Liverpool's end in the Champions League: Has the Jürgen Klopp system exhausted itself?

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Jürgen Klopp during the game against Real Madrid

Photo: Peter Powell / EPA

The end of the Champions League was a few minutes old, when Jürgen Klopp was ready for a TV interview.

Before the game, he had demanded that Liverpool have to play like Liverpool again, the journalist reminded and asked if he considered the requirement to be met.

Klopp laughed.

Not his fervent Klopp laugh.

This came out quieter.

"It's a little part of us this year," he said. "We're not going to finish it."

Klopp and his Reds had previously tried 90 minutes to create one of those Champions League evenings against Real Madrid, on which one team stimulates itself and their belief in progress increases to the same extent as the opponent's doubts.

Just like Liverpool did two years ago, in a 4-0 win over Barcelona.

This time it would have needed a 2-0 win after the 3-1 in the quarter-final first leg in Madrid.

But the game ended goalless.

At least Liverpool started the way Liverpool had to start such a game: with the highest intensity.

After barely two minutes, Mohamed Salah came free in front of the Madrid goal, with only keeper Thibaut Courtois in front of him, but Salah did not place the ball well.

Liverpool's first chance should remain their greatest.

The end in the Champions League means that Liverpool will end the season without a title.

That alone would be manageable.

However, the club threatens to miss participation in the premier class.

In the Premier League, Liverpool are sixth, the gap to fourth place, a Champions League place, is three points with eight game days to go.

The one in first place even 22.

Klopp has already experienced a similar crash at BVB

The coming weeks will show whether the club can avert a disaster season without qualifying for the Champions League.

The summer becomes almost even more important when coaches and club officials investigate how it can be done that a team that scored 99 points in the previous year collapses like this.

And what conclusions they draw from it.

The situation may be unusual, but Klopp has seen something similar before.

In 2014/2015 he crashed even more violently with Borussia Dortmund in the table.

After four seasons, which BVB had completed with Klopp as champion or runner-up, the club spent the winter in a relegation zone.

The ingredients for the collapse back then were injuries to key players, an unlikely bad exploitation of chances and the realization that a large part of the Bundesliga had adjusted to Klopp's tactics.

Some of it can be found in the current turbulence.

Klopp has been missing many key players for months, above all defense chief Virgil van Dijk, his representatives Joel Matip and Joe Gomez as well as captain Jordan Henderson, that's about as if Bayern were playing David Alaba, Niklas Süle, Jérôme Boateng and Joshua Kimmich at the same time absence.

That also applies to the chances of Liverpool's season.

Sadio Mané scores far fewer goals than in previous years and yet twice as many as the hapless Roberto Firmino, and there is no shortage of opportunities.

Klopp as coach of Borussia Dortmund

Photo: 

Friedemann Vogel / Bongarts / Getty Images

There is one crucial difference to the BVB crisis in 2015: Klopp is not deciphered this time.

The problem is not that the opponents know how to defend against Liverpool, they already knew that in previous years.

The problem is that Liverpool are no longer implementing their plan as they were last season.

On the one hand this is also related to the defensive failures around Virgil.

Instead of perhaps the best defensive player in the world and his strong partners, Nat Phillips and Ozan Kabak are now mostly defending, one of whom played in the second division at VfB Stuttgart last season, the other came from FC Schalke in January.

But does the lack of key players in defense and midfield explain why the strikers are wasting their chances?

Why did the team suddenly lose six times in a row at Anfield after 68 unbeaten home games?

Klopp himself cites the lack of fans as the reason

When Klopp is asked about it himself, he talks about the missing fans.

His team missed the atmosphere, that was obvious.

But this explanation seems a little too easy at a time when all teams have to get by without a home crowd.

If you look at Liverpool's games, you actually notice that something is missing: the fans, but above all the punch that actually characterizes the team.

In some games, the elf looks as if it has been put into energy-saving mode.

In the first leg in Madrid, for example, Toni Kroos was allowed to hit one long ball after the other in Real midfield, thus preparing the first two Madrid goals.

A playmaker who distributes balls undisturbed in the center is one of the last things a Klopp team allows.

Usually.

In the second leg you could at least feel the intensity again.

But it seems that the team only succeeds in a few games, less so: only in a few game phases.

Since Klopp has been in Liverpool, he has sparked euphoria in the club environment, first leading the team to the Champions League final, then to the title and finally, last season, to the first championship in 30 years.

But that also meant that for the first time the team no longer had a natural goal in mind.

It was no longer about conquering something, but about defending what had been conquered.

From Klopp the statement has been passed down that he never wanted to be the best, but rather to train a team that is able to beat the best.

But how can a club still be an underdog when it has won everything?

Perhaps the past titles the club have longed for have played their part in the current crisis.

Maybe some players are missing a few percent.

In addition, there are injuries and the high stress caused by the corona schedule.

If so, that led to another question: Shouldn't Liverpool have seen this coming?

The Reds are actually considered to be a particularly progressive club, known for being particularly analytical about important decisions.

For example, which players are signed.

Recently, however, they seem to have made strategic mistakes.

“We have to go on now.

We have to keep fighting "

There are no strong alternatives for the regular players in the squad for the full-back positions that are important under Klopp.

The defense center is thinly manned.

Numerous important players are approaching or have reached the age of 30.

Liverpool does not seem to have recognized the fact that these footballers are gradually getting older, perhaps also a bit happier, as a potential problem.

The club seems hesitant on the transfer market, although the smart shopping has been a big plus over the past few years.

That could get expensive now.

Missing the Champions League and the associated income would not be easy to put away even for a high-turnover club like Liverpool, it is about a larger eight-figure amount.

But it's not there yet.

"We have to carry on now," said Klopp on Wednesday evening with a view to the coming weeks: "We have to keep fighting."

In Dortmund he led his team from penultimate to seventh place.

He did not rebuild afterwards, he went to Liverpool.

After that, BVB was never as successful as under Klopp.