Mauricio Pochettino and Jurgen Klopp Epitomise the Modern Football Manager
Football managers working supposedly antiquated styles are often accused of being dinosaurs. Their supporting conduct and methods mark them out in some eyes as holdovers from a bygone era.
In truth, even the more radical in the profession are hardly beacons of real progression. Change in this sport generally comes at a far slower rate than in most other areas of society and popular culture (in June GQ's Freddie Campion labelled Pep Guardiola as "a f--king style god," but the new Manchester City boss' tailor-made suits are hardly worthy of a David Bowie-like V&A exhibit).
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But in football's Mesozoic Era, it is fair to say Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp and Tottenham Hotspur's Mauricio Pochettino have at least left their Triassic peers behind to make it into the Jurassic period. We will hold off on going so far as to categorise their modernity as being Cretaceous-worthy yet.
Klopp's and Pochettino's sides meet at White Hart Lane on Saturday afternoon.
Liverpool began the season with an exhilarating 4-3 win over Arsenal before suffering a surprise but deserved 2-0 defeat at Burnley. A 5-0 thrashing of Burton Albion midweek in the EFL Cup has lifted spirits ahead of their second trip to north London in a fortnight.
Tottenham faced Merseyside opposition on the opening weekend, drawing 1-1 with Everton at Goodison Park. Kicking off their final campaign at this version of the Lane last time out, they beat Crystal Palace, 1-0, with new signing Victor Wanyama scoring a late winner.
Both clubs have felt the relatively quick impact of these foreign appointments, as each is looking to do things a bit differently than his predecessor. They took different paths to the Premier League and their current employers—Pochettino from La Liga via Southampton, Klopp from his native Germany—but have adjusted relatively well.
In Pochettino's first season Spurs reached the League Cup final, and although they lost to Chelsea, they still ended up qualifying for Europe. Last time out, they pushed on to record their best-place finish since 1989-90 and earn a return to the Champions League for the first time in five years.
Klopp took over at Anfield last October—coincidentally facing Pochettino in his first game, a 0-0 draw—and while coming nowhere near a title challenge like Spurs did impressively reach the League Cup and Europa League finals. Defeat to superior Manchester City and Sevilla outfits was no disgrace in the first year of what the German hopes will be a project that resembles the success of what he achieved at Borussia Dortmund.
Where Klopp and Pochettino epitomise the modern manager is in their inclination to define and describe the stubborn yet bold methods and logic informing similar high-octane styles that have made their teams so competitive.
What is fascinating in comparing how they practice all this individually is how similar results are achieved rather differently.
While not disrespecting its subject, Pochettino may find himself tiring of the Scouse phenomenon of "Kloppmania" (see above) by now.
In the three pre-match press conferences the Argentinian has had discussing Liverpool since Klopp's arrival in England, he has spoken in reasonable detail on what separates two of football's most famous proponents of—to simplify—a pressing game.
"They are fast, they are quick...and they love to play on counter-attack," the Spurs boss said this week. "Different to us, we like to manage the ball and play in possession and play in the opposite half."
Upon his first meeting with the former Mainz and Borussia Dortmund man 10 months earlier, Pochettino expanded on why the Lilywhites are a "different team with different philosophy" to Klopp's Reds, per the Guardian's Paul Doyle:
"It is a different style of pressing. If you analyse Dortmund, it's not similar to how we played at Southampton. Our pressing was to the opposing goalkeeper, whereas Dortmund played with a medium block. You can’t compare Klopp's style with my style, we are different. I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that we are different.
It depends on your ideas, your culture, how you see the philosophy, your football. I prefer to press high and we believe we can press the keeper. Another manager believes it is better to stay with a medium block or play deep and go on the counterattack. This is how you feel and believe, and how you develop your style.
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Ahead of the 1-1 draw at Anfield last March, Pochettino complimented his peer as "a great, great manager" but denied any real similarity between them. "No I am Argentinian, he is German," he said more comically. "I am not, he is very tall."
That difference was highlighted again prior to the latest meeting, when a baffled Pochettino was not interested in comparing his team's football to a type of music, like Klopp had famously done describing Dortmund's football as "heavy metal," via the Daily Express's Charles Perrin. However, the Tottenham man might still have been scarred from comparing Man City's Sergio Aguero to classical music in 2014 and seeing him score four against his side that weekend.
All this lends itself to Pochettino's own practice of the modern man, a blend of traditional Argentinian grit and football thinking looking to harness but build on old ways.
He is not attention-seeking and interested in contemporary thinking related to building individual brands. But nor is he staid in his oft-cited philosophy.
Some of his Tottenham predecessors were hardly proposing defensive football, but the strategy to their attacking game plans was certainly less intricate.
Harry Redknapp famously told striker Roman Pavlyuchenko to "just f--king run around" during a win over Liverpool in November 2008, per the Telegraph. His successor by two, Tim Sherwood, similarly looked to keep things simple for his attackers in a loose but sometimes too disorganised playing mandate.
Pochettino encourages fluidity going forward, but it must be backed by calculated aggression closing down and spatial awareness that extends beyond strict-position requirements (for instance, Redknapp's desire for Pavlyuchenko to focus on putting himself about in the box).
There is some overlap, too—Sherwood also believed in the merits of promoting from the academy. As far as general differences, though, what works better is up for you to decide.
What is certain is that Pochettino is a coach who does not want to leave things up to chance, and the more detailed, strike-first mentality he believes in has worked for Spurs so far.
As for Klopp, it is fair to say he is one of football's more outgoing modern men.
His fiery and passionate touchline persona is not new, but there is unique quirkiness to much of his public conduct and philosophy, also seen via his natural and easygoing presence in front of the camera.
Even amid relaxed discussions of English geography with BBC Match of the Day's Gary Lineker (see above), there is clear thinking to Klopp's ambition. He and Pochettino are certainly similar in being able to get their respective messages across to players—a difficult task with players increasingly holding more power.
"I don't live in the past, but there is a reason why we are here—because of our fathers and grandfathers," he told BBC Sport of hoping to match the achievements of Liverpool legends like Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley. "I would like to celebrate something each season over the next six years."
We will get an idea on Saturday of how close they are to Tottenham in this regard. More so than Pochettino, though, Klopp is working under particular pressure to show that his methods will work as well in the Premier League as they did the Bundesliga.
"Last season was characterised by moments of brilliance interspersed with extreme ordinariness and defensive calamity, and already that appears to be the pattern this season," Bleacher Report's Jonathan Wilson wrote of Liverpool post-Burnley. "Klopp is still building, but 10 months after his arrival, it’s probably about time some semblance of consistency began to be seen."
The different ideas of football's new(er) breed of managers will only get so long to flourish without results. Still, most would back the coach behind last year's extraordinary win over former club Dortmund, not to mention some other eye-catching victories, to get there soon enough.
Like Pochettino, Klopp's thinking is not flawless. Finding a reliable Plan B has been an issue for the former, and the latter is still adjusting the energy of his desired style to personnel at both ends of the pitch perhaps not best suited to it (hence a squad turnover the Argentinian went through earlier in his tenure).
The sustained and stimulated fine-tuning of a doctrine firmly rooted in fashionable ideas of entertaining but direct football separates Klopp from his predecessors. He believes in a way of playing but does not consider the idea that there should be limits to how he can make it better.
Take his discussion of Daniel Sturridge's frustration about not playing in his preferred centre-forward role, per the Liverpool Echo's James Pearce:
"We don't have these defined positions in football any more. They're not actually there.
Of course you have the defensive ones with a bit more of it, there's more responsibility with that. But you can say everyone is responsible for everything. You're involved in offensive situations, involved in defensive ones.
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The notion of footballers being able to do more than one job is not new, of course. But it goes to demonstrate that Klopp does not want to play by certain rules when more flexible thinking could produce better outcomes.
Time will tell if he can match the high points of the reigns of Rafael Benitez and Brendan Rodgers, let alone Shankly and Paisley. For better or worse, though, Klopp and Pochettino are the kind of managers we must get used to until evolution and nature take us somewhere different.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
