Do we like them?

Do we like Jürgen Klopp?

Our score: 9 out of 10. Backed Rainbow Laces, shut down race-baiting about his squad, and gave €100,000 of his own to a charity, with only temper and a tongue slip against him.

Klopp played over 300 games, mostly for Mainz, then became their head coach in 2001 and won promotion to the Bundesliga in his third season. He took over a struggling Borussia Dortmund in 2008 and turned them into back-to-back Bundesliga champions. Then came Liverpool: a Champions League win in 2019 and the club's first Premier League title.

The goss on him is small. In June, working as a TV pundit at the World Cup, he said Julian Nagelsmann was picking the team 'still', and Germany heard it as a dig. Klopp apologised on air, called himself an idiot and said the staff were fully behind Nagelsmann. That's a bloke owning a slip-up fast, not a scandal.

On the harm test he comes up clean, and then some. In 2021 he said of the Rainbow Laces campaign that it was “a great campaign” and that he loved it every year. In October he dismissed far-right posts about the colour of his Germany squad and said there was “absolutely no reason to pay attention to these people”. After the state election in Saxony-Anhalt he said he did not want to leave national pride to the wrong people.

The big recent story is the Germany job. After Nagelsmann quit following the World Cup exit, the DFB presented Klopp on 24 July on a four-year deal through Euro 2028 and the 2030 World Cup. He had spent about a year and a half as Red Bull's head of global soccer, and the DFB paid a Red Bull-linked charity €1 million and agreed to play three games in Leipzig. That's the one bit of company worth watching, but it's a transfer deal, not a harm.

The good stuff is real. After leaving Liverpool he became the first honorary ambassador of the club's charity foundation and gave €100,000 of his own money, with part going to food support during school holidays. The foundation's chief executive said he had wanted to do something before he left.

So: no lawsuits or criminal matters turned up in our searches, no slide into conspiracy theories, and no harmful company beyond a corporate job. He's a famously fiery touchline character who has copped football discipline in the past, but nothing here points to a bully or a fraud. He's earned the 9; the only thing missing is a decade more of the same.