Played 233 games under Jurgen Klopp at Borussia Dortmund over 6 years, featured in no less than 7 different positions on the pitch.
[article]Jurgen Klopp may bump heads with his players on Saturday, he may even slap them but one message will be clear: it is not about you, it is about the team.
Klopp is an emotional guy. You have seen on television how he is on the touchline living every kick? Let me tell you he is equally animated in the dressing room. He is colourful, angry, emotional but he definitely has a plan. He has a clear strategy, he combines brains and guts.
Before every game, he made sure the atmosphere inside the dressing room was always highly charged. He would speak to each player individually, pumping them up, telling them what he wanted and then he would address us all as a group.
Lots of things went on with varying degrees of roughness; you could compare it maybe to what you see in American football or the rugby world cup, he'd bang heads with players, slap them. It was not in an overly aggressive way but in a way buddies would motivate each other.
He wanted to get inside our heads so that he knew we were going out to win. He wants everyone to put their body on the line and that will be his mantra: One for all and all for one. Any Liverpool individual who doesn't buy into that will soon find himself out of the group.
It's true he wants his team to run 120km every game. By pushing ourselves further we made it difficult for the opposition to keep up.
One of my first key games for him was against Hoffenheim and I ran 13 kilometres during the game. Afterwards, Hoffenheim's coach Ralf Rangnick came out and said: 'Kevin Grosskreutz ran more than my whole team put together!' I was delighted and I knew Klopp was too as I then started nearly every game for him. I understood what he wanted. It was putting yourself apart for the sake of the team.
Klopp knew that despite Dortmund having talent such as Mario Gotze, Robert Lewandowski and Marco Reus, he needed players such as me who were prepared to run into the ground.
It is important for players to understand the team comes before themselves. There is not much room for individuals. With him it is important that everyone is equal. He can be your friend and your boss, like sugar and spice.
We went through every emotion: laughing, crying, anger but I will never forget the experience of working with Klopp. What he taught me will define me as a player and person for the rest of my career. It was like a reality show at times. He is The Real One as well as The Normal One. I have written to him to wish him all the best of luck and he wrote back thanking me, saying he appreciated the message. On Saturday morning I'll be ready to watch Tottenham against Liverpool and I'll be cheering for him and for 'the reds'.
Our last season did not change our opinion of him as a coach or as a man. At the conclusion I have never witnessed such an outpouring of emotion for a manager. There were 85,000 people including the players, coaching staff and Klopp in tears. It was a sad time but one that showed what all of Dortmund thought of Klopp. He's a great guy, that coached a great team in a great city and does so again. All the best to you, Jurgen and to Liverpool.[/article]
[article]Großkreutz is never going to be the most technically gifted player or the player with the sweetest first touch of the ball the world has ever seen, however, he made up for his limitations through effort on the pitch. Intellectually the midfielder may not come across as the most complex figure German football has ever seen, but his understanding of the rather complex game of football is certainly astonishing.
Back in 2013 Jürgen Klopp exclaimed:”I haven’t called Kevin a tactical genius for no reason. Every year he manages to develop himself even further in different positions that require very different things of a player.”[/article]
