Liverpool's Pre-Season Plans Show Jurgen Klopp's Influence

Liverpool recently announced four domestic pre-season friendlies to be played before the Reds travel to America for two games in California in late July.

Jurgen Klopp's side will play at Tranmere Rovers, Fleetwood Town, Wigan Athletic and Huddersfield Town across 12 days in mid-July.

They then head over to America, where they'll play Chelsea and AC Milan in the pre-season International Champions Cup tournament before returning to face Barcelona at Wembley, also in the ICC.

That's seven games, five of which are to be played in the UK. That marks a huge shift in pre-season scheduling from recent years—and indeed from that of most Premier League clubs.

Klopp is a manager whose focus is rightly on the actual football, and he certainly appears to have had a say in the reduced amount of games abroad.

Last summer, Liverpool played a game in Thailand, two in Australia, one in Malaysia and another in Finland, plus one domestic game against Swindon Town. In total, they played six games in five different countries.

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The summer before that, the Reds played one game in Denmark, five in America, plus a domestic match at Preston North End and one against Borussia Dortmund at Anfield. That summer also saw a post-season friendly in Dublin.

Liverpool's itinerary for the forthcoming summer initially involved four different American cities, but Klopp appears to have had a large say in the revised plans, and now his team will just be based in one location in the USA.

They will be based in Palo Alto, just outside of San Francisco, and train at Stanford University. Per a report by the Liverpool Echo, Klopp sought the advice of USA national coach Jurgen Klinsmann on where to base his training camp. The game against AC Milan in Santa Clara is just a 20-minute drive away, while the Reds will have a short flight for the game against Chelsea at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, just outside of Los Angeles.

It's a vast difference to the summer of 2014, when Liverpool's America tour saw them play in Boston, Chicago, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Florida, holding open training in each location and never being based in one place for more than three days.

The manager has also insisted on less promotional activity while in the States—so there's less chance of seeing Daniel Sturridge making a sandwich down your local Subway.

Liverpool's Pre-Season Fixtures

• July 8 Tranmere Rovers
• July 13 Fleetwood Town
• July 17 Wigan Athletic
• July 20 Huddersfield Town
• July 27 Chelsea
• July 30 AC Milan
• August 6 Barcelona

This streamlined approach to pre-season is a welcome change to the myriad of high-profile pre-season tours that top clubs embark on in modern football.

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Klopp himself hasn't previously had to deal with taking pre-season preparations on a promotional tour, instead creating obscure training camps for his players at Mainz and Borussia Dortmund.

"We took the team to a lake in Sweden where there was no electricity," Klopp explained previously about his time at Mainz, per the Guardian's Donald McRae:

"

We went for five days without food. They had to do this [he whistles and, using an imaginary fishing rod, casts off]. The other coaches said: "Don't you think it's better to train playing football?" No. I wanted the team to feel that they can survive everything. My assistant coach thinks I'm an idiot. He asks if we can train there. No. Can we run there? No. But we can swim and fish!

"

Liverpool's pre-season won't be quite that extreme, but the German has been planning and looking forward to his first summer in charge at Anfield for some time.

Earlier this month at the club's end-of-season awards, he explained how players will have triple training sessions starting at 7 a.m. local time:

"

It’s triple training sessions, of course. We have to do a lot to create a base for one year.

Football is about training and all that we have done is because of the work we’ve done together.

We have a special plan of what we want to do with the boys.

"

Klopp's focus won't be on results, though:

"

In all of the (pre-season) games we will play we will play out full training. So if we play our best in pre-season then I’ve done something completely wrong. It’s another session, it’s not about beating our opponents. I don’t care about how big the opponent is we will say nothing about the situation.

"

According to the Guardian's Andy Hunter, Klopp recruited Bayern Munich's head of fitness Andreas Kornmayer and nutritionist Mona Nemmer. There could be further backroom changes to follow, with Klopp eager to ensure his squad are fully prepared for the rigours of a full season playing in the manager's style of play.

Klopp's pre-season plans emphasise his focus on the football, which makes a refreshing change in the increasingly commercialised era of football.