It can be hard to assess how good Jürgen Klopp is as a manager, because his outsized charisma gets in the way. At every club he coached, he was adored even when losing. He always essentially had to sack himself, because nobody at the club would do it for him.
After he resigned at Mainz in 2008, having missed out on promotion from Germany’s second division, 20,000 people gathered in the town’s Gutenbergplatz to see him off. When he left Borussia Dortmund in 2015 after a mediocre final season, the famed South Stand “cheered him for minutes on end, with the team lining up behind him with solemn respect”, writes his biographer Elmar Neveling. Klopp leaves Liverpool similarly beloved. “Because nobody will sack me, I have to make this decision by myself,” he said in the video announcing his resignation in January.
Detractors charge that the Klopp effect is mostly hype. They note that in nine years at Liverpool he won just one league title (the same English haul as the rather less esteemed Claudio Ranieri) and one Champions League (the same as Roberto Di Matteo, who fell out of demand as a manager years ago).