Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool remind English football what it is good at

Gegenpressing, a more evolved version of closing opponents down, is what should have developed in England had we not lost faith in our own methods

Two games in five days, both 1-1 draws, both of the highest quality and played out with a ferocious intensity. There are plenty of reasons to believe Liverpool are moving forward under Jürgen Klopp. What he has also done is make Liverpool fun and, more than that, has demonstrated just how enjoyable, how good, English football – and an English style of football – can be.

Jürgen Klopp rises above schmaltz as Liverpool take another step forward

When Klopp arrived at Anfield, amid a cloud of excited chatter about gegenpressing, there were cynics who sniffed and asked just how new this great theory really was. How did this differ from “closing down”? To which the answer is that it doesn’t, not in essence. From the mid-60s onwards, English sides were noted for their willingness to chase the man in possession, to press. Energy and relentlessness were hallmarks of the English game.

In slightly differing forms, pressing sprang up roughly simultaneously in England, the Netherlands and the USSR and, for a time, European football was divided between a north that preferred a back four and pressing, and a south that sat off and deployed a libero. As with many innovations, it was as though the time was simply ripe for its development: the widespread adoption of the back four after the 1958 World Cup added to improvements in nutrition and sports science opened the doors and it was then simply down to radicals to push their way through.

Pressing lay at the heart of the success of English teams in European competition in the late 70s and early 80s. The title of Raphael Honigstein’s book on English football makes clear the characteristics of the English game that the rest of Europe feared: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. But then came the Heysel ban, that led to English teams, without regular competition against the European elite, being left behind and, just as significantly, developing a sense of inferiority.

Europe became Other again, an exotic and sophisticated place where they did things better than us. Every defeat seemed to fit the pattern. When Manchester United lost 4-0 in Barcelona in 1994, it seemed the ultimate confirmation of the trend, whereas a decade earlier such a result may have been explained less as the result of English failure than by reference to the quality of Johan Cruyff’s side or the way United were hampered by the foreigners ruling.

At the same time, at national level, the positivity that followed Italia 90 soon faded. England were dismal at Euro 92 and then failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. There was a recognition the zealotry of the long-ball theorist Charles Hughes and his influence over the national centre of excellence at Lilleshall had, in the words of Brian Glanville, “poisoned the wells of English football”.

What was needed, the cry went up, was more technical coaching to produce young players who were comfortable on the ball, who could pass. None of which was necessarily untrue – and the dearth of coaches in England in general remains a scandal – but the problem was that in the rush to improve, what had made English football great – our natural virtues, if you will – was forgotten. Holland had put England out of the 1994 World Cup and in 1995 Louis van Gaal’s great Ajax won the Champions League: the Dutch, then, was the model to follow. Then France won the World Cup in 1998 and Euro 2000: all aboard for Clairefontaine! Then the Spanish had their breakthrough and won three tournaments in a row: what was needed was more rondos, more places like La Masia, the Dutch model with a Catalan twist. Look at all the Italian coaches in the Premier League: let’s make St George’s Park our Coverciano. And now it’s Germany: their Reboot – to cite another Honigstein title – was the way to go.

And of course English football does have much to learn from other cultures: it’s absolutely not the case that English football in the early 90s was perfect and has somehow been adulterated. The issue is the Premier League response to every problem is to use its wealth to import. The default has become to buy its way out of trouble. The notion of improving existing resources has almost been forgotten so the mentality is that if our football has gone sour, it must be possible to ship in, wholesale, a model from outside.

It has perhaps taken Klopp to remind us what we used to be good at. Gegenpressing, a more evolved version of closing opponents down, of the pressing that brought success before, is what should have developed in England had we not lost faith in our own methods. Klopp himself has never made any secret of the influence of English football on his thinking.

And the result is matches like the Tottenham game on Saturday and the one at Borussia Dortmund on Thursday that resemble a slightly quicker, slightly slicker version of the football of the 80s. Such matters are subjective but there were many who were left a little cold by the virtuosity of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, of the basketball-style rhythm of each side attacking in turn. Liverpool’s football in the past week, against other sides committed to pressing, has been a reminder there can still be quality in high-tempo, percussive football. If quick balls over the top can bypass the press, then why not?

Liverpool may not have won either game but there is reason for them to feel highly encouraged. And for English football in general, there has been a perhaps overdue reminder that its virtues, albeit filtered through two Germans and an Argentinian, are nothing to be ashamed of.