To understand how Liverpool are going about hiring their next manager, it’s worth reviewing how they appointed the current one almost nine years ago.
Ian Ayre, who was the club’s chief executive, made first contact with targets.
Two of those conversations produced interviews, the first with Carlo Ancelotti and the second with Jurgen Klopp. Both men flew to the United States, where Liverpool’s owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) are based, following dialogue instigated by Ayre.
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Klopp’s agent Marc Kosicke was wary of pranksters, which resulted in a video call to ensure the person at the other end of the line was genuine. From there, the process of getting a deal done for Klopp was relatively straightforward. Kosicke told Ayre his client was interested and a meeting was arranged with FSG in New York City at the offices of law firm, Shearman and Sterling.
That setting sounded ideal to Klopp, believing it lowered the chances of him getting recognised — though things didn’t turn out that way.
In Munich at the start of his trip, he was stopped by flight attendants who wanted a photograph; when he got out of his car in Midtown Manhattan, he was spotted by a German exchange student who asked for a selfie; then, at his hotel, a tourist from Mainz — the German city where Klopp first entered management with Mainz 05 in 2001 after a decade playing for the club and spent a further seven years in the dugout — wanted to talk to him, as did as a group of holidaying Turkish football fans.
Still though, nobody made the link between Klopp and the decision-makers at FSG, who had travelled from the U.S. cities of Boston and Los Angeles to consider the options in front of them.
The opinion of Michael Edwards was considered, a person whose significance at the club had been marked by a promotion to technical director barely six weeks earlier, but the final call was ultimately made by the owners. From then on, FSG president Mike Gordon was largely the point of contact for Kosicke and Klopp.
The story is a reminder that Liverpool are entering new territory, as the club sources Klopp’s replacement.
Maybe football gets too hung up on job titles, but the role of sporting director didn’t exist when Klopp succeeded Brendan Rodgers at Anfield in October 2015. It is perhaps more significant, however, that any comparable position did not carry the same level of responsibilities.
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Things are different at Liverpool now, as the club head into a new era with Edwards effectively replacing Gordon as the FSG man closest to ground level and Richard Hughes, the new sporting director arriving from fellow Premier League side Bournemouth, leading the managerial search.
FSG wants more decisions to be made on Merseyside and when each prospective candidate sits in front of Liverpool officials, it will be Edwards and Hughes especially they will need to impress – a departure from how things have been done in the past.
While many of the people involved in each of these decisions had served Liverpool for a number of years, thus gaining an understanding of the special demands imposed on any manager, Hughes’ very first call, operating in unfamiliar territory after nearly a decade at Bournemouth, could prove to be his biggest.
So what are some of the dos and don’ts of how to hire a Liverpool manager?
Don’t be blinded by process
If recent history teaches us anything, it is that there is no one ‘right’ way to appoint a Liverpool manager.
Before Klopp, Rodgers was recruited ahead of the 2012-13 season on the strength of a presentation he gave to FSG, which involved a 180-page dossier.
Before Rodgers, FSG leaned on Kenny Dalglish to re-establish a sense of identity that had been lost under Roy Hodgson, who was hired in summer 2010 by a combination of Ayre, managing director Christian Purslow and temporary chairman Martin Broughton during a period where the club were up for sale and their owners, American businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gillett, were unable to agree on pretty much anything.
Before Hodgson, Rafa Benitez got the nod in 2004 because chief executive Rick Parry and owner David Moores believed he could do at Liverpool what he’d achieved at Spain’s Valencia, where he had steered a team on a much lower budget than Real Madrid and Barcelona to two domestic titles.
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Before Benitez, in 1998, Gerard Houllier was recommended by secretary Peter Robinson, who thought Liverpool needed to embrace European methods to move forward, which seemed like a giant leap at the time, seeing each of the club’s previous five managers could be viewed in some way as an “in-house” choice, given already established associations.
Embrace Europe – but without breaking the bank
While Edwards has never recruited a manager, Hughes has experience from as recently as last summer, when he brought Andoni Iraola to Bournemouth after making the surprise decision to part with Gary O’Neil, who had stepped up from an assistant role following the August 2022 sacking of Scott Parker, less than four months after he’d delivered promotion, and kept them in the Premier League.
At Madrid’s Rayo Vallecano, Iraola had taken an unfashionable club into European competition — a feat those running Bournemouth might like to achieve too at some point. The same thought process should be applied to Liverpool, as it was under Klopp, when he arrived with a track record of winning titles at Borussia Dortmund ahead of rivals with much greater resources while also going far in Europe.
To a large degree, the remit for the Liverpool manager has never changed: show you are streetwise enough to balance ambitions domestically and abroad and you’ll be fine.
There was an exception to this rule – Hodgson, who arrived at Anfield fresh from reaching the Europa League final against the odds with Fulham. The west Londoners, however, finished 12th in that same 2009-10 season, after coming seventh under Hodgson the year before. Neither of those league positions would ever be received positively at Liverpool.
Hodgson’s six months is the shortest reign of any manager in Liverpool’s history. Though he failed because of results, albeit at a difficult time as the club’s financial problems illustrated, he also failed because of what he said, and quite often, what he did not.
Misfits are welcome
It would be tempting to conclude that Liverpool managers need to be great communicators but neither Benitez, nor Bob Paisley before him in the 1970s and 1980s, fall into that category. They were awkward, but such personality traits were overlooked because of their achievements.
It is often said – certainly since the days of Bill Shankly (1959-74) – that any Liverpool manager does not just represent the club but the city. It is a civic duty, and anyone taking the job must, at least, have some appreciation for what the place has been through.
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Anyone who has spent time in Benitez’s company will tell you he falls to the right politically, but it is more accurate anyway to say Liverpool is a city in opposition to the establishment rather than left-leaning.
A misfit like Benitez, who was perceived as being a misunderstood character, managed to fit in.
Tactics
For Hughes, there are also tactics to consider. Or more accurately, the style of the team any managerial appointment would bring.
Match-going Liverpool fans have rarely cared that much about this sort of thing, so long as the team won. It has become more of a talking point, however, over the last decade, with the voices of a global fanbase becoming more prominent.
Everyone wants to see gegenpressing and tiki-taka, preferably both at the same time. For Hughes, the only consideration should be this: can the incoming manager get a tune out of the majority of the players he is inheriting?
Most are young enough, talented enough and smart enough to understand what it takes to transition from a Klopp demand, to say, a Xabi Alonso demand — which might involve more touches of the ball.
Sentiment doesn’t guarantee success
A decision to appoint Bayer Leverkusen coach Alonso might also involve sentiment, given that he was a part of the Benitez midfield that won the Champions League in 2005, which helped him become a hugely popular figure at Liverpool.
That is not a bad thing, with fans probably more inclined to give a returning hero some leeway if results do not click immediately, but even at a club as conscious of their history as Liverpool, it should not be considered a guarantee of success.
Graeme Souness’ illustrious history as a player with Liverpool did not help him deliver the required amount of silverware as manager in the early 1990s and while Roy Evans engineered a revival, it was still not enough to win the title. Dalglish’s comeback after Hodgson departed in January 2011 lifted fans’ spirits, and he won the League Cup 13 months later, but Liverpool ended that 2011-12 season in eighth place, their lowest league finish since 1993-94.
Alonso would still seem an obvious choice, mainly because he has transformed an underachieving Leverkusen team into one that is likely to end Bayern Munich’s run of 11 straight titles in Germany’s Bundesliga, and one which has not suffered in Europe due to their domestic pursuit.
Even if it is not Alonso – whose sample size of work is small, as he has only managed at a senior level for 17 months – in the dugout come August, Hughes would be well advised to remember that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
GO DEEPER
If not Xabi Alonso then who? Analysing Liverpool's Plan B managerial options
(Top photos: Getty Images)
