Jürgen Klopp on new deal: 'I'm full of passion for this club'

Exactly nine months on from his appointment as manager, the German committed his future to the Reds along with assistants Zeljko Buvac and Peter Krawietz.

And shortly before the opening pre-season friendly of the new campaign – at Tranmere Rovers – Klopp expressed his delight with the deal in an exclusive Liverpoolfc.com interview.

A new contract with Liverpool – it certainly seems like you’re happy being the manager. How pleased are you?

Very! I’m happy being Liverpool manager, that’s right. What can I say? When I came here, it was the biggest honour I could imagine that somebody had the idea to ask me if I wanted to be Liverpool manager. It’s wonderful. It was not my idea, to be honest, but I was quite happy when I heard about it. It feels a little bit like a penalty; everybody is celebrating when they hear the whistle, but first of all you have to score and finish. That’s what we have to do now. It’s a nice situation, we really like it. We love to be here and love to work together – at Melwood, Chapel Street and the whole club. It’s a really good relationship and it’s the basis for our future. I like it as a sign, it’s nice. So, let’s go.

Zeljko and Peter have extended their deals too. How important was that to you?

There was no other chance, of course. I’m related to these two guys now! It’s good. Plus Pep and John. It’s good to work. We use our experience and use the fire in the group, the learning attitude in the group and we want to bring this into the team. We are quite ambitious and we want to reach a lot. We try to find our players, we try to find Liverpool players who want to play and we don’t have to convince with money; we want to convince them because of the club, because of the atmosphere in Liverpool, because of Anfield, because of the position of the club, because of the chance to create something special in the future. Now we will go on.

You’ve said if we’re together all the time then we’ll be stronger and the success will be sweeter. What represents sweet success for you?

We will see, but sweet success is something special and that’s what we’ll try to achieve, 100 per cent. Being together for a long time means you know more about each other and you can use your skills better. If you are always new somewhere then you always have to be different and show something special. We want to have that it’s natural that we show our best – that’s the atmosphere we want to create for our players. There’s pressure in the squad, there will be some pressure in the squad next year because we will have a lot of good players in the squad, at 100 per cent, and they will push each other at the highest level – and I will help with that! In the end, if you see the pictures around Melwood, the changing room has had some new painting – newer faces, but no actual faces on the wall, so we have to create a situation where the next painter thinks ‘OK, this team should be on the wall’. I’m really happy about the chance I have now. I can promise I will do my very best, full of power, full of passion for this club. I will try.