargo.

Inside the £50,000 vehicle was none other than the new manager of Liverpool Football Club, Jurgen Klopp, who was set to face the media for the first time, fresh from having his three-year contract made public the previous day.

A lengthy meeting with club owners Fenway Sports Group, which had taken place in the New York offices of law firm Sterling and Shearman earlier that month, had convinced all parties that Klopp and Liverpool were the perfect match.

A planned sabbatical was cut short before he arrived on Merseyside ready to face the significant challenge of returning the 18-time champions of England to the summit of the game.

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The clicks and the flashes of the photographers bounced around the press room as Klopp strode into his new workspace alongside then CEO Ian Ayre and club chairman Tom Werner at 10am.

As the assembled media waited to begin the inquisition, a puzzled look on the new manager's face eventually gave way to a broad smile.

Klopp, despite his status as one of the most highly-regarded managers in the game, looked faintly confused and embarrassed by the attention and interest in the fact that he had found new employment.

Wearing a black suit jacket and shirt and dark blue jeans, his smart-casual attire now contrasts with the club-themed tracksuits he has since made his trademark over the last seven years.

But on October 9, 2015, he was out to impress.

And he didn't disappoint.

"Morning Jurgen, welcome to Liverpool Football Club," began LFCTV's Peter McDowall. "Tell us what attracted you to this club and how does it feel?"

Klopp started his tenure with a simple apology before outlining just why the great Anfield restoration project appealed so much.

"First of all, I have to say sorry for my English!" said Klopp. "But usually I am now on holiday.

"Since a few days I've known that I would be back in the race and I can say it's the biggest honour I can imagine to be here.

"For me, it's one of the biggest clubs in the world and it's given me this opportunity to try to help in a situation that's not so difficult like all the people in this room feel, I think.

"It is not perfect of course, but it is a good moment to come here and I feel really proud."

For the next 25 minutes, Klopp put on a clinic as far as debut performances go.

He spoke of turning doubters into believers, not being burdened by the weight of history and why he should be known only as 'the Normal One'.

He also detailed how the passion for football on Merseyside had drawn him to this part of the world.

"When he walked in, he did have a genuine aura," says one member of the press at Anfield that day.

"It's hard to sort of not skew how it was in reality at the time, given all that's been achieved since, but genuinely, it was like: 'I can't believe Liverpool have pulled this off.'

"There was a general buzz around the press room.

"There was a lot of overseas media, Scandinavia, Asia, places where there's a big interest in the Premier League and after he left there was a lot of murmuring about how impressive it had been as a debut press conference."

After speaking to one section of the press, Klopp was taken to Anfield's trophy room where a second makeshift media area had been established.

There, he chatted to the daily media before finishing off with a conversation with those who work for the Sunday newspapers.

Despite the apparent enthusiasm, Klopp made it clear his arrival would not mean an overnight fix for the problems that were gripping an underperforming, underachieving squad.

“If you make me out like, I don’t know, Jesus and then the next day say ‘he’s not able to walk on water’, then we will have a problem," he said.

"We cannot change the whole world in one day, but I’m sure all the Liverpool fans are clever enough to understand we need time."

More photo opportunities awaited as Klopp was given a tour of the pitch by Ayre and Werner before he held aloft the club's shirt.

"He sounded like a really positive guy when we watched him on the TV," says one senior member of staff. "You could see the way he talked that he would bring energy.

"And from there it was about bringing that to the club and the people around the club and that did eventually happen."

An evening meal was arranged later that day at the Hope Street Hotel where Klopp had been put up by Liverpool while more permanent accommodation was being arranged.

Coaches Pep Lijnders and John Achterberg were told they would be retaining their positions at the club by Ayre and were invited for the meal later that evening to meet their new line manager.

"He was talking to me like I'd known him already for 10 years!" Achterberg recalls. "We really got on with everything.

"I was talking about how the club works a little bit, how the rules in England are and he asked me about the menu at the restaurant.

"There were a lot of French-sounding dishes on there, so I had to tell him I didn't know what they all meant!

"He was surprised by that. He said: 'You've been here over 10 years and you don't know the names of these?' So I had to tell him they were not English names, so I wasn't sure.

"There were no families, it was the coaching staff, mainly. It was myself, Peter Krawietz, the head physio, Ian Ayre and Tom Werner.

"Obviously we got on straight away from the first day and the boss is like that.

"He's such a good character and he can get on with everyone, so it made it work really well. "

Klopp was given a crash course, of sorts, of how the manager role differed in England to what he had been used to during his time with Mainz and Borussia Dortmund in Germany.

The conversation over dinner ranged from the atmosphere inside the stadium to the technical details that a manager is demanded to preside over at a Premier League club.

Klopp, it was decided, would be in need of a personal assistant and a diary.

The decision to bring with him his long-serving deputies Peter Krawietz and Zeljko Buvac was already made, but only the former was at dinner in the city centre's Georgian Quarter that night due to green card issues.

Achterberg adds: "I said to Jurgen he had to decide everything from how many balls we need, do we need more floodlights or whether or not to wear a suit for the games.

"Everything in England is decided by the manager. In Europe, it is all decided by a technical manager or someone like that.

"I told him he would get a massive office and everything he needed there and he would also have a massive range of experience around him to use if he wanted it."

Klopp wasted little time getting to work, making the nine-mile journey the following day from his hotel to the Kirkby Academy to watch the club's current batch of young hopefuls in action.

Perhaps spurred on by the presence of the new first-team manager, the U18s would run out 4-1 winners against Stoke as 15-year-old Rhian Brewster was called up for his debut in that age group for the final 10 minutes while Klopp watched on alongside Krawietz and Academy director Alex Ingelthorpe.

But while he was desperate to assess what was at his disposal within the Liverpool ranks, the Reds boss was also intrigued by what his new home had to offer as a city too.

A couple of days later, he and his wife, Ulla, would make the short walk from the Hope Street Hotel to the Old Blind School bar on Hardman Street when he was inevitably spotted by well-wishers.

"We saw him and his wife across the bar and sent some drinks over to them," recalls Kirsty Lucas of her meeting with Klopp seven years ago.

"We got talking to them and congratulated him on the appointment. He bought us a round of drinks as a thank you and his wife got a picture of us all together.

"He was so welcoming and friendly and was cracking loads of jokes with us. He found out I was an Everton fan and told me I had to leave!

"They were both lovely and just really down to earth people, but we didn't sit with them for too long because loads more people had spotted it was Jurgen."

It hadn't taken long for Klopp to make himself at home. The doubters had started to believe.

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