There are some people in life you have to begrudgingly respect. In a football sense, Sir Alex Ferguson might be the ultimate. No one in the modern era has matched his longevity at the top of the game. Have there been better teams? Yes. Was his career in Europe, despite winning two European Cups, kind of, sort of average? Yes. But what’s not in doubt is the stranglehold he held over English football for two decades.
Under Ferguson, Manchester United were the standard. Like the sun rising in the East and setting in the West, they were a constant: 90 points, parade. Rinse. Repeat.
Finish above United and you won the league, it was that simple. What Ferguson built has taken on even more significance when you factor in the club’s decline since he left. All the built-in advantages -- the youth system, the culture, the history, the giant transfer budget -- are still there. And yet United haven’t sniffed a title race since he left.
Building and sustaining are concepts that have fascinated me throughout my career. I’ve written about them a bunch in these pages. Say it with me: Maintaining something is never as satisfying as building it. Yet to Ferguson and his band of merry men it was! Calling that “unusual” would be like calling a bilingual retriever unusual.
Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool are now at the start of what they hope will continue to be a trophy-laden run. No one will get the amount of time Ferguson got in his job with United, it’s just not possible in the modern game -- owners, coaches and fans all suffer burnout too readily, divorce is the default. But if any club was set-up for a decade-long run, it would be this club at this time with this manager. The squad is young. The manager still has all the fire that led him to the top. All of them seem ready and willing to cash-in on this window to its max rather than jump ship to one of the Spanish giants -- something that doomed Liverpool runs in the past.
In the past couple of weeks, I have been reading and rereading a whole bunch of Ferguson stuff, trying to figure out the secret sauce, and how it might be applicable to Klopp’s group.
(Sidebar: Ferguson’s second autobiography, covering the United years, is as plodding and awful as his first is zesty and brilliant. If you’re interested in going through a Ferguson deep-dive, I’d recommend post-career interviews and in-the-moment profiles from the FourFourTwo archives as well as some of the nationals. And read the first book; save your time and money on the second)
There are plenty of lessons Klopp can take from Liverpool's old nemesis.
Adaptability
Ferguson’s reputation as an old-school, man-manager who lacked some of the sophistication necessary to triumph in Europe is overstated. Ferguson’s record in the Champions League wasn’t great (that’s a hilarious sentence to write for someone who won the damn thing twice and clinched the Cup Winners Cup with Aberdeen), but it often had little to do with his tactical savvy.
Ferguson was much more adaptable than his reputation. He was happy to bin-off one system and replace it with another. What was interesting, though, is how those changes came incrementally rather than in a wholesale change.
He built systems to suit his players rather than vice versa. Would he add a player or two with an intention to switch styles? Sure. But it was all through the guise of a long-term evolution, where he viewed the team six, twelve, twenty-four months down the line, and where he thought football -- specifically the Premier League -- was going. He didn’t necessarily innovate, but he wanted to be at the forefront of trends, relying on his team’s superior financial might to add the right kind of talent so that he would hit the same evolutionary point as the innovators at the same time. Essentially: he used cash to jump the queue.
Take Ferguson’s two best teams: the ‘99 treble winners and his 2008 double-winning team. They couldn’t have been more different. The treble winners played a disciplined, rigid style. The defenders defended, midfielders shuffled, and a quartet of strikers scored. Everyone had a role and stuck too it. They played an orthodox 4-4-2. Compared to what we see in the Premier League these days, it was caveman football.
Now take that ‘08 side, which, along with this current Liverpool side and City’s Centurians, is probably the best the league has seen. That was one of those teams where their best games emitted audible purrs. They were so swift, so ferocious, so clinical.
Ferguson ditched his previous rigidity for a more egalitarian style, switching formations with it. Europe’s best centre-back partnership sat at the back, with a pair of screening midfielders in front of them. Everything else was a free-for-all: Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez, Ryan Giggs, and Nani popping up anywhere and everywhere, positions be damned.
When you’re at the start of a dynastic run, when the championships are flowing and the champagne bottles are popping, it’s easy to delude yourself that you’ve figured this whole football thing out.
The best adapt. Constantly. Ferguson’s crowning achievement was in ‘99 with a primitive style, but he never stopped trying to improve -- he was open to new ideas, new ways.
There’s a lesson for Klopp in there somewhere. He has already shown a willingness to adapt and grow, to evolve. At Dortmund, he played with a fairly rigid 4-2-3-1 while developing the most sophisticated pressing system in Europe this side of Ariggo Sacchi. When he arrived at Liverpool, it was assumed he would pick up that model and plop it in the Premier League.
He didn’t. Klopp kept the core tenants but adapted the style. He shifted to a full-time 4-3-3, with Roberto Firmino playing the role as a false nine, a much different approach than the battering ram approach Klopp had used to success in Germany. His wide-forwards became wide forwards, serving, basically, as on-the-shoulder number nines, albeit ones flying in off the wing rather than starting centrally. They were to be the team’s main goal-scorers, and in Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané, Klopp struck the jackpot.
What will be the team’s next tactical evolution? We’ve already seen Klopp move away from some of the lightning strike stuff that was a hallmark of the early parts of his tenure. Liverpool have been more possession-oriented this season, partly by desire and partly by necessity. With opponents sagging off in order to limit the space behind their defensive line for Mané and Salah, Liverpool have had to develop more of a patient game, playing more of a tippy-tappy, in front of the midfield block style. As the results show, it’s been wildly effective.
What comes next? A shift back to 4-2-3-1, with Salah leading the tip of the spear as he has in short minutes when Klopp has toggled to that look in each of the past two seasons, or with Timo Werner leading the line? What about shifting Trent Alexander-Arnold into midfield, as the team’s creative pivot, and bringing in a more orthodox fullback?
Whatever it is, that Klopp has proven to be open to new ideas and fresh approaches is encouraging.
Transfer system
Ferguson’s transfer system was fairly generic: spend record-breaking sums on youngish players and then claim to have exceptional foresight and genius-like scouting tendencies.
Oh, wait, no, sorry. There was actually a system. It went something like this: First look to the youth system; then sign the best of the best in the Premier League, those who have proven they know how to operate at the top of the English game; then search for emerging talent across the world.
His biggest tenant: never, ever sign ready-formed, big-money players from non-Premier League clubs. Big reputations mean big ego, big demands, big wages, and big headaches.
Ferguson broke his rule only a couple of times. All were disasters. Juan Sebastian Veron is the most infamous. Veron was supposed to ignite United’s shift from the disciplined style of the late-90s to the one we saw in the late 2000s. But it was never a fit. The shift was too stark, Veron regularly flaunting the rules of the carefully calibrated system and leaving United disjointed with and without the ball.
And that was about it. During his two-decade run, Ferguson was forever flexing United's financial power to pick off the league's best up-and-comers or to swoop in and pinch away a want away star from a direct rival: Eric Cantona (Leeds), Andy Cole (Newcastle), Robin van Persie (Arsenal), Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Carrick (Tottenham). There were younger stars he pinched away from rising mid-table clubs or falling giants, too: Wayne Rooney (Everton), Carlos Tevez (West Ham), Ashley Young (Aston Villa), Dwight Yorke (Aston Villa), Rio Ferdinand (Leeds), Roy Keane (Nottingham Forest).
Almost all of Ferguson’s biggest whiffs were in the “emerging young players” category, those with some degree of promise but who lacked the technical or mental gifts to tough it out at a perennial contender: Diego Forlan, Bebé, Gabriel Obertan, Kleberson, etc. None of them cost that much, and all kept some semblance of re-sale value. Plus, those misses were offset by some outrageous hits: Cristiano Ronaldo, Peter Schmeichel, Nemanja Vidic, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Nani, Patrice Evra, Jaap Stam, and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Together, they cost less than £90 million combined. And more than half of that was tied up in Ronaldo and Van Nistelrooy, both of whom more earned the club its money back when they were sold to Real Madrid.
It was a simple formula, but it earned remarkable results.
Liverpool under Klopp are following a similar doctrine. The only ready-made, big-money signings they have added from Europe are Alisson and Naby Keita -- whether Salah falls into the emerging category or the ready-made one is for you to decide; he was certainly a monster in his final two seasons in Serie A, second only in the nerdy metrics to Lionel Messi in his attacking output, but his reputation was not as one of Europe’s finest.
Otherwise, Klopp’s team have focused on the Premier League: Mané, Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson, Gini Wijnaldum, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Xherdan Shaqiri. There have been those among the emerging sect: Joe Gomez (who might slide into the “youth” one given his age when he was poached from Charlton), Divock Origi, Fabinho, and Takumi Minamino. Then you have the new focus on the academy with Trent Alexander-Arnold working his way into the first team and showing a proven pipeline for the likes of Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott -- re-establishing an academy is a long-term thing, but Liverpool feel like they’re finally on the cusp of a special class. And then there are the holdovers from the Rodgers era: Milner, Firmino et al.
Interestingly, the player who currently inspires the most debate between supporters is Keita, one of the only big reputation, ready-made signings.
Liverpool aren’t in a financial position to bully the likes of Man City, United or Tottenham for their best players like Ferguson did back in the day. He would cherry-pick the best of the best from whichever team finished second or third in any given season, provided it wasn’t Arsenal. But Liverpool have still followed the essence of the template, grabbing those who are proven operators in the division and sprinkling in those from overseas who perfectly fit the team’s style or where the manager wants to take the team (Klopp famously likes to bring along new signings slowly).
Check out the latest from the rumour mill and you see Liverpool being linked to all kinds, but mostly Klopp is said to be interested in young players who still have their best football in front of them: Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, Jadon Sancho. It seems like Liverpool may be the front-runner for only one, but even he, Werner, despite having a pretty big reputation at this point, still fits within the Ferguson principles.
Ruthless
Probably the most famous Ferguson principle. No one was to be bigger than Manchester United, was Ferguson’s maxim. In truth, no one could be bigger than the manager. Van Nistelrooy was dumped. David Beckham was let go. Roy Keane, Denis Irwin, Gary Pallister, Steve Bruce, Andy Cole, and Wes Brown were all culled from the squad when Ferguson thought their time was up or the team needed to evolve. There was no sentimentality.
Klopp is going to face similarly tricky, complex choices during his time at the club. Great, great teams in the modern era have had around a four-year cycle. No manager since Ferguson has been able to build a second-cycle. More often than not, clubs opt to stick with a core group of players and ideals and swap out the manager -- see Chelsea or Man City. Or, the manager is so successful he is poached away for another gig.
Klopp has a rare chance to be the first post-Ferguson coach to build a second great team at the same club. Something will have to change, that’s just the way football is. Be clear, be thorough, be decisive, be bold. Be unpopular. It’s a necessary and basic trait for those who want to be dynastic architects: Bill Belichick in New England, Nick Saban in Alabama, Ferguson in Manchester. You could argue the end of Arsène Wenger’s reign at the very top of the game came when his ruthless streak -- those infamous battles with Ferguson -- subsided.
Is Klopp someone who can make courageous decisions, ones that get panned in the moment but that he feels, to his very bones, is the right one? Moving on from Salah or Firmino or Robertson or whatever the decision may wind up being?
Sure. For as much as Klopp casts a happy-go-lucky figure, he’s always been willing to flash his teeth (not the smile) when needed. We still don’t know all of the reasons why Željko Buvač, his long-term assistant and ally, left Liverpool. We do know it wasn’t exactly amicable.
First at Mainz and then at Dortmund, Klopp showed a ruthless streak. It’s not been as common as Ferguson’s (such is the way with someone who is more naturally able to charm and get players on his side) but it’s there if need be -- and if he’s to build a second great team during his Liverpool spell, there will be a need.
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Jürgen Klopp must follow tactic of Liverpool's biggest nemesis to ensure place among all-time greats - Liverpool.com
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