Liverpool's decline / rebuild job would still be a good 4-5 years away, their core players are 26-28, giving them at least a good 3-4 years even for their oldest players.
I was hoping Klopp left in 2022 after his usual 7 years, but unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case. Whether he stays longer to rebuild or leaves is anyone's guess, but of course a rebuild will be hard, even SAF struggled around 03-05. But like SAF Klopp seems to sign players remarkably well, so if he did stay for a long time I don't see why he couldn't do it.
There's a lot of worry on here about Liverpool's rebuilding "problem", which smacks of trying to divert attention from the current (real) problem of having a Liverpool side that are easing themselves into their first PL trophy for 30 years...
The news doesn't get better for those who don't like 'pool. When they played their kids (who were well and truly beaten against Villa, and who did surprisingly well against Everton), we finally got some public insight about how the internals are all set up. The kids regularly play the first team in training, and they're
apparently ahead this year. Each "kid" is groomed to slot into a specific place in the first team, semi-regularly trains with the guy who holds that place (and those that normally sit on the bench) and gets familiar with the style of play and requirements he'd need to step up and claim it for himself. Playing against the guy who's holding that place down gives a clear idea of where the kid is, relatively speaking. Klopp knows where he needs reinforcements and where he can develop internally.
It's not radical stuff, I'm sure loads of clubs do it, but it's apparently new for Liverpool - before Klopp the kids (generally) trained separately, and only the coaches regularly met. This whole philosophy of progressively stepping up from young age to old, with *specific* goals and targets is new, at least to Liverpool.
And here, I can offer some insight that isn't often made publicly available. My kid (10 going on 11) is in one of the Liverpool academy over
here in the US in the Bay Area, CA. In 2016 when Liverpool came over to play their Summer tour, they beat AC Milan in the Levi's stadium here in Santa Clara. The day after the match, Klopp and co were at the Sunday training for the kids (yes the *real* kids, including the 7-year olds). He was crouching down, giving advice to these little kids about how to improve their play as a team rather than individually, was talking to the trainers (most of whom are ex-pros) about the kids, and taking a genuine interest in how things were going. The Liverpool academy here was pretty skills-focussed before this (you needed to master a given technique before you'd go on to do something else). There's still an element of that now, but the focus changed after Klopp's visit to make it more focussed on how the team as a whole performs.
Now the chances of my kid ever playing for, well, anyone is vanishingly remote. He plays with his team because he loves the sport, but realistically he's got a better chance in life by doing well at school. Still, he got advice from Klopp about how and when to run, and how that would help his team, (in conjunction with a couple of his team-mates; they were all told that *if* this happens, *and* they can do *this*, then... etc.) and the same advice was clearly given to the trainers, because it became a staple of how the team now trains (we train 3 times per week and have a game every weekend, so I get to watch a lot
). There was and is a marked difference in how they play their game - I mean it's constantly evolving, but the running approach, the support offered to team-mates, and the ethos of "us" rather than "me" definitely changed from the training perspective.
So if he's willing to take the time to help out a bunch of kids on the opposite side of the planet, only loosely associated with LFC, I can only imagine the effect he has on the *actual* academy day-in, day-out. It's a truism that you can't focus on everything in this life, but somehow he does seem to be able to focus on everything he's doing
at the time he's doing it. He also seems to have a plan for how everything should fit together - maybe not in detail, but at a level that lets things just gel together without too much friction.
And then of course, he's also got all the options in the transfer market, where he's had pretty good results too.
I honestly don't think that Liverpool have been in a better situation with regard to long-term progress ever - and I've been watching them now for 45 years. Even if (when) he goes, if the same team ethos can be carried over (it's been 4 years now since he was last this far west in the US and the impact is still obvious from that one visit), the future will be bright indeed.
Well, this turned out to be far longer than I'd expected when I started, sorry for that
I'll finish with one more observation - in person, he's a lot fecking taller than he appears on telly!
