Jurgen Klopp: Germany's Greatest Export, review: Liverpool's manager is a man at ease with himself
Some football managers end up in entertainment shows: look at Harry Redknapp and his late-flowering showbiz career. Jürgen Klopp started out in one, appearing on a German game show back in 1995 when he was a little-known player for Mainz in the Bundesliga 2. The footage was dug out for Jürgen Klopp: Germany’s Greatest Export (Channel 4), and watching him laugh good-naturedly as he was mocked by the host was to see a man entirely at ease with himself. Try to imagine, if you will, Roy Keane making a similarly amiable appearance on Blankety Blank.
We’ll take it as read that Liverpool fans enjoyed this documentary, celebrating as it did a man who led the team to a first league title in 30 years, and picked up a Champions League trophy along the way. But Channel 4 doesn’t usually make films that play like extended Football Focus features and stick them in primetime. Klopp has the likeability factor, and charisma by the bucketload, which meant that this breezy profile had a broad appeal.
If the title brought to mind a beer advert, the sponsors were doing their job. It was brought to you by Channel 4 and Erdinger Weissbräu, the brewery for which Klopp is an ambassador. An accompanying press release burbled about “new and innovative ways to integrate our client’s brands closer to the content that audiences love… a perfect example of partnership between brand, media partner and talent.”
No doubt this shaped the tone of the documentary, which had the usual elements of a football package – talking heads, archive footage – but also tried to position Klopp as the hipster’s choice. It had one of those scripts (read by David Morrissey, a Liverpool fan) that thinks it is poetic: “Then I was all alone – no ferries, just the seagulls…”
Really, Klopp’s rise from average footballer to inspirational manager was irresistible enough. There were decent tributes from Sir Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard, and enough footage of Klopp himself, joking his way through press conferences, to keep us happy.
