Jurgen Klopp has cast doubt on whether he will take another job after his shock decision to quit Liverpool on Friday, but revealed his intention to never manage a different club in England.
Klopp, who will leave Liverpool at the end of the season, has won seven major trophies during his 8½ years in charge, and his team are in the running to win all four major trophies available to them in this campaign.
– Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, more (U.S.)
“If you ask me now if I will ever manage again? I would say no.” Klopp said. “But you don’t know obviously as I’ve never had this situation. But I do know definitely I will never manage a different club in England than Liverpool. It is impossible.
“I will find something else to do. But I will not manage a club or country for at least a year.”
Klopp, 56, replaced Brendan Rodgers as Liverpool manager in 2015 and revitalised a team that had been struggling to compete with the best teams in England.
The German manager won the Champions League in 2019 — his first trophy with Liverpool — before delivering the team’s first Premier League title in 2020.
Klopp’s decision to step down on Friday caught the footballing world by surprise, particularly because the coach had signed a contract extension in 2022 that was due to expire at the end of the 2025-26 season.
Bayern Munich head coach Thomas Tuchel expressed his shock at Klopp’s decision to leave Liverpool in a news conference Friday.
“I have to digest that first. … Kloppo is one of the very best coaches in the world, he has always managed to influence the clubs where he worked. It’s big news,” Tuchel said.
Klopp experienced the most difficult season of his time in charge of Liverpool last season as they finished fifth in the Premier League and missed out on qualification for the Champions League.
But Liverpool have returned to prominence this season and are top of the Premier League table while remaining in contention to win the Europa League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup.
“I told the club already in November,” Klopp said. “I have to explain a little bit that maybe the job I do people see from the outside, I’m on the touchline and in training sessions and stuff like this, but the majority of all the things happen around these kind of things. That means a season starts and you plan pretty much the next season already.
“When we sat there together talking about potential signings, the next summer camp and can we go wherever, the thought came up, ‘I am not sure I am here then anymore,’ and I was surprised myself by that. I obviously start thinking about it.
“It didn’t start [then], but of course last season was kind of a super difficult season and there were moments when at other clubs probably the decision would have been, ‘Come on, thank you very much for everything but probably we should split here, or end it here.’ That didn’t happen here, obviously.
“For me it was super, super, super important that I can help to bring this team back onto the rails. It was all I was thinking about. When I realised pretty early that happened, it’s a really good team with massive potential and a super age group, super characters and all that, then I could start thinking about myself again and that was the outcome. It is not what I want to [do], it is just what I think is 100 percent right.”