sport news MARTIN SAMUEL: Jurgen Klopp's ability to find the right words is why he's ... trends now

It was the final exchange before training. A question from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Jurgen Klopp appeared happy, relaxed. He made a little joke about how well Eintracht Frankfurt had done, winning the Europa League.

Then the mood turned serious. The gentleman wanted to know about the Champions League final being in Paris, not St Petersburg as intended, about what this change meant and whether Klopp had given any thought to its significance. War, death, sanctions.

Momentarily, his face fell. He clearly had not. And as a decent man, he possibly felt a little guilty about that. He had come prepared for questions on Sadio Mane, and revenge on Real Madrid and football, football, football. But not this.

So he fell silent. And he sighed, audibly. ‘How to kill the mood,’ he quipped, weakly, but he knew that wasn’t appropriate either. So he was silent again, for what seemed like an age. 

And then he said this: ‘The war is still going on and we have to think about that. The game still happens and the fact we are not in St Petersburg is exactly the right message that Russia should get. Life goes on, even when you try to destroy it. We play this final for all the people in Ukraine. I am sure some people in Ukraine can still watch it, and we do it for you, 100 per cent.’

And he rose and went training in the sunshine on the Stade de France turf and, right there, was the essence of Klopp, his intelligence, his management of men.

He once explained his religious doctrine: ‘When you leave a room, try to make sure that people don’t feel worse from the moment you came in.’

Nobody in the room in Paris would say that. Klopp, his mind so obviously on the biggest game of Liverpool’s season, was tested but still found the right words, in the right moment. He didn’t let anyone down. His teams, too, rarely let anyone down.

They are forged in his image, from his principles, his intelligence. When asked to explain his playing career as a second tier footballer, Klopp admitted that he had the ability for tier five, but the mind for the Bundesliga.

‘I never succeeded in bringing to the field what was going on in my brain,’ he said. ‘The result? The second division.’ And that was frustrating for Klopp the player, as his disciplinary record suggests.

As a manager, though, problem solved. As a manager, it does not matter that he could not do what he now asks of his players. As a manager, Klopp’s elite thinking has come into its own. Right now, pound for pound, he is probably the best manager in the world.

There are better teams, no doubting that. Manchester City under Pep Guardiola have won the league four out of the last five seasons in England. Even accounting for the campaign in which Liverpool were crippled by injuries at the back, City have been the dominant force in English football for the last decade.

In Europe, Saturday's opponents, Real Madrid, have won four of the last eight Champions League titles, with Zinedine Zidane masterminding three of them.

Yet these uneven battles only add to Klopp’s reputation. His detractors say his Liverpool should have won more, but is that true? If City are the best team in England, how many titles should Klopp have won? And how many Champions League trophies should a team win from 3-0 down against Barcelona?

Klopp is also the only coach to deny Bayern Munich the title between 2010 and 2022. Munich have won the Bundesliga

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