Germany has hired J\u00fcrgen Klopp to coach its national team, giving the ex-Liverpool manager a daunting task to turn around the fortunes of a squad which failed yet again at the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Klopp signed a contract to coach Germany through to the 2030 World Cup. Speaking shortly after the announcement Friday, he told a news conference in Frankfurt it was \u201ca big honour\u201d to take the job and signalled it could be his final role as coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cJ\u00fcrgen Klopp has no career after the national team,\u201d he said. \u201cIdeally, this will be the highlight of my career, my life, my working life. I will put everything into it that I possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n
He replaces Julian Nagelsmann, who resigned amid heavy criticism after Germany\u2019s loss to Paraguay meant it failed to reach the last 16 of a men\u2019s World Cup for the third time in a row.<\/p>\n
Klopp wants to make German soccer cool again<\/p>\n
It is Klopp\u2019s first coaching job since he left Liverpool in 2024 citing fatigue. He said he was \u201crecharged\u201d in comments while in talks over the Germany job.<\/p>\n
Klopp signaled he plans to make some surprising squad selections and said his mission isn’t just to win games, but to bring back a buzz around the team.<\/p>\n
Klopp himself admitted that \u201cit’s been a while\u201d since he watched national team games outside of major tournaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to create something with the national team that means that people go home after the game and think \u2018That was really cool.\u2019 That’s what I’d like to see happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Klopp said Friday he would be prepared to leave without any severance pay if it doesn\u2019t work out, and threatened to resign if the media doesn\u2019t \u201cleave my family in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klopp’s arrival follows talks during the World Cup<\/p>\n
The man known for thrilling \u201cheavy metal football\u201d at Liverpool, Klopp was Germany\u2019s preferred candidate as soon as Nagelsmann quit.<\/p>\n
Over weeks of talks, the 59-year-old German \u2014 20 years older than Nagelsmann \u2014 stayed in the United States as a World Cup pundit for a German-language broadcaster.<\/p>\n
The federation also held talks with the Red Bull group, where Klopp spent the last year and a half as \u201chead of global soccer\u201d advising its worldwide group of soccer clubs.<\/p>\n
German federation president Bernd Neuendorf said there wouldn\u2019t be a typical release fee paid to Red Bull for Klopp. Instead, the federation pays one million euros (US$1.14 million) to a Red Bull-linked charity and has agreed to hold three national team games in the eastern city of Leipzig, where Red Bull backs the city\u2019s Bundesliga club team.<\/p>\n
Klopp faces a tough introduction to his first national team job with four Nations League games in 11 days against the Netherlands, Greece and Serbia in late September and early October. The first major milestone will be the 2028 European Championship.<\/p>\n
Mertesacker joins Klopp in Germany setup<\/p>\n
Germany hasn’t won a knockout game at a World Cup since beating Argentina in the 2014 final. Now a player from that team will be working alongside Klopp.<\/p>\n
Former defender Per Mertesacker joins Klopp as the federation’s new managing director for sport, with a role overseeing the German men’s national teams and an emphasis on bringing players through youth national teams to star for the senior team. He will start the role in January and joins after eight years running Arsenal’s academy.<\/p>\n
Klopp is reunited with two of his assistants from his Liverpool days, Peter Krawietz and Pep Lijnders, weeks after Lijnders left a role as Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Man City. Ex-Germany player Sven Bender also takes an assistant role.<\/p>\n
In an unusual arrangement, Klopp’s longtime agent Marc Kosicke joins the coaching team in a role focusing on strategy and administration, but won’t be a federation employee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany has hired J\u00fcrgen Klopp to coach its national team, giving the ex-Liverpool manager a daunting task to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-823058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}