Echoes of the Fall – Is Jürgen Klopp’s Final Dortmund Season Happening All Over Again at Liverpool?

“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes” - Mark Twain.

When Liverpool were in the process of hiring their 21st-century idol; the man who, like so few others in the club’s history, could guide them to a raucous, unrelenting state of football revelry, there was a remark made by Ian Graham, Liverpool’s contemporary Director of Research.

He was, with the hope of convincing Jurgen Klopp of its merits, using data to analyse Dortmund’s 2-0 loss to Mainz in Klopp’s final season, one of those results that truly stuck in Klopp’s craw as his side fell to eighteenth place in the table – that’s stone, dead, bottom in the Bundesliga – only fifteen months after being in the Champions League final.

According to the New York Times, Klopp is said to have marvelled at Graham’s description of the game: that Dortmund were killing Mainz, that it was incredulous and astounding for Dortmund to lose it 2-0. Dortmund, to quote the New York Times piece, lost that game “because of two fluky errors.”