On Saturday night in Kiev, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp will have his second tilt at winning a Champions League final.
As his side face Real Madrid, arguably the biggest club in the world, Klopp will go through a maelstrom of emotions on the touchline, an animated figure who has taken Liverpool to the brink of a high not reached since that famous night in Istanbul 13 years ago.
But when I caught up with him last week at Liverpool’s training camp in Marbella, he was relaxed and insightful as he discussed the people who have shaped him and his career – as well as Saturday night’s intriguing final.
Klopp never regarded himself as anything other than an enthusiastic but mediocre footballer, playing for little money in the fairly modest environs of second division side Mainz, with whom he spent a decade between 1990 and 2001.
He had to supplement his semi-professional wages by working in a bar and also in a warehouse that distributed new films to cinemas.
Klopp will now try to do with Liverpool what he came so close to achieving with former club Dortmund.
Victory against Madrid would be the culmination of the meeting he had in the law offices of his new employers on 1 October 2015, when he told them Liverpool should, and could, be a regular force in Europe.
He added that his aim was not just to get them back to that elite level but to transform them into the kind of team no-one wanted to face.
Job done, or at least part of it.
Source: BBC news
