Uttiyo Sarkar

The Marketing Ploy That Might Force Jurgen Klopp Out Of Liverpool

Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool

Jurgen Klopp has become a Messiah-like figure for Liverpool fans for completely transforming the club inside out after arriving in 2015.

The Reds were lingering in a mid-table battle when he arrived, but by using his heavy-metal football tactics, the German gaffer has turned them into one of Europe’s very best clubs.

Liverpool have won every possible winnable title in Klopp’s years and are now competing for all four trophies midway into the 2023/24 season.

The Reds are topping the Premier League table, are into the Carabao Cup final and strongly competing for both the FA Cup and UEFA Europa League titles too.

Life can’t be better for Liverpool fans.

However, some interesting recent news about a marketing move being planned by the higher-ups at the board level has worried supporters that trouble might be brewing in the near future.

That is because it has been reported that Liverpool are interested in speaking to media groups about a ‘fly on the wall’ documentary series like Amazon’s ‘All or Nothing’ show.

Incidentally, the club had actually rejected Amazon’s pitch for this docu-series back in 2018 because Klopp was strictly against the idea of having multiple cameras capturing the day-to-day activity within the club and whatever happens behind the scenes.

Despite that, it appears that the Liverpool owners – Fenway Sports Group – are planning to entertain the prospect of having everything that goes on inside the club and in the dressing room to be displayed for the fans to see. From their perspective, it’s logical as the club would receive a sizeable amount of money and mainstream attention for such a project.

Of course, Amazon has already produced two ‘All or Nothing’ seasons revolving around London heavyweights Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur in the past few years.

Klopp reportedly rejected advances for Liverpool to be part of this series because he ‘believes there is nothing to be gained from fly-on-the-wall exposure and that people’s behaviour changes when they are on camera’.

The German gaffer had voiced his disgust at a video footage released in 2019 which showed the then-RB Salzburg manager Jesse Marsch’s animated half-time team talk during their 4-3 loss to Liverpool in the Champions League. He had bluntly said: “f LFCTV had put out a video of me in that situation, I would leave the club. That’s the truth and that’s all I will say about that.”

Despite that, FSG appears to be ready for a major media organization to produce a similar show to give everyone a peak into the atmosphere outside the pitch.

A lot of Liverpool supporters have been worried by this because some fear that it might compel Klopp to exit the club because of his rumoured hatred for these documentaries.

The German gaffer is also fiercely protective of maintaining the family-like nature within his squad and wouldn’t want to invite more controversies by having cameras record every single thing that happens behind the scenes.

Moreover, he wanted to avoid a repeat of the how badly Brendan Rodgers was portrayed in a docu-series ‘Being Liverpool’ that the club filmed in 2012. Klopp has always been against the prospect of having his pep-talks to his players, or how he behaves in the dressing room or in training sessions extensively captured on camera.

In addition, the documentary might reveal some inner secrets within the club that other teams can use to trouble them in the future.

Some have also pointed out how these documentaries also end up having a negative effect on the teams, with Arsenal and Spurs enduring underwhelming, trophyless seasons when the ‘All or Nothing’ series was being covered for them.

Liverpool’s assistant coach Pep Ljinders, for one, attracted the wrath of many supporters back in 2022 when he released a book ‘Intensity: Inside Liverpool’ – which some felt exposed the tactics of how the Reds play in a season when they ended up missing out on a Premier League top-4 finish.

There are some fans who are actually okay with the prospect of having their club’s behind-the-scenes stuff footaged in this kind of a show, and feel it can be an exciting thing to let fans realize how players behave in training sessions or the general dressing room feeling.

It remains to be seen if Liverpool actually go through with agreeing to be part of this ‘All or Nothing’ type documentary because doing so might infuriate Klopp to the point where he might not want to stay at the club beyond his current contract – which expires in 2026.