Jürgen Klopp is leaving Liverpool Football Club at the end of the current campaign.
That sentence has brought smiles to the faces of fans of rival clubs but also a dagger through the hearts of Kopites around the globe.
Whether you like Klopp or not, no matter where your loyalties lie in the game, there is simply no denying that what Klopp has achieved with the Reds is monumental.
We could sit here for hours and talk about how good his Liverpool sides have been at different points of his reign, the trophies he’s won, the players he’s transformed into world-class superstars, etc., but we already know all of that.
The question on everyone’s lips is simple–who will be Klopp’s successor?
This is a crucial moment for the club’s hierarchy; they cannot afford to make mistakes.
Certain sports news broadcasters have linked club legend Steven Gerrard with the soon-to-be vacant job, but that outcome is improbable for several reasons.
The dream of having a club icon as the next manager may not be completely dead yet, though – Bayen Leverkusen manager Xabi Alonso has emerged as the overwhelming favourite early on.
Still, time will tell if those odds can be trusted.
In this data analysis, we will aim to highlight three top candidates for the role, using statistics from the last three seasons of managers who, in one way or another, have shown tactical similarities to Klopp’s Liverpool.
That’s the idea here – seeing which managers would come in and be something of a continuation of what Jürgen Klopp has built, not a complete restart.
In this analysis, we will examine data related to three key tactical areas: Liverpool’s off-the-ball aggression, their phenomenal attacking output in the final third, and their possession progression.
Of course, we will then highlight which managers stand out the most based on the data to determine which three managers should be considered.
Liverpool Manager Criteria
In terms of criteria for selection, we followed a few simple rules to select the managers involved in this data analysis.
Firstly, it is essential to note that we are only looking at coaches/managers currently employed in Europe’s top five leagues, as listed by Wyscout (English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1, and German Bundesliga).
Of course, Liverpool may hire someone outside of this parameter, as unlikely as it may be.
From there, we looked at the rankings among those leagues for metrics that have been important to Klopp over the years—metrics, of course, in which Liverpool has shown an ability—and highlighted clubs that showed similar abilities in certain areas this season or since 2022/23 or 2021/22 (ranging from manager to manager, depending on their time within the top five leagues/when their club started to improve drastically).
Below is a table that shows all managers (and their teams) involved in this analysis.
There may be some names you did not expect to see in relation to the Liverpool job.
Still, again, we have selected managers based on their teams apparent similarities to Klopp’s Liverpool tactics while also trying only to include realistic options from Europe’s top five leagues—they aren’t going to take Pep Guardiola from Manchester City, for example.
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