Jurgen Klopp’s master plan is to win with minimum effort

Liverpool have been winning for a long time now but is it Jurgen Klopp’s masterplan to do so with minimum effort? We investigate.

I’ve been toying with a novel theory for these past few weeks. It seems one can be taken with flights of fancy and reckless speculation when there is a seasonal break in football. And I’m no less prone to this than anyone else. So bear with me a bit and hear me out on this theory.

The 2018-19 campaign saw Liverpool play a near perfect season, only losing one fixture in early January to title holders and rivals Manchester City, but the Reds dropped points in several draws that left them one point behind City after the final match day in May.

While this was heartbreaking for players and fans alike, I feel this only steeled the resolve of Jürgen Klopp, Pep Ljinders and the backroom staff. And so they went to work over the summer to come up with a plan to push the numbers even higher. In short, they have tried to come up with a season long strategy to leave as little as possible to chance. A hell of a gamble, that so far has paid off in spades.

After three full terms in title quest campaigns, Klopp has figured out the formula for winning the Premier League title. He followed this same path to success at Dortmund in the Bundesliga. Die Roten, recordmeisters of Deutsche football are a formidable side in any season and to beat the Bavarian giants in Germany requires maximum heroic effort. But Klopp found a way.

He learned his lessons there very well, the hard way. How many times had other sides through the past decade put up early title challenges to Bayern, only to fail in the spring due to player fatigue, fitness injuries, and dead legs. Simply put, they just run out of gas.

Winning in the Bundesliga required not just week in and week out player and game management, it also required the farsighted planning to have enough left in the tank to be competitive and strong for the duration of the campaign. Winning a football match requires that teams play to the final whistle. Winning a league title requires that you play at a high level from match day one to the very end on last match day. Anything less, leaves too much to chance. There is nowhere in the world where this is more apparent than in Germany’s top flight.

So Jürgen became a fitness fanatic, requiring his teams to be in peak fitness, managing player diets, rest periods, etc and other areas that the science was telling him about his team’s fitness levels come match day.

He instilled in his players a sense of purpose, confidence, and belief that through hard work and perseverance they could topple Munich. And they did just that, winning back to back titles in 2011 and 2012.