It was certainly unholy what Liverpool did to the Saints on Wednesday night, but suggestions of a cultish quality have followed Jurgen Klopp since his days at Dortmund.
His disappointing final season was explained by a German philosopher as being the direct result of the manager’s overbearing influence on his players.
The way Wolfram Eilenberger saw it, Klopp’s sway over the Borussia Dortmund players was so strong that they lost the ability to think for themselves.
“Dortmund as they presented themselves towards the end of last year, were no longer a club but a cult,” said Eilenberger. “With all the classic attributes like a ban on articulation, total community suggestion and unconditional belief in the saviour.”
Bottom of the Bundesliga table, having lost 11 of their opening 19 games, it was certainly a horrendous spell for the club that won two league titles under Klopp.
Unsurprisingly, the popular manager dismissed Eilenberger’s thesis when it was recently put to him, instead insisting that he has always fought against the deification of football figures.
“Absolute rubbish. You can always see a little bit of their true motives when someone comes up with something like that.
“I don’t want to make a club dependent on me any more than I have pretensions to be the best manager in the world.
“For as long as I’ve been here, I’ve always said: Stop building up everyone connected to football to be some sort of demigod.”
In fairness, those are not the words of a cult leader. However a couple of Klopp’s players have made utterances of late that could be mistaken for the brainwashed words of a cult follower.
According to the FBI, who have some experience of dealing with cults such as the Branch Davidians in Waco, have defined them as a movement that is “foreign to the culture in which it lives”.
Adam Lallana’s description this week of the effect of a Klopp team-talk certainly sounded pretty foreign to what went before under Brendan Rodgers.
“I remember the team meeting before we set off for the ground on that day. We listened to the manager and I was so pumped by what he’d said – the vibe, the emotion and the feeling – I walked out wanting the game to start there and then, in that second.”
The former Southampton man spoke again last night after the game, this time talking about the “miracle” of Klopp and his ability to instil his “ethos” into the squad.
“We want to keep the momentum we have gained,” said Lallana. “It is not a miracle what he has done, he has come in and put his ethos into the squad.”
If anyone was in any doubts about Klopp’s remarkable abilities of management, then witness Divock Origi’s electrifying hat-trick during Liverpool’s 6-1 win at St Mary’s. The Belgian striker, much maligned before Klopp’s arrival, credits the German with driving his transformation.
“I already did this last year but I think I’ve worked very hard and I have the support of everybody so today I’m glad that the coach gave me the confidence and I could reward him with the hat-trick.”
It’s a hat-trick born out of confidence: a confidence trick, if you will. Is that the kind of thing a cult leader might do?
Either that or he is simply a wizard.
There is little doubt Klopp inspires great loyalty in his players, but he would argue he is simply instilling them with the confidence to be themselves or, in the case of Origi, asking them to simplify what they do on the field.
Klopp’s preferred tactical approach requires players to commit fully to the gameplan, but in that he is no different from the majority of modern managers. You could argue that the tactical straitjacket Louis Van Gaal imposes on his players is more oppressive than anything the Liverpool boss has done.
The new king of Merseyside has made an impressive start to life at Anfield but from the moment he was appointed the media and supporters were anticipating the arrival of this larger-than-life character.
He has wooed the public so should any of us be surprised that he also managed to woo his players?
You don’t have to be a cult leader to get your point across and as far as I recall the Branch Davidian XI weren’t up to much.
It’s early days but Klopp has delivered exactly what everyone wanted. His style of management, like everyone except Brian Cody, Alex Ferguson and Arsen Wenger (!), has a shelf life and clearly things went stale at Dortmund.
It’s fresh right now at Liverpool and they are very happy to obey their glorious leader.
