Feyenoord manager Arne Slot has confirmed he will replace Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, once the German steps down from his post at Anfield at the end of this season.
Pep Lijnders has been Klopp’s assistant at Liverpool since 2018, and he will also leave the Reds and take over as Red Bull Salzburg this summer.
Klopp will manage Liverpool for the last time on Sunday and ahead of this tie, Algemeen Dagblad had a detailed chat with Lijnders.
On the current mood at the Merseyside club, he said: “It’s emotional what’s happening this week. And then the last match still has to come…”
In the last two months, Manchester United and Atalanta knocked Liverpool out of the FA Cup and Europa League respectively, while the Reds managed only four wins from their last nine league games, which ended their hopes of winning the title this season.
The 41-year-old, who worked as a youth team coach at Liverpool in the 2014/15 season, has revealed his influence on youngsters at the clubs he’s worked at has convinced him to take the job at Red Bull Salzburg.
“If you look at my career, there is a very clear common thread: developing players and helping talent flow through,” Lijnders explained.
“At PSV, Ibrahim Afellay was the first talent to break through from the youth, more followed later. At FC Porto that was Ruben Neves. At Liverpool it started with Alexander-Arnold and this season we won the League Cup with seven or eight homegrown players in the final.
“Salzburg also stands for youth. And for dynamic, creative, a clear game idea, determined in what they want. They see change as a challenge. The conversations clicked from the first moment.”
Lijnders, who was Klopp’s assistant between 2015 and 2018, had a short spell at Dutch side NEC in 2018, which wasn’t a successful one. The Dutchman insists this experience was vital in helping both Klopp and Liverpool in the last six years.
“I take away that without that period I would never have been able to help Liverpool and Klopp, as I have done in the last six years,” he added.
“I already knew what it was like to be ultimately responsible for the youth teams of PSV, Porto and Liverpool. But not yet from a first team at professional level. At Liverpool they asked me back after NEC, but I would never have done it if I had only been asked back as ‘number 2’ in the staff.
“Over the past six years I have been given a lot of responsibility. Jurgen has let me do press conferences, match talks. Everything he does himself. “We do this job together”, he always says. And that’s how it really is. I know I am well prepared.”
