Jurgen Klopp is regarded as one of Borussia Dortmund’s greatest ever managers, due to his successes between 2008 and 2015.
But while he won two Bundesliga titles, the German Cup and made the final of the Champions League, Dortmund had, in anyone’s terms, a fairly nightmarish campaign in 2014/15.
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Coming up to Christmas, the runners-up from the season previous were bottom of the Bundesliga table.
Oliver Kirch, a rotation defender who’s been at Dortmund since 2012, explained Klopp’s rather unorthodox method to resurrect his squad.
He threw a party!
“Don’t think for a second this is optional. Everyone comes, no exceptions,” Klopp’s text to the squad read, Kirch began – cited in the Echo.
“But you couldn’t have called it a party. It felt more like a funeral, to be honest.
“Kloppo was super positive about everything. I’d never seen him like that before. He laughed a lot. Loudly.
“He had already tried everything. So he started building us up. He worked on our self-confidence. He asked us to visualise what we had already achieved. A weight had been lifted.
“I have to give him full credit for it. Springtime in Dortmund began that week – the very week after we hit rock bottom.”
Klopp’s men, who had been ravaged by injury in the first half of the term, eventually climbed to a 7th placed finish – more than impressive considering the position they were in.
The feeling though was that the strains of the term were too much, and Klopp and his managerial team parted with Dortmund, a set of fans and squad who had fallen in love with him.
Now, he’s in charge at Liverpool, and we know if we’re ever in trouble, the charismatic German will do everything in his power to fix it.