Jürgen Klopp is taking time to look into the future between the Hamburg and Cologne games and makes the clarion call for a catch-up race. “When, in ten years time, you look back at 2014 will you really remember what was happening? Eight players taking part in training with three youth team players joining in. And then, in May 2015 will you still remember what was up then? Maybe, but the chance is there and that’s where we are right now,” said Borussia Dortmund’s coach in an interview with the FAZ newspaper.

Borussia are hoping to bring some stability to affairs and find their form thus ensuring that they slip no further behind in the race for automatic Champions League qualification. How to manage that? Well firstly calmly and through hard work, “From me, as the coach, it is a time for some damned hard work, as simple as that!”  

“We will pull together and are all pulling in the same direction so that we get out of this mess,” stressed Klopp having, for the first time in his nine years in Dortmund, seen his side lose four of its opening seven games. “If I had lost my belief, which I haven’t by the way, it would be very tough to deal with the current situation.”

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Klopp can do a ‘crisis’; he knows that himself as do his bosses at BVB. Klopp: “It is a time for proper coaching, especially at a time when things aren’t quite going our way. Yes, we have made mistakes but they weren’t bad enough to lead to us having just seven points. I am very self-critical, I also respect the opinions of some of my critics but the crucial point is that I know I haven’t left anything out there, I am giving my all and I haven’t lost my fire or anything else for that matter.”

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Ergo: “Everything, then, is in place for us to turn things around, we just need to start that process. It could all end in as a glorious passage in our history. When, in ten years time, you look back at 2014 will you really remember what was happening? Eight players taking part in training with three youth team players joining in. And then, in May 2015 will you still remember what was up then? Maybe, but the chance is there and that’s where we are right now.”

Klopp actually sees the current dip in fortunes as a chance for growth and positivity, a chance to become better aware of the way the team functions, “Whilst it isn’t exactly fun to be experiencing the problems we are now, it is possible that the experience can give us all perspective, to not take things for granted, because in this game nothing can be taken for granted. The current emphasis on particularities of our methods is something that given our current situation needs clarifying. Things turn in this game not by ten or twenty percent swings but in two or three percent changes. You can do 96% right and still lose a game 1-0.”

Source: kicker.de