It’s clearly that emanates a sense that he’s loving life. Here is he is seconds after the final whistle in Madrid. Is there a secret to Jurgen Klopp’s winning culture at Liverpool and what can any of us learn about our own workplaces. Let’s make a contrast at this point. It is not the norm to have such a close bond in a team of football players. In fact even the most successful manager of the last decade Pep Guardiola doesn’t get close. According to Soccernomics what determines success is principally the wage bill of clubs. There’s a very strong correlation between the highest wage bill and the biggest success.

Including interviews with Klopp, Liverpool players and leading management psychologists we discover the 4 secrets of Klopp’s culture at Liverpool (data, a simple plan, inclusivity, psychological safety). This approach hasn’t always won praise – especially when Liverpool extended their seasons without winning anything. The Irish Independent newspaper spoke for many when it wrote that “Jurgen Klopp must be wary of owners’ reliance on analytics to assess players” Klopp has previously described this combination as heavy metal football. He was quoted as saying that the tika taka possession of football wasn’t for him. He said “It is not my sport. I don’t like winning with 80% [possession]. Sorry that is not enough for me. Fighting football, not serenity football, that is what I like. Klopp’s manager at Mainz was Wolfgang Frank, a man credited with introducing the 4-4-2 to German football, Frank is often cited by Klopp as his biggest inspiration. We’re going to look at 4 secrets of Jurgen Klopp’s style of cultural management. While it can look like a culture built on love and adrenalin, it’s far more than that. The pillars of Liverpool’s success are 1) Using the Data, 2) Having a clear Plan, 3) Being Relentlessly Inclusive and 4) Creating Psychological safety.Christian Heidel – the former sporting director at Mainz who elevated Klopp from defender to manager in 2001 reported that Klopp’s secret weapon was always his passion. At Mainz he built on Wolfgang Frank’s blueprint taking the team first to promotion and then scoring 11th place finishes. For his first season in the Bundesliga Mainz had the smallest budget and the smallest stadium in the league. But after two 11th slots he weathered relegation in his third season. He took it well, Klopp was quoted as saying “People and the club have reacted in a classy manner. Here people will never be idiots for losing a game”. Of course the allure of the story of football managers is that somehow here’s someone who’s able to get a 10 out of 10 result from a 6 out of 10 team.

Watching Klopp’s interactions with his team it would be easy to say the secret is his charisma. But it’s not that. As we’ve said before he values entertainment and is no fan of hierarchy. An article by the journalist Melissa Reddy in October 2018 reports that the culture of closeness had never felt better. You may well have read or watched Moneyball which was about Billy Beane at baseball’s Oakland As breaking the golden rule that the team with the most money achieves the best results by the use of data.Klopp mentioned a secret unfulfilled desire to be a doctor. “I have this helping syndrome,” Klopp told McRae. “I really care about people and I feel responsible for pretty much everything.” The inclusivity of Liverpool FC is the result. Jurgen Klopp has built something remarkable at Liverpool FC he’s built success founded on 4 critical elements: