News (engl.)

Jürgen Klopp has officially begun his role as Germany head coach. On his first day with the German Football Association (DFB), the 59-year-old spoke at the DFB Campus in Frankfurt about the early work with his coaching team, his excitement ahead of the UEFA Nations League internationals in September and October, and the importance of the fans to the national team.

DFB: Welcome, Jürgen! Today is officially your first day working for the DFB, although you’ve already spent much of this week at the DFB Campus, including with your coaching team. Was there one particular moment when it first really hit you that you’re now the Germany national team head coach?

Jürgen Klopp: There have been a few, to be honest. My official start date may be 15th August, but unofficially we’ve been at it for a while already. I’ve even signed off some WhatsApp messages to friends with “Bundestrainer Klopp”. (laughs) Nobody would actually refer to themselves like that and it sounds pretty awful, but I thought it was acceptable among friends. (smiles) We’re taking things step by step now. We’ve already spent the past few days here with the full coaching team, getting to know how things work. The onboarding process means getting set up with our devices and being given the contact details of people I’ll be speaking to over the coming days, weeks and months. I’ve already been in touch with some of them and have arranged meetings with a number of Bundesliga coaches, for example.

I haven’t contacted any players yet. A lot of them have been travelling all over the world, in Asia for instance, and they’re right in the middle of pre-season. From my point of view, there isn’t actually that much we need to discuss with them just yet. But when I visit the coaches and clubs, I’ll obviously speak to the players there as well. We’re all hugely excited and highly motivated. It’s been a really good start. Everyone we’ve met here so far has given us a fantastic welcome, so thank you for that! It already feels very familiar, which is really nice.

DFB: Have you already learnt anything in these first few days about the DFB or the people working here for German football that you didn’t know before? You have a huge amount of experience and have enjoyed great success as a club coach, but you yourself said at your first press conference that being Germany head coach is a different kind of job.

Klopp: I quickly realised that the people I’ll be working closely with are very good at what they do. When a World Cup hasn’t gone well, you might think everything needs clearing out and you have to start again from scratch. But that’s completely unnecessary. I’ve been around long enough to know that the changes we need have to come from elsewhere. Everyone is here at the DFB because they have something to offer, not because they couldn’t find anything else. There’s a real sense of excitement among everybody.

There are two big areas we need to focus on now. Number one is the senior national team. Number two is everything else. We have to start with the senior team because that is what comes next. We have lots of ideas already and plenty more will follow. Ultimately, though, so much depends on the players: how fit they are and what condition they’re in generally when they arrive. That’s why we still need a little time. But there certainly won’t be any shortage of enthusiasm, commitment or hard work.

Next week we have a three-day workshop, with the entire coaching team and parts of the wider staff coming together so we can get to know one another. Anything we can do now, we’re doing. Anything that still needs a little more time, we’ll wait for and prepare for as well as we can.

To come back to the question, as a club coach you work with your players every day. A week really is a full week. In that time, I could get to know four or five players better and find out who they were and what made them tick. The following week it would be another four or five. After four to six weeks, I would have a pretty good picture of my team. That process has to happen more quickly now.

That’s why I’m trying to visit a few clubs and players before we get started, although I won’t be able to see everyone. You also have to allow yourself some time. I know the players, but I don’t necessarily know the people behind them. For me, it’s important to understand what motivates each individual, where they’ve come from and where they want to go. Fortunately, this isn’t a short-term project. It’s something we’re building over a number of years. And now we can get started.

DFB: That’s also why you’ve already sat down with the coaches of Germany’s U19, U20 and U21 teams. Hannes Wolf is not only head coach of the U20s, but also director of youth development, training and development. How important is the work he is doing, and the reforms he and his team have introduced through the German training philosophy?

Klopp: The meeting with the youth national team coaches was incredibly important. I’d already spoken to Toni Di Salvo at length on the phone, and the same goes for Hannes Wolf, whom I’ve known for a very long time anyway. I once coached Hanno Balitsch, albeit not for very long. I nearly coached Christian Wörns too, but he retired before I arrived at Dortmund. So there’s already a bit of shared history there.

The key thing, and what I wanted to get across to the coaches, is that we are all coaching Germany together, just at different age groups. To me, there’s no distinction. That was always the case for me at club level as well. If a 17-year-old is ready, then he’s ready. But I wouldn’t necessarily know that because I’d been standing there watching him train every day. The U18 coach would tell me: “Have a look at this lad.” That’s exactly the kind of cooperation I want us to have.

The youth-development concept Hannes Wolf has put in place is fantastic. Things worked very well for decades, then we realised they weren’t working anymore and everybody called for change. Then somebody comes along and changes something, and suddenly plenty of people say: “Yes, change is good, but not like that. And certainly not in Germany.” You have to be persistent and stick with it.

I believe one hundred percent in the approach being taken. We need to develop coaches and help every coach out there working with a football team so that they, in turn, can help their players. We at the DFB can’t coach every single player ourselves. What we can do is set the direction and follow that path consistently ourselves. The challenge is getting grassroots football on board with it. If I can help with that, I’ll be more than happy to. There’s no question about that.