Liverpool assistant manager Pep Lijnders has called for the club to bring the curtain down on the Jurgen Klopp era with a “last dance” ending and added that the coaching group first sensed their time at the club was coming to an end last summer.
The Merseyside club confirmed last week that Lijnders and his fellow assistant coaches Peter Krawietz and Vitor Matos will join Klopp in leaving Liverpool at the end of the season.
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The three have been key members of Klopp’s backroom team and the German manager recently highlighted Lijnders’ contribution in particular and the role he has played in implementing Liverpool’s style of football.
“It’s not easy, leaving such a club. But in life I feel always you have to do the right thing and the right thing means that in the summer we said we continue and we go with all we have, we make it ‘the Last Dance’, we make it like a proper ending,” Lijnders said in an interview with Liverpool’s club website.
“Not knowing that it would be that season but knowing that the project is coming to an end. I felt that with the back-up of the ownership, signing the right players, we are just going back to basics.”
Lijnders, who joined the club in 2014 as a youth academy coach, became involved with the first team after Klopp’s appointment the following year and played a key role in the development of academy graduates including Trent Alexander-Arnold.
The Dutch coach left Liverpool at the start of 2018 to take over at NEC Nijmegen but after a brief five month spell in Netherlands Klopp offered him a senior role in his backroom team and brought him back to the club. In the period since, Liverpool have won six trophies, including the Champions League in 2019 and the Premier League the following year.
“He’s [Klopp] a friend, a brother, a proper football brother I think. We’ve been through a lot here: good times, bad times. I have full trust, we trust each other fully, that’s why it works,” he said.
“The way he gives me the freedom to lead the team, to design the training, to make tactical decisions, that says everything, no? It’s sad that we go but I’m excited [for] what’s ahead.”
Lijnders, who often deputises for Klopp in news conferences, has said he’s ready to take the next step in his career after leaving Liverpool.
“I always said I will finish with Jurgen; the moment I will not assist anyone else, that’s the moment I will go and I will manage. That was always the case. So when we spoke, it was clear for me: OK, then I go and manage, and we end this project together [that] we started,” he said.
“I hope I can give the same emotions and the same joy to the fans in the future, to the new club. I really believe that it’s a natural progression, how we led this club for the last years, so that’s really cool and I can’t wait to start.”
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