"Yeah, yeah. I every day, actually. [I say to] myself, in the morning: 'GET UP!'" That's Jurgen Klopp on the prospect of a return to management. Draw your own conclusions.
The former Liverpool boss has been everywhere at this World Cup — cowboy hats with Thomas Muller in Texas, padel with Dirk Nowitzki on his birthday, a photo op next to a Luis Diaz Adidas billboard in New York, a bear hug from Lionel Messi after his record-breaking brace against Austria. Anyone tracking Klopp's itinerary these past two weeks would be forgiven for thinking he's the main attraction.
He's here officially as an analyst for German broadcaster Magenta TV, and he's been sharp in that role — dismissive of Rafael van der Vaart's Van Dijk-as-Boeing-747 take ("if he ever says something positive about a player, I'm willing to take him seriously again"), measured but honest on the hydration breaks dividing opinion at the tournament ("it's definitely too long — for drinking, you don't need two and a half minutes"), and candid to the point of abruptness when a journalist tried to pull him into the Bastian Schweinsteiger racism controversy. He shut that down fast and walked.
The Normal One, thriving
What's striking isn't just that Klopp is enjoying himself. It's how completely he seems to have shed the weight of being a manager. The intensity, the press conference battles, the 50-game seasons — none of it is visible here. In its place is someone genuinely at ease, tagging former players on Instagram, posing with WWE wrestlers, cracking toilet jokes about hydration breaks on live TV.
His Instagram bio reads "The Normal One" — the tagline he adopted when he left Liverpool in May 2024. It was always part of his brand. Right now, it looks like his actual life.
Brief reunions with Alexis Mac Allister, Virgil van Dijk and Jordan Henderson at the tournament have served as warm reminders of what he built at Anfield — six years that ended with a Premier League title, a Champions League, and a fanbase that still hasn't fully moved on. The Liverpool faithful watching him grin next to a Diaz billboard will feel that familiar pull. Some will dream.
A comeback that isn't happening
Those dreams should probably be shelved. Klopp is now Red Bull's global head of soccer — a role built around influence and vision rather than training ground routines and press conferences. It suits him. The World Cup appearance is an extension of that: high-profile, opinionated, liberated from the result-driven pressure that defines club management.
Every time the return question lands — and it lands constantly — he deflects with charm and just enough ambiguity to keep people asking. But the ambiguity is the answer. A man genuinely weighing a comeback doesn't spend the World Cup doing this. He watches tape. He takes calls. He doesn't pose with Sheamus.
"We will see. Who knows?" he said this week. Who knows, indeed. But the picture with the Luis Diaz billboard says more than any press conference answer ever could.
