While Jürgen Klopp has not yet publicly and resoundingly closed the door on a return to Liverpool, reports suggest that he is “committed” to his current job and the club’s current hierarchy would be opposed to the legendary German’s return even if Arne Slot was sacked.
Slot diffused some of the mounting pressure surrounding his position with a competent 2–0 victory over West Ham United on Sunday afternoon. However, three points against a side currently out of the relegation zone by goal difference alone does not necessarily mean the defending champions are back in all their glory.
As Slot himself admitted, “this is a good first step” rather than the end of their recovery.
Should the good will evaporate again—perhaps, say, when a thorny Sunderland side bound into Anfield on Wednesday night—talk will once more circle back to the potential return of Klopp.
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The charismatic former Merseyside leader may have won as many Premier League titles as Slot, but will forever be a hero to the city at large for far more than results on the pitch. Klopp steered Liverpool back to the division’s summit while playing a brand of “heavy metal” football the crowd adored and preaching a philosophy on life which meshed perfectly with the traditional industrial stronghold.
Klopp was awarded the freedom of Liverpool in 2022 and hailed by the Hillsborough campaigner Margaret Aspinall as “a great human being, a great personality and a great humanitarian.” He wasn’t a bad football manager either.
Jürgen Klopp laughing.
Jürgen Klopp has not ruled out a return to Liverpool. / Michael Regan/Getty Images
After taking a step away from the fire and fury of management in the summer of 2024, Klopp has served as Red Bull’s head of global soccer, overseeing a broad role for the energy drink empire’s stable of clubs. Yet, the 58-year-old left the door open to a potential return earlier this year.
“I said I will never coach another team, a different team, in England. So that means if then it’s Liverpool ... yeah. Theoretically it’s possible,” he told Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO podcast in October.
While the grind of training and media duties are something which Klopp can do without, the sense of camaraderie among his squad was an aspect he flagged. “I don’t miss the dressing room as a dressing room, but sitting in a restaurant with the players having a chat, that’s nice,” he reflected. “We won a lot of games so there was often a very good mood in the building. I still have Virgil [van Dijk’s] laugh in my ear for example.”
Whether the players would welcome Klopp’s return is unclear, but there may not be a “very good mood” in other parts of the building were this reunion to be pulled off.
Michael Edwards at a rare Liverpool game.
Michael Edwards’s presence at Liverpool reportedly points away from a return for Jürgen Klopp. / Robin Jones/Getty Images
The modern history of Liverpool’s success cannot be told without the recruitment team spearheaded by Edwards. Together with director of research Dr. Ian Graham and chief scout Barry Hunter, Edwards oversaw a remarkable run of successful transfers—both in terms of purchases and sales—which underpinned Liverpool’s charge up the table.
Klopp, who came from a structure at Borussia Dortmund which saw a sporting director lead transfers, was happy to accept this setup initially. However, the manager supposedly had “disagreements” with Edwards towards the end of his first spell at Liverpool, which were described as “pretty fundamental” to his departure in the summer of 2022, per The Telegraph.
Liverpool’s hit-rate in the transfer market notably dipped thereafter, with Darwin Núñez standing out as a particularly disastrous recruit. Klopp, as Graham would later reveal, was the driving force behind the acquisition of the mercurial Uruguayan after he played well for Benfica against Liverpool.
Edwards returned to Merseyside in March 2024—after it had been announced that Klopp would be stepping down that summer—in a new role as CEO of football for Liverpool’s owners, Fenway Sports Group. It is reported by The Guardian that “in all likelihood” Edwards would not have agreed to come back if Klopp was set to remain at the helm.
The Telegraph go one step further, explicitly outlining that Edwards, FSG president Mike Gordon “and the rest will certainly not want to go back to Klopp.”
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