05 strikers Benjamin Auer and Thurk sometimes argued for a more relaxed playing style, without success. Klopp was uncompromising when it came to his footballing agenda. ‘But only one player,’ Heidel insists, ‘didn’t get along at all in Mainz: Hanno Balitsch. He always said that Klopp and the team behaved like a cult, that they were laughing their heads off all day. He couldn’t stand that, and he also thought it strange that players were addressing the coach with “Du” [not the more formal “Sie”]. Hanno and me still laugh about it now when we bump into each other. But I challenge you to find others, even those who didn’t play regularly, who’ll say one bad word about Mainz. They won’t. I always told prospective players to call and ask former players about their opinion. They had no reason to lie.’
Mainz won plenty of plaudits for a courageous showing in the 4-2 defeat against Felix Magath’s Bayern at the Olympic stadium at the end of November. But darkness was closing in. Seven more defeats and one goalless draw against Rapolder’s Bielefeld left them in fifteenth place, four points ahead of the relegation zone. There were no more insightful interviews in highbrow publications with the manager, but questions about his job security. The Mainz board, however, made it clear that Klopp would stay on as manager even in the case of relegation. The questions receded again. ‘Getting rid of him was never discussed,’ says Strutz, ‘we were convinced of him as a coach and a human being.’
Klopp told the fans at the Bruchweg to stop swaying to the carnival music and celebrate every won tackle instead. He had sleepless nights and later admitted to feeling lonely amidst the wave of bad results (‘I couldn’t ask anyone because coaches don’t tend to outlive eight defeats in a row’) but stayed upbeat in the dressing room and projected calmness. ‘The players never started doubting themselves, that was his real achievement as a coach,’ write Rehberg and Karn. A tactical tweak–Mainz started playing 4-3-2-1–also helped them to find their feet again. Wins against Freiburg (5-0), Schalke (2-1), Hannover (2-0) and Bochum (6-2) eased fears of the drop. After matchday 32, a 4-2 home defeat by champions Bayern, they were mathematically safe. Both teams celebrated together with the fans, swilling big jugs of beer on the pitch. Mainz finished their first-ever Bundesliga season in eleventh place.
Klopp’s ability to sell himself, his football and his club to others, even at times of struggle, distinguished him from Wolfgang Frank, says Doehling. ‘Frank didn’t have that talent. He lost his nerve after every defeat, bemoaning Mainz not doing better and the stadium being empty. Klopp learned from that. He knew how to talk to people. Do you say to them: “You’re all idiots because you don’t understand how great our football is”? Or do you say: “This is a full-throttle event. Everyone who doesn’t come to experience that will really miss out. You’d better come.” He’s got a talent for being positive. And, you will have heard that before, he captures people. There aren’t many people in Germany who can do that. Can you get people behind you, behind your idea? Politics is no different to coaching. He’s a born politician. But you mustn’t drive people into the fire. You can only do that once, then they’re gone. You have to lead them in and out of the battle again–alive. You have to deliver them. Then they will follow you.’
Staying up in 2004–05 was a ‘football fairy-tale’, says Quast. People in Mainz had almost become used to miracles; the extraordinary had become routine. He recalls Bayern fans standing outside the ground with open mouths, staring at Klopp partying with supporters in the club’s stadium pub, the Haasekessel, after the final whistle. ‘“Hold on, isn’t that your coach?” the visiting supporters wondered. They went up to him to take some photos. He was always there, drinking with the twenty-five fans who had seen him score four goals at Erfurt. He didn’t want to change. That was him. And that was Mainz.’
A couple of weeks after securing top-flight survival, Mainz’s fortunes took a turn for the even more fantastical. The Bundesliga’s smallest club found itself experiencing a dream within a dream, like the marks in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Thanks to the congenial demeanour of players, officials and fans–as well as a hefty dose of luck–FSV became one of two European teams allowed into the UEFA Cup by way of the Fair Play ranking. (Their role as the league’s nicest, most fun-loving club didn’t win universal approval, however. Ultras from Hannover 96 held up a banner saying ‘Your likability makes us vomit’ months later.)
Jürgen Klopp played things cool. ‘UEFA Cup feeling? Is that like heart burn?’ he replied to questions about Mainz’s completely unexpected excursion into European football. Worries about the heightened demands on the inexperienced, close-knit squad were similarly brushed aside: ‘We shouldn’t talk ourselves into having a problem. The only difference is that we’ll see less of our wives.’
But that wasn’t the only difference. Adventurous trips to Armenia (4-0 on aggregate v FK Mika Ashtarak), Iceland (4-0 on aggregate v Keflavik) and Spain (0-2 defeat on aggregate v Seville) brought huge excitement but also fatigue and exhaustion in the early stages of the 2005–06 season. Mainz lost the first five Bundesliga games. Ah, second-season syndrome, many said, the party was over. Gravity was bringing the high-flyers back down to their natural level at last. ‘It’s questionable how long Mainz’s fun society will continue to exist under increased pressure,’ wrote Neue Zürcher Zeitung ominously.
Klopp sought inspiration in a comic strip he had read as a teenager. ‘Clever and Smart’, drawn by Spanish illustrator Francisco Ibanez (‘Mort and Phil’ in English), are secret agents who constantly suffer terrible mishaps and grave mutilations without any lasting damage, appearing as good as new in the very next panel. ‘I loved these comics,’ Klopp said. ‘The time needed for regeneration by the characters was brilliant. It didn’t matter whether you were flattened by a steamroller or fell off a cliff 800 metres high–things simply carried on!’
In ‘Clever and Smart’, the laws of physics and biology didn’t apply. But the Bundesliga was a much less forgiving environment. Mainz’s form recovered after their UEFA Cup exit at the end of September. The results didn’t. Ten games into the season, FSV were in the relegation zone with seven points on the board. A 3-1 defeat away to Hertha BSC was typical of an inexplicable disconnect between splendid attacking football and depressing scorelines. Klopp instructed everybody to look past the numbers. ‘We will analyse this match independently of the result,’ he told reporters in Germany’s capital. Local broadsheet taz was a little surprised to note that the players continued to keep the faith, determined ‘to stay the good-mood-gang of the league, to keep acting courageously, to keep playing offensively, fast and with a plan, and above all, to keep presenting themselves in such a way that even the most critical observers can’t help but notice that these men enjoy playing football.’
Klopp himself still enjoyed football, that much was obvious to those closest to him. He regularly turned out as a player for the team of Kemweb, a small media agency whose offices were close to his house in the suburb of Gonsenheim. Kemweb played against other firms–banks, supermarkets, building firms–in a dedicated amateur league, and they were often short of men. Peter Krawietz, who worked for them, had one day asked Klopp if he felt like making up the numbers. He did. Every three or four weeks, whenever Mainz’s Bundesliga scheduled allowed it, he’d play somewhere in the countryside between vineyards and fields of turnips ‘against men with huge beer bellies and incredibly bad players who were all world champions of the “third half”’, as Martin Quast recalls. ‘Kloppo was at his happiest there, among those guys. He stood on the pitch and keeled over laughing when some bloke tried to shoot on goal and hit the corner flag instead. Afterwards, everybody huddled around Kloppo in a tent or in a pub, and he didn’t stop laughing all night. That barking laugh of his. All you saw were his big teeth. Completely random people working at a bank or at Blendax, the toothpaste factory, went home saying: “Herr Klopp, we knew you as a coach, but we had no idea you’re such a cool guy. Sensational. You could still play in the seventh division, right?” That wa
s the biggest praise to his ears. Because he never pretended to be someone he wasn’t.’
As the days drew shorter, Mainz 05’s strong attacking department–playmaker da Silva, strikers Michael Thurk, Benny Auer, Petr Ruman and Mohamed Zidan–started to turn a heap of goal-scoring opportunities into tangible success at last. By Christmas, Mainz had amassed 16 points. The positive momentum could not be overlooked. Klopp was offered a two-year contract extension until the 2008 winter break, and he accepted. Christian Heidel didn’t deny reports the coach’s salary had been raised to €1.2m, which would have put him not far off the Bundesliga elite at the time.
‘Mainz 05 are a fantastic club,’ Klopp told Frankfurter Rundschau in a double-interview alongside Heidel in January 2006. ‘They have literally exploded in terms of their development over the last five years, without changing their character. Working there is still a great, fun challenge. Looking for another challenge right now was never up for debate.’
Klopp, the fuse for Mainz’s explosion, denied being changed by the spotlight but did concede that his high profile was beginning to have a negative impact. ‘You get used to getting recognised, your private life suffers,’ he said. ‘If somebody had beamed me into the year 2005 five years ago, I would have been shocked. I would have been able to run through Mainz naked then, nobody would have known my name.’
Streaking through the genteel streets of Gonsenheim was perhaps no longer an option but Klopp didn’t exactly hide either. His name was on the doorbell of his house. (It was still there in November 2016.) You would find him on the sun deck of Café Raab a short walk away or renting DVDs from Video Toni in the evenings. One day, Toni, the owner, said to Klopp he’d get free videos for life if his shop was shown on television. Hearing that, Martin Quast included Toni in a feature on Klopp for Sport1. Toni kept his word. ‘Now Kloppo will never pay again,’ he said.
Heidel did warn Klopp that he would go from being ‘the most famous person in Mainz’ to somebody known ‘by eighty million Germans, including every grandad and grandma’, after working for ZDF at the World Cup in five months’ time. If the subtext of the Rundschau conversation–that Klopp was slowly outgrowing Mainz 05–was lost on anyone, the coach made sure to spell it out. ‘My willingness to be a coach at Mainz won’t last for ever,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine still being here in ten years. I’m too curious for that. I’d kick myself up the back-side [to make a move then].’
Klopp’s winsomeness might have created unwanted attention for him, but it translated into cold hard cash for the club, Heidel says: ‘No one was jealous. On the contrary: we took advantage of his popularity. The Kloppo effect helped us win sponsors and sell tickets.’ The club were beginning to think big, far beyond the next game and the immediate need to stave off relegation for a second time. They conducted a feasibility study into building a new stadium. And after fifteen years in the job, Heidel finally went full-time as the club’s general manager. ‘We have a chance here to create an infrastructure that we wouldn’t have dreamt about a couple of years ago,’ Klopp said. ‘I want to be part of that challenge. When I leave, I want the club to have benefited from me. That was always the plan. I want to leave a mark.’
‘Negotiations with Kloppo lasted two minutes,’ Heidel says. ‘I gave him a piece of paper with a number. He was allowed to put the year next to it. Shake of hands, end of story. We never negotiated. He always agreed to my proposal. You know, he always complains about earning so little as a player, but he was, for sure, the best-paid manager in the second division. By a distance. And he wasn’t a pauper in the first division either. Because I knew how important he was. He earned as much as three, four players put together. He would say: “Come on, that’s too much.” “No. You’re worth it.” Sometimes people called to lure him away and he would laugh his head off. Because no one realised how much we were paying him. Seven figures. There were many Bundesliga coaches who didn’t make that. Klopp filled up the whole stadium. He was an advertising icon for Mainz 05. You can’t measure that effect in pecuniary terms. It went far beyond his work in training.’
The team’s obvious top-heaviness, meanwhile, necessitated a tactical rethink. Mainz’s best players were all in attack, so a new 4-4-2 system with a diamond in midfield–and Thurk behind two strikers–was put in place to bring their qualities to bear. Away to Dortmund in February, the new formation seemed to leave the midfield far too exposed, however. The coaching staff were mulling over abandoning the experiment at half-time, with Mainz 1-0 down and not in the game at all. But they stuck with it. Somehow, things fell into place, Thurk scored and the visitors were in the end unlucky not to take all three points. ‘That was a very tough moment,’ Klopp later said, ‘one of many valuable lessons for us.’ Seven points from the next three games lifted them clear of the relegation places.
Recognition for Klopp’s good work also arrived in another shape: centre-back Manuel Friedrich was called up by Jürgen Klinsmann–the first-ever Mainz player in the Nationalmannschaft. ‘Manu is a class defender and super lad. I’m happy for Jürgen Klinsmann that he’ll be able to get to know him,’ Klopp quipped, beaming with pride.
Mainz only lost one match in seven, 3-0 away to Nürnberg, in their modified shape. Nevertheless, results elsewhere conspired against them ahead of the home game against league leaders FC Bayern Munich on matchday 31. The team were confined to a bleak, cheerless place. But that had nothing to do with their unexpected slip into the relegation places. On the invitation of Rhineland-Palatinate minister of justice Herbert Mertin, Klopp had taken the squad for a visit to the Rohrbach federal prison. One inmate told the coach that he had once sat next to him on a fan bus journey to a Mainz second division game when Klopp had been suspended and travelled with the supporters. The Mainz manager listened attentively to the inmate’s life story. ‘Man, you have to get your life in order when you get out,’ he advised him, Frankfurter Rundschau reported. Klopp told the paper it was important for his players ‘to experience a completely different world that’s anything but fun and luxury. That kind of thing helps you grow as a human being and as a player, even if it doesn’t quite help you win against Bayern.’
The best part of the unusual trip, however, was the chance ‘to get the boys in here a few extra hours outside their cells’, he added. Having been told that there was no live football on television inside the jail, Klopp asked Mertin to install a pay TV decoder to enable the inmates to watch Mainz’s match v Bayern. The politician only smiled at the brazen suggestion but felt that the team visit might have served as a ‘kick-start’ for the rehabilitation of some of the convicts.
Back on the pitch, Mainz drew 2-2 with Bayern. ‘It would be disaster if Mainz were to go down,’ Bayern general manager Uli Hoeness said after the evenly contested ninety minutes. A nervy 3-0 win away to VfL Wolfsburg put the club into a very promising position. And on the penultimate matchday it was carnival time at the Bruchweg once more. Mainz beat Schalke 1-0. They were safe. A tearful, beer-drained Klopp mounted the stadium fence to sing punch-drunk songs with the fans. ‘He’s the ultra among the Bundesliga coaches,’ Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote, and ‘Mainz 05 has become the expression of his personality’, a club where both players and the crowd were ‘whipped into a frenzy’ by the man on the sideline and ‘tens of thousands were living in step with the emotions prescribed by their coach.’
After a 0-0 at Duisburg on the final day of the season, the poorest side in the league (their wage bill of €13m was less than half of the average for the other seventeen sides, €28m) were once again ranked the eleventh-best team in the country. Some players wondered whether they had actually underachieved in view of their playing capabilities, but Friedrich maintained that the club knew exactly what they had done. ‘Being able to play in the Bundesliga again next year is the greatest thing for us,’ he said. ‘We still experience each game as a present, like a kid with wide eyes.’
Like a discreetly out of tune violin among a philharmonic orchestra, however, two small, a
nnoying quibbles jarred with the celebrations ever so slightly. Mainz fans had angrily jeered former FSV midfielder Mimoun Azaouagh during the Schalke match; a sign, perhaps, that the self-styled party club was becoming a bit less special, more like a normal one. ‘That’s not who we are,’ Klopp castigated the supporters. Secondly, regular observers noted that Heidel protested a little too vigorously when someone put it to him that the losses of playmaker da Silva (to Stuttgart) and key striker Mohamed Zidan (back to Werder) would be tough to compensate. ‘We’ve been hearing that for fifteen years now,’ he said dismissively.
But that summer, the floodgates opened. In addition to da Silva and Zidan, striker Benny Auer and defender Mathias Abel also left. Most damaging, in more ways than one, was the departure of a fifth regular, Michael Thurk. The forward’s twelve goals in 2005–06 had gone a long way to keeping Mainz safe, as had his six goals in the second half of the previous season. Thurk was the type of striker Germans call a Schlitzohr, literally: a cut-up ear. The expression goes back a few hundred years, to when apprentice craftsmen wore golden earrings and had them ripped out as a punishment for misdemeanours. Thurk was a street hustler on the pitch, a lovable hoodlum and serial irritant for defenders. He’d grown up in the Gallus quarter of Frankfurt, an industrial, working-class district wedged in by two major railway lines. Locals referred to the area as ‘Kamerun’, due to its high level of immigrants.
Bring the Noise_The Jürgen Klopp Story Page 16