Xabi Alonso, currently in charge of Bayer Leverkusen, is the standout candidate to replace Jurgen Klopp in the summer. Photo: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
The wrong decision can set a club back for years, and incidents like the one Liverpool repeated at Wembley today with a trophy on the line could once again become as rare as ever for the other slumbering giants of English football who are not easily awakened.
The brilliant end to the Jurgen Klopp era continues in the League Cup final, with his team favorites despite an injury crisis to start the weekend top of the Premier League. Many of the club's American owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) may well be in London to watch Klopp potentially add a fifth major honor to his record at Liverpool. Behind the scenes, no one needs to be told that decision time is approaching for the club.
And it's not just the manager: Xabi Alonso remains the standout candidate ahead of Ruben Amorim and Julian Nagelsmann. This is also a case of a structure that supports the chosen man. In the first decade of ownership, FSG achieved success after several misadventures. Mike Gordon, a football-focused hedge fund investor who is one of FSG's key shareholders, has been instrumental in the club's rejuvenation and recruitment efforts. The question is, can they do it again?
Jurgen Klopp and FSG shareholder Mike Gordon with the Champions League trophy. Gordon returned to an important role at Liverpool. Photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool via Getty Images
Important appointments of a manager and sporting director await, and everything else follows from this. FSG's track record suggests it has a good opportunity by now, although not everything US investors have tried has worked — the less said about Project Big Picture and the Super League the better. FSG also considered selling the club but still remains the owner. In terms of building a club and everything connected with it, we have accumulated a lot of experience.
Perhaps that's why, having stepped away from Liverpool duties in November 2022 as offers to sell surged again, Gordon has since returned to what many say is a key role. Before the summer, FSG will have to re-form the club to support the new coach.
He has the advantage of all the experience he has accumulated, which currently puts him ahead of Ineos at Manchester United and the Eghbali-Boheli show at Chelsea. The question is how they seek to use it. As for the new athletic director, Gordon went back to Michael Edwards, another key figure from the previous decade, to offer him a return but has so far declined. Frédéric Massara, once of Milan, is available, making him a good option, as is Thiago Pinto, a former Roma player. Florent Ghisolfi seems unlikely given that his current employer, Nice, is owned by Ineos.
The importance of this decision is unlikely to escape the attention of FSG, a cautious, process-oriented creature who likes to take his time. The transformation has been pretty impressive so far, but it's only getting more complicated. The great United team of the 1990s was rebuilt for the 2000s by the same man, Sir Alex Ferguson, because English football was simpler back then. Today, the market for off-field specialists is as brutal as the market for managers.
Notably, FSG this month reunited with one of its US sports network's best-known employees, Major League Baseball executive Theo Epstein. He was the general manager of the FSG Boston Red Sox franchise when it finally won the World Series after an 86-year wait in 2004 and again in 2007. He later moved to the Chicago Cubs and ended a 71-year wait for the same. He returns to FSG as a co-owner and a statement on his arrival named EPL Football as one of the businesses he will lead.
This is a pivotal period for the Premier League's elite
Back in 2012, FSG unsuccessfully tried to appoint Klopp before settling on Brendan Rodgers. As Rodgers' days waned, the club's then director of research, Ian Graham, built a model to measure managers' performance against bookmakers' estimates of potential league wins. There were many other elements to the process and in the end the three standouts were Klopp, Carlo Ancelotti and Eddie Howe. Klopp was in a comfortable lead. More experienced than Howe and much less of a beneficiary of big spending than Ancelotti.
It's important to note that Klopp was available in 2015 and Graham's research showed that his final season in the Bundesliga, in which Borussia Dortmund failed, was an anomaly. Of course, the next time around, under Thomas Tuchel, they bounced back five places to finish second. Of all the major figures at Liverpool over the last decade, there is no doubt that Klopp has been the most important. He turned a very well run club into something more. The study, which eliminated all small doubts, was confirmed.
With all this in mind, FSG will be watching with interest this week's series of interviews with Sir Jim Ratcliffe from London on United's future under Ineos. Ratcliffe clearly failed to support Erik ten Hag and reworked Ferguson's famous line about knocking Liverpool out of their position for the modern era as if it had been said upon his appointment in 1986. It was spoken by Ferguson in 2002, when he was safe. He was too astute to lead it in an era when United, as now, were constantly trailing in the league.
Despite all this, Ratcliffe seemed to have grasped the mood in English football which: once, the game continues. Ineos aggressively sought to achieve immediate management goals. Pep Guardiola and Txiki Begiristain will not remain at Manchester City indefinitely. They also have important meetings to make at Anfield and they do so from a strong position. However, as United have proven over the last 10 years, it's not hard to throw away a winning hand.
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