After last night’s humbling Europa League defeat, Liverpool are now just weeks away from seeing Jurgen Klopp leave the club.
There had been tremendous hope that the Reds would be able to send Klopp off with a big farewell party in Dublin for the Europa League final.
But fairy-tale endings don’t tend to work out in football, and the German’s looks set to be no different. There is still a chance that Liverpool can win the Premier League of course, but they need to improve quickly.
Regardless of whether Klopp has one more trophy in him at Anfield though, he’ll be on his way after the final whistle against Wolves on May 19th.
By Jurgen’s own accord, he wants to take some time out of the game following his Liverpool exit. But quite what he does after that will be intriguing. And after some surprise news today, we may have just got a clearer picture as to what may happen.
Jurgen Klopp not taking over Germany
The most likely scenario for Klopp had always felt that he would take charge of the German national team when the time is right.
There had been a campaign in the country’s media to get the 56-year-old in charge of Die Mannschaft even before he’d announced his intention to leave Liverpool.
And with Julian Nagelsmann set to leave after the summer’s Euros – and being heavily linked with Bayern Munich and even Liverpool – the job looked like being open.
This summer would surely come a little soon for Jurgen, but there could surely be an agreement to keep the seat warm for him for a little while.
As it turns out though, Nagelsmann is ready to stay after all. In a shock turn of events today, the German Football Association announced that the 36-year-old has signed a new contract to stay with the national team until after the 2026 World Cup. We didn’t see that coming.
As a result, unless Klopp is willing to spend more than two years out of the game, he’s going to have to find himself another job in the meantime.
What could Klopp do instead
We really did assume that it was more or less set up for Jurgen to take over the German team post Nagelsmann. It had all seemed to fit together quite nicely.
Now that that isn’t the case, we’re not really sure what to think. However, it seems pretty clear that Klopp’s more immediate future lies in the club game.
Of course there is a chance that there have been conversations and Klopp has decided that he does indeed want two years out of the game. Nagelsmann is happy to continue, so maybe that suits everyone.
But Jurgen is a football man. Having spent 40 years in the week-to-week, we think he’ll be tempted to return sooner.
Where will that be? Who can say for sure. But, whoever it is, they’ll earn themselves legions of Liverpool fans once Jurgen arrives.