Where the idea comes from
Klopp's football has three roots.
Mainz and Wolfgang Frank. Klopp played in the 1990s under Wolfgang Frank at Mainz, one of the first German coaches to implement ball-oriented defending with a back four and zonal marking on the Sacchi model. Klopp has always named Frank as his most important teacher. The idea that a team shifts as a block and that the ball is the reference point comes from there.
Dortmund and counter-pressing. As coach at Dortmund from 2008 to 2015, Klopp and his assistant Željko Buvač developed counter-pressing into their main weapon. The line that no playmaker in the world is as good as a good counter-pressing situation dates from that time. Dortmund won the title in 2011 and 2012 and reached the Champions League final in 2013.
Porto, via Lijnders. Pepijn Lijnders joined Liverpool's academy in 2014 and the first-team staff in 2015. Before that he had spent seven years in FC Porto's youth setup — in the world of tactical periodisation. Lijnders has often stressed that his thinking about training planning was shaped there. Through him, a piece of Porto came to Liverpool.
There was also a club structure that suited Klopp: sporting director Michael Edwards and an analysis department under Ian Graham, who searched for players by data — Salah, Robertson, Wijnaldum and van Dijk were bought against profiles that fitted Klopp's game.
The playing idea
Klopp's playing idea is related to Red Bull's but less schematic. Rangnick has rules; Klopp has principles. The playing style in detail is covered in Jürgen Klopp's tactics.
Counter-pressing as the first line of defence
The moment after losing the ball is the most important. Instead of dropping off, the group nearest the ball attacks immediately. The reasoning is the same as Rangnick's: the opponent is disorganised, and winning the ball leads straight into a chance. Exercise forms for this: training pressing and counter-pressing.
At Liverpool, counter-pressing was closely tied to the attacking game. The team attacked in a way that left it in a pressing position the instant the ball was lost — many players near the ball, short distances.
The pressing of the front three
Firmino, Mané, Salah — the forward line of the great years was first of all a pressing line. Firmino as a false nine triggered the press, the wingers closed down the full-backs, the midfield pushed up. The opponent was to be forced into a mistake before reaching midfield.
Verticality and pace
After winning the ball things went fast. Liverpool was not a possession side, even if the figures rose in later years. The idea was: win the ball, play the first pass forward, be in front of goal in five seconds.
The full-backs as playmakers
Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson delivered more assists over the years than most midfielders. The forward line tucked inside and the full-backs got the flank. That was less Klopp's invention than an adaptation to the players he had — and an example of how he adjusted principles to players rather than the other way round.
Emotion as training content
Klopp never treated emotion as a side issue. "Mentality monsters" was not a slogan but the goal: a team that gets harder after setbacks. How that is trained is less tangible than a game form — but it takes up a lot of space in Lijnders' book: team talks, rituals, the deliberate handling of defeats.
How they trained: what Lijnders describes
Intensity is a diary, not a textbook. But patterns emerge.
Intensity is the training objective. Lijnders' core sentence is that intensity is the identity of the team. Training is not done to get fit but to act at the tempo of the match. Every game form is designed to reach or exceed match tempo.
The week follows the match rhythm. Similar to the morphocycle of tactical periodisation, every day has a function depending on the distance from the last and the next match. With two matches a week — which was the rule for Liverpool — that shrinks to two or three training days with clear roles: recovery, one intense day, preparation.
Game forms with a counter-pressing rule. Lijnders describes game forms in which the loss of the ball is the starting point. Small pitch, many players, rules that reward attacking immediately. The conditioning load comes out of the game form itself.
Individual programmes alongside team training. Liverpool worked heavily with individual preparation and follow-up: strength, prevention, specific work for individual players. Andreas Kornmayer, who came from Bayern, led the fitness department. Unlike at Frade or Seirul·lo, there was therefore a considerable amount of work outside the game forms — but individual, not as a team run.
Specialists for details. In 2018 Liverpool appointed Thomas Grønnemark as a throw-in coach and was mocked for it. The throw-in retention rate rose measurably. The club worked with Neuro11, a company for mental training at set pieces, and treated nutrition (Mona Nemmer) and sleep as performance factors. The pattern: every area that yields percentage points gets someone responsible for it.
Video at the core of analysis. Peter Krawietz, Klopp's second assistant since Mainz, was responsible for video analysis. Klopp often called him "the eye". The analysis concentrated on pressing moments and transition situations — the scenes in which the playing idea worked or did not.
Pre-season: Klopp's best-known training feature
Klopp's pre-seasons are notorious. Training camps in Austria or France, double sessions, lactate tests, volumes that take players to their limit. That was already the case at Dortmund and continued at Liverpool.
The logic is different from Frade's. Frade rejects classical pre-season: the week always stays the same, only the complexity rises. Klopp deliberately builds a conditioning base in pre-season that the season lives off. The intensity Liverpool showed in matches was laid down in the summer.
That is a genuine methodological difference between two successful schools. And it is a hint that the question "isolated conditioning or not" is less settled than the Portuguese or Catalan schools claim.
The criticism
The load. Liverpool had considerable injury problems in several Klopp years, especially in 2020/21 when almost the entire central defence was out. Whether that was down to the training approach, the fixture list or chance is not established. But a playing idea built on intensity has a price, and it is paid in injuries and dips in form.
The wear. Klopp himself has said that his way of working is exhausted after seven or eight years in one place. At Dortmund the final season collapsed. At Liverpool, 2022/23 was a weak season before the last one turned good again. A training model that lives off the emotional state of the group is not indefinitely sustainable.
Dependence on the coach. Unlike Red Bull or City, Klopp's football is tied to Klopp. There is no catalogue of principles a successor could take over. That Arne Slot won the title in 2024/25 with almost the same squad speaks for the squad, not for a transferable system — Slot plays differently.
The documentation is one-sided. Lijnders' book is valuable, but it is the book of a participant about a season with two trophies. There is little critical assessment from outside.
Klopp is at Red Bull. Since the start of 2025 Klopp has led Red Bull's football operation. That is consistent — the playing ideas are related — and at the same time it shows that Klopp football does not live on at Liverpool without Klopp.
Application: what you can take from it
This section is our interpretation.
Klopp is the school that has most to do with attitude. That makes it hard to copy — and in parts very transferable.
The loss of the ball is the most important situation
Train it. Game form 5 v 5 on a small pitch. Rule: after losing the ball the losing team has five seconds to win it back. If they do, it counts like a goal. Count out loud. The team learns that losing the ball is not an ending but a beginning.
Train at match tempo or not at all
Lijnders' core sentence applies in every league. A game form slower than the match does not train for the match. If the tempo drops: smaller pitch, sharper rule, break. Do not play on.
Give every training day a role
With two sessions: one intense, one preparatory. The intense one sits far from the match — Tuesday or Wednesday. The preparatory one is short and fast, with set pieces and without fatigue. Never two identical days.
Look for the details nobody trains
Throw-ins. Kick-offs. The goalkeeper's goal kick. In every match there are thirty or forty such situations that no amateur coach trains. Ten minutes a week on one of them is worth more than another passing exercise.
Build the base in pre-season
Unlike the Portuguese school, the Klopp experience argues for doing more conditioning work in the first weeks than in the rest of the season. Not with cross-country runs — with game forms at high volume. The season lives off it.
Emotion is training content
How your team reacts to conceding is trainable. Game forms that start from a deficit. Game forms in which a goal for the opponent means the next attack has to come immediately. Not motivational speeches — situations in which the reaction is practised.
What to take away
- Klopp's football is ball-oriented defending after Wolfgang Frank, counter-pressing from Dortmund and periodisation with a Porto influence via Pepijn Lijnders.
- Intensity is the training objective. Game forms are played at match tempo or stopped.
- The week follows the match rhythm, with clear roles per day — with two matches a week reduced to recovery, one hard day, preparation.
- Unlike Frade and Seirul·lo, Klopp builds a conditioning base in pre-season. That is a genuine difference between successful schools.
- Specialists for details: throw-ins, set pieces, nutrition, sleep, mental training.
- The limits: high load, wear after years, attachment to Klopp as a person.
Weekly planning in Coach OS sets a focus per session across the season. Which session is the hard one and which the preparatory one is your decision — the structure for it is there.
FAQ: frequently asked questions
Sources and further reading
- Pepijn Lijnders: Intensity: Inside Liverpool FC — the primary source, a training diary of the 2021/22 season.
- Raphael Honigstein: Klopp: Bring the Noise — a biography focused on the origins of the playing idea, Wolfgang Frank and Dortmund.
- Raphael Honigstein: Das Reboot — on the development of pressing football in Germany.
- Interviews with Peter Krawietz, Andreas Kornmayer and Thomas Grønnemark on the detail of their work.
- Ian Graham: How to Win the Premier League — on data-based squad planning at Liverpool.
A note on the evidence: the description of the training draws above all on Lijnders, that is on a perspective from within. Statements about injury problems are observation, not established cause and effect.