Jurgen Klopp Reveals Hilarious Mistake During Borussia Dortmund Team Talk in 2011
By Tom Gott
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has opened up about one of his favourite - and funniest - mistakes he made during his time with Borussia Dortmund.
Klopp spent seven years with the Bundesliga side between 2008 and 2015, in which he managed to establish a youthful Dortmund side as one of the strongest in Europe.
However, writing for The Players' Tribune, Klopp confessed that things didn't always go so smoothly for him, and he reminisced about a major error during a team talk in 2011.
He said: "My Borussia Dortmund team were playing Bayern Munich. It was a huge match in the league. We hadn’t won in Munich in something like 20 years. I take a lot of inspiration from movies, so whenever I needed to motivate the boys I would always think of Rocky Balboa.
"In my opinion, they should show Rocky 1, 2, 3 and 4 in public schools all across the world. It should be like learning the alphabet. If you watch these movies and you don’t want to climb to the top of a mountain, then I think something is wrong with you.
"So the night before we played Bayern, I gathered all my players at the hotel for our team talk. The boys were all sitting down. All the lights were off. I told them the truth of the situation: 'The last time Dortmund won in Munich, most of you were still in your Pampers'.
"Then I started playing some scenes from Rocky IV on the video screen. The one with Ivan Drago. A classic, in my opinion. I told the boys, “You see? Bayern Munich is Ivan Drago. The best of everything! The best technology! The best machines! He’s unstoppable!'
"Then you see Rocky training in Siberia in his little log cabin. He’s chopping down pine trees and carrying logs through the snow and running up to the top of the mountain. And I told the boys, 'You see? That’s us. We are Rocky. We are smaller, yes. But we have the passion! We have the heart of a champion! We can do the impossible!!!!!'
"I was going on and on, and then at some point, I look out to all my boys to see their reaction. I was expecting them to be standing up on their chairs, ready to go run up a mountain in Siberia, going absolutely crazy.
"But everyone is just sitting there, staring at me with dead eyes. Completely blank. They’re looking at me like, What in the world is this crazy man talking about?
"So then I realised, Wait, when did Rocky IV come out, 1980-something? When were these boys born?
"Finally, I said, 'Wait a minute, boys. Please raise your hand if you know who is Rocky Balboa?' Only two hands went up.
"My entire speech — nonsense! This is the most important match of the season. Maybe the most important match of some of the players’ lives. And the manager has been screaming about Soviet technology and Siberia for the last 10 minutes! Hahahaha! Can you believe this? I had to start my whole speech over from scratch."