Jurgen Klopp:‘Life Is A Present'

Jurgen Klopp, interviewed in The Independent, claims ‘Life Is A Present. We have to deal carefully with it and have fun with it.’

Ahead of the Champions League final Jonathan Liew met the Liverpool manager to talk football, family and finding happiness

The first of many throaty laughs emanates from the mouth of Jurgen Klopp roughly three seconds into the interview. There’s something uniquely disarming about a Klopp laugh. It’s part surprise, part derision, and you’re never quite sure how much there is of each. One thing you learn after a while: Klopp doesn’t like loaded questions, and he doesn’t like boring questions. He’s 51 now, and life is far too short for banalities.

Indeed, there are times when he’ll start answering one question and finish somewhere completely different, via a sort of conversational free jazz, a thicket of connections and tangents and associations tapping out a rhythm that only he can truly follow. Over the course of 40 minutes, the Liverpool manager will discuss the trauma of last year’s Champions League final defeat in Kiev, the rise of the populist right in Europe and the greed of football’s governing bodies, all while taking occasional sucks on a vape that is perhaps his one concession to mortality.

For all that, he’s in a good mood. Here at Liverpool’s training camp on the Costa del Sol, the Mediterranean Sea licks lazily at the rocks, refracting the sunlight into a million jewels. Waiters skim across the hotel terrace bearing healthy salads and detox juices. There’s a brutal Premier League season to dissect and a legacy-defining European final against Tottenham to come. But here, now, both feel equally remote.

We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.

Continue reading @ The Independent.