Letters to the Manager: A 9-Year-Old's Exchange With Jürgen Klopp
Revisiting a favorite memory as the legendary Liverpool manager announces he'll be leaving the club
Jürgen Klopp was talking about sports cars. He’s German, you know, so imagine a Porsche. For years, he was the fastest, the quickest, he said last week—a lightning bolt flashing past you on the highway. When he arrived at Liverpool to take over as manager, the Reds hadn’t won a major cup since 2006. They had never won the Premier League since its 1992 founding.
Klopp came from Germany trying to mute any expectations that he might turn things around. He called himself “the Normal One” (the infamous manager José Mourinho had once dubbed himself “The Special One”). Yet under Klopp, the Liverpool engine roared back to life. He brought a Champions League and Premier League title to Anfield in 2020 and established himself and the club as the best in the world. Klopp raced along this year, seemingly as energetic as ever. “I’m like a proper sports car,” he said in a video released last Friday. “I can still drive 160, 170, 180 miles per hour, but I am the only one who sees the tank needle is going down. The outside world doesn’t see that.”
Klopp explained that he needed a break. He would be stepping down as Liverpool’s manager following this season.
We discussed the meaning of great coaches here a few weeks ago, when Bill Belichick, Nick Saban, and Pete Carroll all left their posts in the same week. Watching Klopp’s announcement, I found myself thinking about Saban again and the way he defined coaching as teaching. “Teaching,” Saban said, “is the ability to inspire learning.”
In 2019, Klopp steered Liverpool to one of the most dominant seasons in English history. His fuel tank was topped off; the engine whirring full-throttle. At one point, Liverpool won 18 Premier League matches in a row—closing in on a record.
The only problem was that not everybody was thrilled with Liverpool’s Klopp-engineered turnaround.
In Ireland, a 9-year old named Daragh Curley watched each game becoming more and more fed up. He fancied himself a diehard Manchester United fan, Liverpool’s hated rival. When the two sides played in the Northwest Derby in January, Liverpool won 2-0. Not long after, Klopp arrived to work and found a letter waiting for him. It was from Daragh, the 9-year-old.
“Liverpool are winning too many games,” Daragh had written. “Being a United fan that is very sad. So next time Liverpool play please make them lose. You should just let the other tam [sic] score.”
A few weeks later, when Daragh’s parents visited the post office, they were told that a letter from Liverpool had arrived for their son. It was written on official Liverpool FC stationery. “As much as you want Liverpool to lose,” the letter said, “it is my job to do everything that I can to help Liverpool to win as there are millions of people around the world who want that to happen, so I really do not want to let them down.”
The note continued, “Luckily for you, we have lost games in the past and we will lose games in the future because that is football. The problem is when you are 10 years old you think that things will always be as they are now, but if there is one thing I can tell you at 52 years old, it is that this most definitely isn’t the case.”
And finally, “I hope that if we are lucky enough to win more games and maybe even lift some more trophies you will not be too disappointed, because although our clubs are great rivals, we also share a great respect for one another. This, to me, is what football is all about.”
Klopp’s signature—bold and hurried like the man himself—was scrawled across the bottom of the page.
In February 2020, shortly after Klopp had written to Daragh, Liverpool finally dropped a bitter 3-0 loss to Watford. It was Klopp’s first Premier League defeat in 423 days. Watford, meanwhile, would sputter all year, finishing second to last in the league.
After the game, Klopp addressed the media. He told them that his Reds would, “go again” soon enough. “I see it rather positive,” he said. “Because from now on we can play free football again. We don’t have to defend or try to get the record. We just can try to win football games.”
Gracious in defeat, but always looking forward. It’s as good as a way as any to be me remembered. Through the past nine years, no matter how fast he raced, Klopp never lost sight of what really mattered.
Even at 200 mph, he never lost his way.
This piece was adapted from the book Religion of Sports: Navigating the Trials of Life Through the Games We Love out now wherever books are sold.
🐘 Here’s maybe the wildest stat you’ve ever seen: no Alabama football player has ever scored in the Super Bowl (in NFL stat-keeping, quarterbacks don’t score points). And it isn’t going to change this year.
🐍 I loved this story in the Washington Post centered around rookies Kobe Brown of the Los Angeles Clippers and Kobe Bufkin of the Atlanta Hawks. In college ball, sixteen Kobes are playing this year. In 2001, when Kobe Bryant’s Lakers won the NBA Championship, 1,552 were given his name. Now, the “Kobe Generation” is reaching the league. Just another way that the Mamba’s legacy continues to live on.
🏟️ Bloomberg Businessweek caught up with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and went inside his new stadium, the Intuit Dome, that cost him “well north of $2 billion.” The arena, Ballmer insists, is nothing less than a “homage to basketball.”
🏏 Last week, the West Indies National Cricket Team registered a seismic upset over Australia in a Test Match, their first victory against the Australians in nearly three decades. Relive the thrilling finish.
🧢 A Jackie Robinson statue was found stolen in Wichita, KS, last week. Then the donations started pouring in to replace it. The GoFundMe has now raised over $140,000, and the MLB has been in touch with promises to fund the area’s “League 42” youth programs.