Jürgen Klopp and Red Bull are a perfect match made in compromise
There’s reason floating in the ethical mire
Over the last few days I’ve been putting together a directory of football newsletters with the simple aim of keeping some sort of record of them in one place.
Beyond that, I don’t really know what its purpose is. There doesn’t seem to be anything better but my website isn’t going to be delivering traffic anywhere anytime soon.
Still, it’s a nice thing to have. Here it is. Let me know if yours is missing.
Don’t miss this week’s Beefy Bites!
Jürgen Klopp and Red Bull are a perfect match made in compromise
Red Bull’s announcement that former Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp will be its new Global Head of Soccer was enough to raise more than a few eyebrows in Germany and on Merseyside.
Klopp, who joins the energy drink giant’s football network at the start of 2025, has cultivated a persona throughout his coaching career that seems to be an uncomfortable fit for the role he’s about to undertake. When football gets uncomfortable, when there are cracks in the edifice that it can’t easily explain, there are people who follow it who are prone to losing their minds.
Dortmund and Liverpool embraced Klopp, in part, because he was a high-quality and successful manager for them both. Let’s not pretend that isn’t the key ingredient in the magic potion. But there’s magic too, and that comes down to character and beliefs.
Football supporters feel connected to managers who get their clubs, who operate within a shared outlook and exude an understanding of their communities that seem impossible from an outsider but all the more powerful precisely because of that.
Just as Leeds United took to Marcelo Bielsa and Luton Town took to Rob Edwards, so Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool took to Jürgen Klopp. Success on the pitch allows it, but in every case it’s something far less tangible that confirms it.
Even in the modern game, Dortmund and Liverpool seem to be from the opposite side of the tracks to Red Bull. No, they’re not perfect. Yes, they have iffy sponsorships or billionaire owners or both. But these are clubs and indeed cities with something about them. Klopp taking any role with Red Bull inevitably generates debate.
It isn’t a popular move in Dortmund, where BVB supporters have other reasons to be saddened. Germany’s supporter-friendly club governance rules – again, not without their flaws nor impeccably applied – chime poorly with club ownership by multinational enterprises. Furthermore, Dortmund and Leipzig are not only in the same league but in direct competition with one another.
The rump of Liverpool supporters might be more circumspect. They have a history of bringing players into the club who are graduates of the Red Bull system and they aren’t currently in domestic opposition to a Red Bull club. But the usual fanatics on Twitter immediately started tying themselves in knots to justify Klopp’s decision to themselves when, in actual fact, they’d have been well within their rights to just say they don’t see the problem.
It’s a curious appointment however we feel about it but the ultimate truth from Klopp’s point of view is that it’s the right one for Klopp. Life isn’t perfect. People do things they need to do that other people might not like. People will take jobs that entice them, inspire them or energise them, and the likelihood is that Klopp sees Red Bull that way and understands the compromise.
Perhaps the uncomfortable truth of the job of Red Bull’s football chief is that it is, if we strip away the ethical question – and let’s be clear, it’s an ethical question that doesn’t bother everyone anyway – what’s left is a brief that really is enticing and inspiring and energising. Take away the taurine and it’s a role with more going for it than most.
Klopp’s compromise is his business. Maybe he doesn’t consider it a compromise at all, and maybe his appointment is more ceremonial than regular involvement on a practical level. It’s impossible to know at this early stage what the day-to-day job description might be.
Let’s assume it’s intended as announced, if for no other reason than Klopp and Red Bull, the organisation if not the brand, might be a good enough fit that they’d both enjoy and benefit greatly from the deal really being the real deal.
The apparent inclusion of a break clause in the event of an offer from the DFB to take over the German national team points to Klopp’s probable end game.
It’s an ideal arrangement for the DFB, Red Bull and Klopp – everybody except Julian Nagelsmann and any subsequent national team managers. It takes the time pressure off both parties and they can align at their leisure.
In the club game, Klopp was a manager who gave his all to get it all. High input, maximum reward. He’s a winner with the silverware to prove it.
Klopp won the Bundesliga two years in a row with a team that hadn’t been champions for nearly a decade and haven’t been for more than a decade since. He came to England and won the Champions League and Premier League with Liverpool, a club that had been chasing its nineteenth domestic league title for thirty years. Klopp got it done.
It’s easy to see how the sheer force of will required to be a manager at that sort of level could be exhausting. Klopp, though successful, was starting to show some managerial wear and tear at times. He acknowledged as much in departing Anfield. Dismantling walls and restoring glories can take a toll.
Joining Red Bull affords Klopp an opportunity unlike any other in the world game. Red Bull gets access to one of football’s sharper minds without subjecting its host to the extreme pressures and persistent vulnerability of being a manager or a head coach. It’s a director of football job supercharged by the despised multi-club model.
Klopp is motivated by player development. “By joining Red Bull at a global level, I want to develop, improve and support the incredible football talent that we have at our disposal,” he parped in the press release.
Red Bull has thrived for a generation in the realm of talent production. Armed with the freedom to move players between Liefering, Salzburg and Leipzig at will, Red Bull has been able to identify, acquire, develop and profit from young footballers in a system that makes many of us feel uncomfortable but never seems to do much measurable damage to the players.
Klopp himself has experience of working with Red Bull alumni. Now, he shares a piece of the responsibility to bring them through a framework that stands up winning teams and moves on some of their constituent parts for profit and reinvestment. He might face criticism for following through but it’s not hard to understand the temptation.
Both the organisation and their new global big dog are driven by football philosophy. They each have a view on how football should be played in pursuit of success. The tactical specifics differ but the mindset of the true believer is universal. Klopp faces a new challenge as a global strategic leader but he’s a coach of vision just as Red Bull’s football operation is a manifestation of a tactical worldview.
Red Bull and Klopp are a tactical match in some aspects. Both have built their success on high-intensity football with counter-pressing at its beating heart. For all the seductive talk of heavy metal football, Klopp’s counter-pressing is necessarily as systematic as the supposedly more measured Red Bull approach. It wouldn’t have worked as well as it did were it not adequately structured.
But they’re a tactical mismatch, too, and it’s in the differences in deployment that the relationship between different and well-established systems that the alliance between Klopp and Red Bull will be most interesting. It’ll be fascinating to see where the collision between Klopp’s 4-3-3 and Red Bull’s preferred 4-2-2-2 will take them. Something, somewhere, will change.
Supporters might not like the appointment on an ethical level but Klopp has taken what should be an incredible job for which he is better suited than almost anyone else. It will give him power and influence while leaving room for the sort of creativity and vision that made his name in the first place.
Klopp is now working towards a unique legacy. His story so far is a fabulous one, enriched rather than soured by occasional periods of relative difficulty. The path ahead of him leads to successful steering of a global football behemoth to sporting and commercial triumph, followed by accession to Die Mannschaft. It’s pioneering stuff.
Naturally, the negative public response has focused to a large degree on that legacy. Signing up to the Red Bull machine was never going to land any other way.
The admiration for Klopp in Mainz, Dortmund and Liverpool is rooted in football but grew beyond it in all three cities.
His ability to make those connections is a beautiful thing but it also means people were surprised that he doesn’t hold himself to the standards they expect of him. I’m not sure that’s fair. Klopp’s legacy at the clubs that loved him shouldn’t be affected after the fact. I hope it’s not.
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Dessert
I’m a sucker for adidas and I love a white boot. This is the signature Leo Messi F50 Triunfo Estelar.
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Have a week.
It's a curious one. Beyond the points you made, there is the relationship with Pep Lijnders (and Vitor Matos) from Liverpool. I wonder if that will be the main focus of his role - ie, more focussed on Salzburg.
What do you think about his potential influence in New York and Bragantino?
Finally, thanks for the inclusion in the directory. Very kind. These directories were very well received in the fiction community from my time over there.