Klopp reveals secret New York meeting which led to Liverpool decision

Jurgen Klopp has revealed how a secret meeting with Liverpool persuaded him to end his one-year sabbatical in 2015.

Klopp had vowed to spend a season away from football after leaving Borussia Dortmund.

But the German admits he left a family holiday in Portugal to speak with Liverpool’s owners in the United States.

“We were on holiday in Lisbon and I got a call from my agent,” Klopp said in a BBC documentary.

“He told me about the interest of Liverpool. So our plans at that moment looked completely different actually, because we wanted to make more holidays!

“And then I told my family and my boys were immediately like “yes!”. I looked in Ulla’s eyes and she was “er, when?”.

“When you make such a big promise like I did when I left Dortmund, that we were going to have a year to ourselves, and after four months you come around the corner with different plans… you have to ask at least.

“I was pretty much on fire from the first second really, they didn’t have to convince me.”

And owner John W Henry also recalled the moment the club got a chance to hire Klopp.

read also:Klopp takes responsibility for Brewster’s penalty miss in Community Shield final

“I remember watching Jurgen in Dortmund when I was really still a student of the game and thinking that’s the kind of football we wanted to play, I think they called it heavy metal football,” he said.

“When (FSG president) Mike Gordon called me one day and said, ‘we’re going to have the chance to meet with Jurgen in New York’, to me that was one of the most exciting phone calls during the 10 years that we’ve been with the club.”