Jürgen Klopp wins LMA Manager of the Year award

Liverpool’s Premier League-winning boss was announced as the 2019-20 recipient of the prestigious accolade on Monday, having guided his team to a club-record 99 points in the top flight this season. 

“I am absolutely delighted to get this wonderful trophy. It’s really wonderful and I had already the opportunity to have a look who won it before and there are obviously a lot of big, big Liverpool names involved,” Klopp said.

“Not only Liverpool names but big, big Liverpool names as well. Bill Shankly, I think, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, Kenny [Dalglish] - it looks like he’s all over the trophy everywhere! Brendan [Rodgers] won it, well deserved. 

Watch: Jürgen Klopp on LMA Manager of the Year award

“And Sir Alex Ferguson - and I know it’s not 100 per cent appropriate as a Liverpool manager - but I admire him. He was the first British manager I met and we had breakfast together. It was long ago and I’m not sure if he remembers it still, but I remember it forever because it was for me in this moment like meeting the Pope if you want! 

“It was absolutely great and from the first second we really clicked and I wouldn’t have thought in that moment that one day I would hold the trophy in my hands, which is named after him. But, I have to say ‘thank you’ to a lot of people. It’s easy to say and sometimes I think it sounds like we have to say it but it’s easy to say in my case: I am here on behalf of my coaches.

“I said it a lot of times, that I’m OK as a manager, but they make me, they make us, a really special bunch of football brains and I love to work with them together. To work together with Pep Lijnders, Peter Krawietz, John Achterberg, Vitor Matos and Jack Robinson - it’s a pleasure. 

“I could carry on with the list forever because we have so many great people here who made it happen that this year we won the title, and I only got this trophy because of that, I know. My players, all the people that I work together with, I take this and I love it for all of us together and I’m happy to show you a few pictures and maybe we can make a few pictures together. Then we will all remember it forever.

“Thank you very much, a very special season with a very special award in the end. Thank you, I am really honoured to get it.”

Images courtesy of Darcy McKellar/LMA

The annual Manager of the Year prize, which was inaugurated in its current guise in 1993, is voted for by professional managers and awarded to “the manager who, in their opinion, has made the greatest use of the resources available to them in the current season”.

It can be presented to any boss across all of English football’s top four divisions, the FA Women’s Super League or Women’s Championship.

Klopp - who was last year inducted into the LMA’s Hall of Fame and is the reigning Best FIFA Men’s Coach - follows 2018-19 Manager of the Year Chris Wilder, with Brendan Rodgers the Reds’ previous winner in 2013-14.

Images courtesy of Darcy McKellar/LMA