The paths of Jürgen Klopp and Real Madrid cross again today at the Santiago Bernabéu. The 55-year-old German is the coach who has faced the whites the most times in the Champions League in recent years, but he never did so in a situation as tight as tonight’s. No team has ever gone 2-5 in a final phase of this competition.
With Jürgen Klopp, Madrid has lived a history of attraction and disagreements in this second stage of Florentino Pérez who has a comparison with another coach, Mauricio Pochettino, and somewhat less with Antonio Conte, whom he wanted after Zidane’s last scare.
As with the Argentine, Madrid has tested Klopp, but the German, a football intellectual who boasts of left-wing ideas, did not accept. It is true that when they asked him about the German he was active, directing other projects that he did not want to break.
Florentino Pérez never raised the offer very much either because he did not quite trust the arrogant character of the German, according to club sources. The attraction for Klopp began in the 2012-13 season, when Borussia Dortmund and Madrid met in the group stage. Kopp came from training at Mainz and was not a well-known coach in Spain despite having won two Bundesligas in a row with the ‘borusser’. Dortmund won 2-1 at Signal Iduna Park and drew (2-2) at the Bernabéu. They would face each other again in the semifinals. And in Dortmund, Madrid suffered its last beating in Germany, a 4-1 defeat with four goals from Robert Lewandowski that the whites could not overcome in the second leg, leaving only 2-0.
That summer was Mourinho’s last on the white bench. Madrid probed Klopp, who chose to respect the year of his contract that he had left at Dortmund. Again that year they met again, then in the quarterfinals and Ancelotti’s Madrid won. 3-0 at the Bernabéu and a 2-0 defeat in Dortmund, which was not worse due to the appearance of Casemiro in the match. Klopp’s prestige was safe in the White House.
In the following season, 2015-16, Klopp landed at Anfield, where he has already spent eight seasons. In them he has crossed paths with Madrid in two Champions League finals and with today’s in two other direct matches, always with the whites as winners..
In Jürgen Klopp’s relationship with Madrid there is a blur that felt very bad at the Bernabéu. When the German criticized the Di Stféfano stadium in Valdebebas (the first leg of the quarterfinals of the year of the pandemic was played there) for understanding that it was an unworthy place for the competition, a mere training camp.
In his press conference, Jürgen Klopp was humble and friendly: “We do not come to do tourism. Even if we only have a percent, we are going to try”.
While Klopp is looking for a feat, Carlo Ancelotti has the recent memory of Chelsea, who came last year in the Champions League quarterfinals with a 1-3 loss and took the game to extra time. (The game ended 2-3 and Madrid passed): “We are not going to make calculations with the result of the first leg. I want an open game and for my team to play attacking,” said the Italian.
