Jürgen Klopp and the strange ritualistic power of the press conference

In which other profession are its ablest and brightest practitioners contractually obliged to take questions from the patently unqualified on an almost daily basis?

TOUGH TIMES: Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp. Pic: PA

Jürgen Klopp takes a seat in the press conference room at Molineux and answers questions about Liverpool’s latest defeat. He looks a little haggard these days, like a homeless wizard: the face worn and weathered, a thick Arctic forest of a beard hanging from him. Deep breaths. Voice cracked and familiar. Baseball cap drawn low over sad eyes. On the walls at Liverpool’s training ground there are photos from his arrival, a younger and handsomer man staring him down every day he comes into work. Seven years. How has it only been seven years? How has it already been seven years? Somebody asks a question about Liverpool’s slow starts. Something about mentality. Suddenly he recognises a face, a name, some words, a feeling. A brief and powerful memory flickers and ignites inside him.

“It’s really difficult to talk to you, if I’m 100% honest,” Klopp snapped at James Pearce, a Liverpool reporter from the Athletic, on Saturday night. “You know why. For all the things you wrote.” Of course Klopp’s outburst seems to have provoked all the usual trimmings of shock and outrage from all the usual places. Personally, I’m surprised this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often. Particularly when you consider the rawness of the emotions involved, the artificiality of the setting, the staggering gulf in expertise between those doing the asking and those doing the answering.