Downton Abbey, old LFC clips and new hobbies: Life in lockdown with Klopp

In a wide-ranging and lively conversation, the manager lifted the lid on how he is keeping himself occupied in his moments of downtime at his family home.

From what he’s watching on television, the music he’s been listening to and the new hobbies he’s taken up, Klopp offered a unique insight into his life away from football.

The boss also shared old photographs he’d been sent in a former classmates’ WhatsApp group in recent weeks.

You can watch the feature in full via the video below, or scroll down to enjoy an extended transcript.

Jürgen, you mentioned in the last interview you’d watched the Taken trilogy. Have you watched anything new since we last spoke?

The supporters will probably like that or maybe not, I don’t know, but we watched Downton Abbey, which I really like, I really like a lot. We only watch television in the evening, but what can you do apart from playing games and stuff like that? We watch quite a few things. Last night I watched, until late, Icarus – very interesting. Meanwhile, I never watched Marvel movies. I saw now Ironman and stuff like this, which I enjoyed as well. You don’t have to think a lot. This kind of stuff, just entertainment because I cannot watch all the news over the day. It doesn’t help if you always know the news numbers or stuff like that. I wait for some proper developments in the right direction and then I can watch the news as well. I’m informed all the time but I don’t want to hear everything people could say about it because, as a human being, I need a balance between good and bad news. As long as that’s not there, I have to judge it a little bit to help myself a little bit.

What’s your favourite genre of film and TV shows?

It’s action, absolutely action. I like that. The last time when I said Taken, Bourne, of course Mission Impossible, all that stuff. It’s really a fast or a quick movie, where a lot of things happen in a short period of time. But I watch other movies as well. What is the name, Out of Africa? It’s an older movie I think, Robert Redford, and I never saw that before. But my missus saw it and she wanted to watch it again and watched it. It’s a nice story as well. I’m not fixed in one genre or whatever. I like movies and my favourites movies are, for sure, this kind of The Waterboy, Dumb and Dumber, really silly movies, Happy Gilmore. So, I’m not alone and my problem is that I laugh that loud and long that everybody who watches the movie with me feels slightly annoyed or interrupted and cannot understand what is the next joke because I’m still laughing about the last one. It’s not a pure joy to watch a comedy with me but I like it and from time to time I do it.

What kind of watcher are you? Are you someone who gives an opinion on how you think it’s going to end if it’s an action or drama?

I don’t do that. If you watch a crime movie, I’m in it and want to know who it is. But when I was a kid my elder sister was always easy to wind up because when I told her after five minutes, ‘I think he was the guy who killed the guy’, she’d [go], ‘Really? Really do you think so?’ I was never like this, I can wait and I don’t speak a lot during movies. A good movie is like a holiday for your mind because the movie’s that good that you cannot think about anything else, you don’t have your smartphone, you don’t answer phone calls. If you find a movie like that then it was a really, really good movie. That’s what I really enjoy.

You mentioned Downton Abbey at the start, are there any other TV shows that you’ve been watching?

It was too much that I can’t remember. Somebody could tell me, ‘You saw that movie already a month or two ago’. And I say, ‘Really? Did I?’ So I can enjoy the same movie a couple of times obviously! I don’t really know and I don’t really remember it. What we do in the moment, we live together, my elder son is here with us. He was in here when the lockdown started, so he’s still here. Every night one of us is in charge of the remote control and can decide what we watch. When I’m in charge it’s always kind of action or a documentary. We have all our favourites but I forget the favourites of the others as soon as I switch the television off, so we can watch it again.

There is one documentary everyone is talking about and it’s Tiger King. Have you watched it?

I haven’t seen it yet. I read about it. I’m not sure if I want to see it, to be honest. I’m not sure why you would want to watch this kind of stuff but probably one time I will start it and then maybe I understand why everybody is talking about it.

On Sunday night there were reruns of four Liverpool games on TV in the UK. Did you happen to catch them?

Yeah, I watched the first two and I had goosebumps all over. Last week I had kind of a flash, I’m not sure if it’s the right word, but I felt fire in me, so I sent [videos] in the players’ group. I started with a video about the trophy celebration after the Champions League, it popped up on my YouTube list and I watched it, three or four minutes. So I put it in the group with the little phrase, ‘Still true’. By the way, I said we played some exceptional games and then it went to the Barcelona game, then I sent Man City at home, the Leicester away game, the United at home game. So there were quite a few nice games – these two-and-a-half, three-minute clips. I tell the boys, ‘Come on, send your favourite videos from the last year or last years’. There were quite a few nice ones. The boys sent a lot of their own videos which they made when we were on the truck driving through the city. You can see that they really enjoyed that and they are looking forward to something similar. It was nice. I saw the Barcelona game, this shortcut of it. The Dortmund game was incredible – I have goosebumps really all over, it was just the atmosphere, the game. Dortmund had quite a few chances, to be honest, but we did well! I hated the goals we conceded still, that’s crazy – just last line too deep and stuff like that. But yeah, that’s how it is and I enjoyed Sunday night a lot.

I think some of the others were watching on Sunday night. I saw Andy Robertson put something on his Instagram about it. Were there any comments from the lads about the reruns?

Yeah, at half-time against Barcelona, ‘Something’s going wrong. We have to make a change!’ I think Robbo himself texted that if I’m right, and angry Gini had to come on. Of course there’s a lot of banter around, it’s really nice. We feel always together, to be honest, but in these moments you feel it especially. That’s really nice. Doing the same thing in the same moment is really cool and connects you on a different level.

You mentioned about browsing YouTube, is it just mainly Liverpool content you’re looking at or anything else you’d recommend to our supporters?

A little bit of music. Some singers obviously do some good stuff on YouTube, matching with other top-class singers. I like that. There are not a lot of good things in the moment but, of course, some good things are that I have time to do different stuff. I never had time before. Doing these kind of things is really nice. Usually I use YouTube on my phone only for football things and now more often than not I use it for other things and see other videos. I like that. I have time to do it – what I never had before. I learn a lot of new things at the moment. Maybe I can use it afterwards, but I still cannot sing so that will not help.

Which musicians have you been looking at?

I forgot the names! Sting had a really nice session with a few other famous musicians. There’s a nice couple, father and daughter both with incredible voices. When you find them once, you will find all the other videos of them as well because they pop up the next day. That’s really nice, I enjoy that. These are my holiday in my moments. That’s all cool. Reading books, stuff like that, audiobooks, all that stuff. I don’t know how I could miss that, it’s maybe not the best book in the world, but when it came out I didn’t read it – Meteor from Dan Brown, which I read in the moment. Just this kind of stuff.

On learning new skills, I’ve been told there are a couple of other things you’ve learnt during your time at home. Could you reveal what they are?

They are challenges, a lot of challenges. I’m not sure if I told that last time but I’m now in charge of dishwashing, which is nice actually. I enjoy it. I’m master of that little machine now. And I did my first scrambled eggs. Nothing else since then because Ulla was impressed about the scrambled eggs but didn’t want to give me another opportunity since then, I didn’t really ask for it. But the challenge for next week is I’m 52 now and I cannot tie a tie. This week now, Dennis and I, we will learn to tie a tie. After this week I should be able to tie a tie. It will probably take a full week because my hands are completely useless usually, so it will be funny.

Where did the interest in cooking come from?

From eating! Because the thing is, I never thought that much about eating as I do in the moment, not that I eat that much. We have to think a lot about what you eat – we do not have to but we do that. Usually I eat in the moment when I’m aware of food, so when I have a full day at Melwood – [where there is] food all day – in the moment when you get hungry you go and eat. I thought, OK, at least one thing I should be able to do apart from heating water, scrambled eggs I like a lot and I did that. It depends on how long the lockdown will be, maybe I will have another meal which I can do.

Is the running a new hobby or something you’ve done for a while?

I finished my career when I was 33. I became a manager obviously overnight. Then the first six months maybe, I was part of the running sessions because I was young enough, a player, but then I forgot being part of it and that was pretty much the moment when I stopped running. A year ago or so I started running on the treadmill because when I tried it a few years ago I realised my knees hurt, like it is when you get older. So I did it on the treadmill, that worked really well but it’s too boring. So now I tried it once to go outside and I enjoyed it a lot. Since we have the lockdown – you are allowed to go out for exercising – so pretty much every day and improvement! I improved my time. I ordered a running watch, hopefully it arrives today, that would be nice. All that stuff. I enjoy it a lot. We live in a really nice area and for this hour, going out for an hour for a run, if we wouldn’t be allowed to do that I would miss it massively.

Finally, something a lot of people have been doing in this lockdown period is looking back at old photos and thinking of old memories. Have you had a chance to look at some old photos of yourself?

Yes. To be honest, we are in a time where social distancing is probably the word of the year. But in another kind, I’m social connecting again with people I didn’t speak [to] for a long time. I love what I usually do, I love my job really, but in all the WhatsApp groups, the emoji is my favourite answer; I read it, I saw it, but I have no time for a longer answer when I am at home at night because I had my phone in my hand the whole day because people called me and I had to call people, so I don’t think about it. Now I’m completely in it, my friends are really surprised how active I am. We have a classmates group. I don’t have any pictures here for myself, they are all in my mother’s house, I never thought about getting them or whatever. But my cousin, who was in my class with me, she started with baby photos and then I asked in the classmates group if they have some pictures and then they were shooting like crazy! I had a wonderful day, to be honest – I was really laughing so hard. A lot of nice memories came up, it was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do. And now I have all these pictures, which is nice.

Will you reveal any of these pictures to our supporters?

I have no problem with that. I looked crazy, strange, when I was young, maybe people say today as well. But I never cared about that, as you can see on the pictures probably. You can show them to everybody, I’m not afraid of that. It will be a big laugh for some, for sure. In hard times, if people can laugh about me, I’m happy with that. No problem.

• Photos: Jürgen Klopp... as you've never seen him before!