Jurgen Klopp‘s new job with Red Bull was projected even before he decided to leave Liverpool, with an initial offer made years before he accepted.
Klopp will officially begin his position as Red Bull’s new global head of football on January 1, which will see the ex-Liverpool boss oversee the development of their worldwide stable of clubs.
It has proved a controversial decision in his native Germany, particularly among fans – and even his players – at former club Borussia Dortmund.
But it is one the 57-year-old has long considered, with Red Bull CEO Oliver Mintzlaff revealing when the job was first broached – while he was still in charge at Anfield.
“The first idea was more than two years ago, when I first spoke to Jurgen about it,” Mintzlaff told Welt TV, per FR.de.
“That was something that always interested him and excited him. So we always kept in touch and I didn’t let up.”
Though Klopp went on to sign a new deal at Liverpool in April 2022, he remained on Red Bull’s radar, and Mintzlaff explained that their advances resumed soon after he announced his resignation in January of this year.
“We met with him in Liverpool and I started again with my topic and told him a lot of things; where I think we could need him and that it would be an exciting task for him,” he added.
“And then he said: ‘All right, let’s do it’. I had to slap myself in the face.”
While there have been suggestions that Klopp has followed the money into Red Bull, he himself has insisted he would have earned more if he had stayed in management.
And Mintzlaff backed this up as he continued: “We talked about the financial side for 20 seconds because he said he was up for the job.
“When he said ‘yes’, it was one of the easiest negotiations I have had in 20 years.”
Though there is no real issue in Klopp being offered a job elsewhere while he was still fully committed to Liverpool – and Red Bull certainly won’t have been his only suitor – it is interesting that he would have been aware of their interest.
Whether it had any influence on his decision to leave the Reds sooner than expected is up for debate, though he left Merseyside with the best wishes of all involved.
And though Arne Slot deserves every credit for his outstanding work in charge of Liverpool so far, the Dutchman himself will maintain that it is partly down to Klopp’s legacy and the squad he left behind.
