Jurgen Klopp has suggested that he would have been a court jester had he been alive 500 years ago.
The Liverpool boss made the bizarre claim during an interview with the Mirror in which he admitted that he was very grateful for his role as a football manager.
Speaking in typically charismatic terms, the German said: “I think about myself as a completely normal person.
“OK, I know a little bit more about football than some other people, that’s true. But that doesn’t make me a special person. It is only luck, because 500 years ago that knowledge wouldn’t have helped me.
“I could have been a jester dancing in front of the king — but I would have slept in the street.
“So I’m really very fortunate that my best skill is somehow needed out there.”
OPINION
This is typical Klopp; philosophical, charismatic, self-effacing. The German was clearly in fine form here, and he makes a valid point, sort of. We take football so heavily for granted that it’s hard to imagine life without it, but the all-conquering, globalised iteration that we know today is such a modern phenomenon. Klopp is definitely being self-deprecating when he says he would be a jester – a man of his intelligence and personality would have probably been a successful merchant or something – but it does get you to thinking about how many supremely talented footballers never even go to play the game. Given the right opportunities, and given a whole different century to grow up in, could there have been people out there to eclipse the talents of Diego Maradona and Pele? It’s an interesting thought, and not one you can imagine any other manager in the Premier League conjuring up through a tabloid interview.
