Klopp gives Liverpool something to laugh — and cheer — about

Most soccer coaches prowl the sideline with the joy and passion of someone awaiting a root canal. Juergen Klopp races up and down his, high-fiving fans and behaving like a kid on Christmas morning.

Most coaches mourn defeats the way others mourn the death of a close friend. Klopp has been known to laugh after losses. And while most coaches see their players as untouchable members of an unwashed caste, Klopp has twice broken his prescription glasses in wild on-field hugfests with his team.

Clearly Klopp, Liverpool’s German-born Teutonic Care Bear, is not like most coaches.

“I’m quite emotional right?” Klopp asked unnecessarily in a phone interview punctuated by frequent laughter. “But not always. You would be surprised when you see me working on all the other stuff in my job. My brain has more influence then my heart or my stomach.

“But in the game it’s a special situation.”

And it often produces special results. Just 33 when he took the reins at Mainz, Klopp wound up lifting the team into German Bundesliga for the first time, then won a spot in the UEFA Cup. In seven years at Borussia Dortmund he averaged 19 wins a season, captured two Bundesliga titles, three domestic cups and made it to the Champions League final.

Now he’s trying to turn around a Liverpool team that hasn’t won a league title in more than a quarter of a century. He’ll get his first full season there started Wednesday when the Reds meet English Premier League rival Chelsea in an exhibition at the Rose Bowl (8:35 p.m., ESPN), where Klopp is most likely to be most animated person on the field.

Organizers are expecting a crowd of approximately 50,000.

When Klopp joined Liverpool eight games into last season, he replaced the dour Brendan Rodgers, who was often as expressionless as a Russian spy. Thirteen minutes into his introductory news conference, Klopp had all of Liverpool laughing.

“They love it,” Christopher Beesley, a soccer writer for the Liverpool Echo, said of the city’s reaction to Klopp’s offbeat style. “Liverpool fans would never refer to his touchline demeanor as goofiness. They’re a very emotional club with emotional fans and his antics are lapped up.

“He does get carried away somewhat. But he is great entertainment.”

He’s also very unusual in a league in which successful coaches such as Manchester United’s Jose Mourinho and Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger generally keep a stiff upper lip win, lose or draw. Klopp, on the other hand, excitedly grasped hands with his players and led them on the field to celebrate a December tie.

“No one told me I should be more like Jose Mourinho,” Klopp said with a chuckle. “Actually I’m not too interested in what people think about me. My family, what they think, it’s pretty important for me.”

But Klopp is already showing signs it won’t be all rainbows and butterflies at Liverpool this year. When he opened his first preseason camp in England earlier this month, he did so with three-a-day training sessions led by new fitness coach Andreas Kornmayer, whom he plucked from the staff at Bayern Munich.

Then earlier this week he banished Mamadou Sakho from the team’s U.S. tour, sending him back to England after reportedly determining the French defender had an attitude problem.

Both moves were intended to put Klopp’s stamp on the team he inherited from Rodgers, then coached to the finals of both the Europa League and Capital One Cup and to an eighth-place finish in the Premier League.

“Developing the style of play, giving a plan for each situation, things like this you cannot do in three days before a game,” he said. “So I think from our point of view we did an OK job in the last season. We learned a lot.

“Now we want to use this information about each other and fight for everything we think we can reach. That’s the job for next season.”

And likely several seasons after that. Although a recent survey by the Swiss-based International Centre for Sports Studies put the life expectancy for a head coach in the Premier League at 14 1/2 months, earlier this month Liverpool’s U.S.-based owners extended Klopp’s contract through the 2021 season.

Asked if he’s having fun yet, Klopp answered first with a deep laugh.

“C’mon!,” he finally said. “I’m now 49. But I love the game too much to stop and do something serious. When somebody gave me the opportunity to be a manager, at this moment my life really actually start[ed].

“I love everything I do. I know it’s not the most important thing in the world but it’s important because we can do a few things no other part of life can show. So I’m really happy about my situation. And yes sometimes I show it, that’s true.”