Klopp Lights Up Our Hearts Without Speaking
IT was September, the very month tattooed into history, as a poignant reminder to mankind of the start of the dark arts of a war that eventually engulfed the entire globe.
A brutal military conflict, pitting good versus evil which, by the time the guns and bombs, fell into silent mode, had killed about 80 million people.
The grim reality of those deaths coming from the fact that, in just about six years of mayhem and madness, about three percent of the world’s population, was sent into their graves.
That’s the month we arrived in Germany, the six of us, on a week-long tour of duty bankrolled by SuperSport in 2013.
Frankfurt, the bustling German financial hub where we landed, was at peace with itself, as summer and autumn embraced, in that annual kiss, amid a background of bliss, which marks the changing of the seasons.
This was a good time to be in Deutschland.
Oktoberfest was just around the corner and, its national game, football, was in prime health.
Just four months earlier, for the first time in the history of the UEFA Champions League, two German sides had clashed in the final.
That the showdown was at Wembley, right in the spiritual heart of English football, could not have provided a better stage, for the final chapter of this Cinderella tale, for the Germans.
Bayern Munich vs Borussia Dortmund!
Like Manchester United vs Liverpool, in the Champions League final, at the Olympiastadon in Berlin, it’s the dream script for those who created the iron curtain that separates Germany and English football.
Ten months after our visit, the Germans would rise to the top of the global football tree, becoming the first European country, to win the World Cup, in a tournament held on the other side of the Atlantic.
Mario Goetze, a player who had joined the Dortmund academy as an eight-year-old, and developed through the club’s youth system, scored the goal that finally beat Argentina as the Germans won the World Cup at the Maracana in July 2014.
Just two months before our arrival, Goetze had left Dortmund to join arch-rivals, Bayern Munich, in a €37 million deal.
That means he wasn’t part of the Dortmund side, when our group went to their fortress, Signal Iduna Park, as guests of the club, on September 28, 2013, to watch their Bundesliga game against Freiburg.
But, defender Matts Hummels, Sven Bender, Neven Subotic, Henrik Mkhitaryan, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Robert Lewandowski and Marco Reus were all part of the hosts’ All-Star side that night.
Packed to capacity, with 80 000 screaming fans, in their black-and-gold colours, with 25 000 standing to form the Yellow Wall, this was club football at a different, and higher, level.
I had been to some of the grand theatres, from Old Trafford to Anfield, from Soccer City to the iconic Cairo International Stadium, but this was different, this was something else, definitely, a new level.
This wasn’t football.
The outpouring of love for their club, the special bond between the fans and the players, the spiritual connection between the supporters and their coach, quite clearly, a love affair with roots in heaven.
This was a journey into the Mecca of football, its cathedral of dreams, a bastion of loyalty to the cause of a club, a human sea of fidelity to the mission of their men and a symbol of sincerity, to the assignment, of their warriors.
This was romance, as powerful, and beautiful, as it can ever get, between fans and their football club.
This was passion, this was devotion, this was affection, this was dedication, this was emotion, this was obsession, this was conviction and this was love, a steamy romantic affair, between these fans and their club.
And, in their animated coach, they had the perfect conductor of the orchestra.
For me, in more ways than one, he was a throwback to the wild days, and rocking nights, when another German coach, Reinhard Fabisch, used to be the leader of our band, at the National Sports Stadium, when the Dream Team were in town.
His name was Jurgen Klopp!
And, on that September night, at the Signal Iduna Park, my first encounter with this football genius, and heavy metal, relentless attacking football, was sealed in Dortmund,
A DARK PAST, A GOOD MAN, A BRIGHT FUTURE
Reus and Lewandoski both scored twice, that night, as Dortmund — parading their full repertoire of attacking football that Klopp loves, and the opponents hate — were crushed by a destructive force that made a mockery of their Bundesliga status.
And, for us, it was a privilege, to have such a front-row seat from where we could watch, and admire, Klopp’s men go about crushed the visitors with the kind of football that provides a touch of beauty to the mission, and the merchants, of destruction.
We didn’t know it then but Klopp had already seen, and read, them — the signs that tiki-taka’s lifespan, which had helped Barcelona rise to the top of the global club football tree, was coming to an end.
“It’s like an orchestra but it’s a silent song, it’s not my sport, I don’t like winning with 80 percent (possession), sorry, that is not enough for me,’’ he said. “Fighting football, not serenity football, that is what I like, heavy metal, I always want it loud, it’s very emotional, very fast, very strong, not boring, no chess.
“What we call in German ‘English’ — rainy day, heavy pitch, 5-5, everybody is dirty in the face and goes home and cannot play for weeks after.’’
Spain had won their only World Cup, in Johannesburg in 2010, building their success story on a foundation of tiki-taka, with their crisp, short passes overwhelming the opposition.
But, after that victory, a 0-4 thrashing at the hands of Portugal, Spain’s worst defeat in 47 years, had provided the first signs, already picked by the likes of Klopp, the world they conquered in South Africa, had found a way to deal with their arsenal.
And, in their first match at 2014 World Cup finals, Spain slumped to a humiliating 1-5 defeat to the Dutch, the very team they had beaten in the final in Johannesburg, four years earlier.
Instead, it was the Germans, who won that World Cup in Brazil, including inflicting a seven-goal thrashing of the hosts, in the semi-finals.
Until his move to Bayern Munich, the previous year, the hero of that World Cup victory, goal-scorer Goetze, had spent 13 years at Dortmund, since joining the club’s academy, as an eight-year-old, at the turn of the millennium.
The imposing Signal Iduna Park was his home.
Just a few kilometres from this iconic stadium, which Klopp transformed into a fortress for Dortmund, delivering Bundesliga titles in 2011 and 2012, lies a reminder of a dark past.
Today, the Steinwache is a memorial museum but, during the dark days of World War II, it used to be a police station and, adjacent to it, was an infamous prison where the Gestapo imprisoned, and tortured, those targeted by Adolf Hitler and his Nazis.
It was called Die Hölle von Westdeutschland (The Hell of Western Germany).
And, between 1933 and 1945, more than 66 000 people are believed to have been imprisoned in the Steinwache prison and, the majority of them, never came back.
Most of those killed were Jews.
By the time Robert Lewandowki, a Polish Jew, arrived at Dortmund, in July 2010, after being signed by Klopp from Lech Poznan, the Steinwache was long been converted into a memorial museum.
A landmark historical building to provide mankind with images, from a dark past, which should always remind us never to indulge in such madness again.
Two years after his arrival, Klopp had transformed Lewandowski into a genuine gunslinger and his 22 goals, during the 2011/2012 season, was the third best return in the Bundesliga.
That tally didn’t include even a single penalty.
His hattrick, in the 5-2 victory over Bayern Munich, in the DFB-Kopal (Germany Cup) final, powered Klopp and his men to a League and Cup double.
By the time he left for Bayern, in July 2014, he had scored 74 goals, for Dortmund, in 131 appearances.
But, being a Polish Jew, Lewandowski also always provided a reminder of the darkness of a past when, people like him, were hunted, and killed, for whom they were.
“Poland’s first goal in international football came in Sweden in May 1992,’’ British journalist, David Bolchover, wrote in The Guardian in May last year.
“It was the centre-half, Jozef Klotz, who made history, converting a penalty.
“Whenever you see Robert Lewandowski scoring, for Poland, remember he is the latest link in a chain that started with Klotz, star of the Jewish clubs, Jutrzenka Krakow and Maccabi Warsaw, (who was) murdered in 1941.’’
In June last year, the Polish and Israeli national teams honoured Klotz during their Euro qualifier in Warsaw.
On Thursday night, Lewandoski became the first Pole to win the rebranded UEFA Player of the Year award, exactly 10 years since his football education, at this high level of the game, started under the guidance of Klopp at Dortmund in July 2010.
FOOTBALL, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL GAME, JURGEN KLOPP, WHAT A FINE GENTLEMAN
Football has certainly come a long way from the days when English fans would sing, “if you won the War, please stand up,’’ in matches against their German counterparts.
Time, they say, is the ultimate healer.
Eighty years ago, on December 20, 1940, around 200 people were killed when a bomb, dropped by the Germans, exploded in Blackstock Gardens, in what is thought to be Liverpool’s single biggest loss of life, during World War II.
One family, the Bellis, lost their mum Sarah, 36, and six of her seven children — Catherine (14); Joan (seven); Patricia (four); three-year-old twins Robert and Cecilia and six-month-old Edward.
In 1998, a memorial was erected, to remember those who perished that day, and it lies just about 4kms away, via the A59, from Anfield.
It was also the year that Liverpool, for the first time in their history, hired a coach born outside the British Isles, when Frenchman Gerard Houlier, arrived at the club.
Ten years later, Klopp took charge at Dortmund where, before every home match, the home crowd, like those at Anfield, sing the “You’ll Never Walk Alone” signature tune.
For the 40-year-old coach, this appeared to be the attachment he needed, for the Mother of All Assignments, to be the one who would end Liverpool’s lengthy wait for the league title.
In January this year, as his unbeaten side appeared well, and truly, on course for their first league title, in 30 years, Klopp — being the great human being that he has always been — decided to provide a voice to a cause he knew was bigger than football.
He appeared in a video, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, alongside the likes of Harry Kane, Virgil van Dijk and Frank Lampard, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
“Today, on Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember, we remember those who stood by, those who did nothing, those that shook their heads,’’ they said in the video.
“We remember those who said ‘this will pass — it won’t last,’ we remember those who didn’t believe, wouldn’t believe, refused to believe, those who reasoned ‘it’s only words, high spirits, harmless insults.’
“We remember those who turned away, who stood by, who watched the deeds of others, but did nothing, we remember the good people, the decent people, all the regular people, who didn’t hate but who encouraged and supported hatred through the power of their silence.
“And we remember their shame, their eternal regretful shame, today on Holocaust Memorial Day we must remember why, when we see racism, anti-Semitism discrimination or hatred, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, we cannot stand by, we mustn’t stand by.
“We need to stand up, we need to stand together.’’
The background shows families, women and children waving Nazi flags at parades and then charred bones of the victims of Auschwitz where about 1.1 million inmates were killed.
Football can never compensate for the barbarism, and the significant loss, of the millions who perished during mankind’s foolish, and deadly, conflict in World War II.
But, in a way, it has been helping to heal some of the wounds.
And, if fate had to choose a German football Messiah, one who provides the role of comforter, for the city of Liverpool, in particular, and the world in general, then it wouldn’t have settled for a better man than Jurgen Klopp.
This charming man, those big and beautiful blue eyes, that huge smile, a perfect combination for a football Messiah with a responsibility, bigger than his achievements on the pitch, to show the world that mankind has moved on from the horrors of his past demons.
“It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion, a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past — a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice.’’
Those were not Klopp’s words.
They were the words of American General, Douglas MacArthur, on board the USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay, when the Japanese signed the terms of surrender to officially end Word War II.
It was September, the very month tattooed into history, as a poignant reminder to mankind, of the end of the dark arts of a war that eventually engulfed the entire globe, when he said those words.
Seventy five years have now passed since that ceremony and, thanks to people like Jurgen Klopp, the word, and its most beautiful game, look to be in good shape.
