What Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp’s Depression Rebuttal Tells Us About Success

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was clearly frustrated, he felt he had been misinterpreted.

“You have to remember I’m not native”, he said gesticulating with his hands.

The Liverpool boss was responding to further questions from journalists about his comment that the team was “mentally fatigued” after the 1-0 defeat to Brighton.

He was keen to clarify, it was concentration he meant not weakness.

“Tonight, was really tough we had two tough games. We’re are not mentally fatigued, like depressed or whatever. Just for tonight we were not fresh enough.

“Don’t forget I’m not native and don’t make stories off my bad English.”

He then pivoted to one of his favorite bugbears, the relentless schedule.

“[Before the next game] We now have one more day to recover, which to footballer’s and bodies in general means the world.”

It’s not the first time this season Klopp has been confrontational when he has suspected he is being baited into a soundbite or an unfair narrative is being woven.

He clashed with former Manchester United stalwart Roy Keane on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football when he thought the Irishman called Liverpool “sloppy.”

Then there was the infamous on-camera argument with BT reporter, Des Kelly after the 1-1 draw with Brighton when he attacked the broadcaster for his team’s lack of rest.

On this occasion, it’s understandable why Klopp would want to emphasize that his description of mental fatigue referred to concentration not depression.

But it shows that, even for managers as smart and sensitive as the German, certain areas of mental wellness remain taboo, at least in public.

This is interesting because the German’s career shows that he is amongst the best managers at dealing with the psychological aspects of the game.

Six final defeats before victory

Part of Jurgen Klopp’s brilliance as a manager is his ability to deal with failure.

This is a coach, who prior to 2019, lost six finals in a row, including the 2013 and 2018 Champions League finals.

Victory in the 2019 Champions League final against Tottenham Hotspur was all the more impressive as it came off the back of another near-miss, his Liverpool side finishing runners-up to Manchester City by a single point.

These are far from the only knocks he’s suffered.

He was relegated in his first job with Mainz and, at Borussia Dortmund, had to contend with talismanic figures like Robert Lewandowski, Shinji Kagawa and Henrikh Mkhitaryan leaving year-after-year.

But taking Liverpool from repeated second-placed finishers to serial champions is arguable his most impressive achievement.

Studies show that being a runner-up often generates a worse response in athletes than third place.

This is because coming so close to a prize can level sportspeople plagued by the sense of what “might have been.”

The world got a glimpse into how Klopp deals with so many near-misses from an unusual source in October last year.

A letter from the manager published online by an 11-year old Liverpool fan, who’d written to Klopp because he was anxious about his move from primary to secondary school, went viral.

In it, Klopp explained how he dealt with anxiety and failure.

“You do not need to worry about bad things happening,” he wrote.

“As you know I lost more than a few finals and this isn’t a good feeling but with the help of my family and friends I kept going and in the end we were able to enjoy some really good times.

“If I had dwelled on the bad moments I know that this would not have been possible so please be positive about yourself.”

He also told the boy that he too “gets nervous” and would be worried if he didn’t.

A new challenge – Arrival fallacy?

Klopp now faces a very different type of challenge from bouncing back from defeat; how to push a team that has achieved so much to new heights.

In the wake of a great triumph, there are different motivational tests like the ‘arrival fallacy.’

“Arrival fallacy is this illusion that once we make it, once we attain our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness,” said Harvard psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, who coined the phrase.

He believes the illusion explains why many so-called successful people; Hollywood actors or musicians suffer from depression. Once they achieve their goal it doesn’t provide the happiness expected.

I’m not suggesting that Klopp or Liverpool are experiencing the depths that Ben-Shahar describes.

But re-energizing the extreme levels of effort and concentration required for success in elite sport can be a hard thing to do.

Repeat champions like Michael Jordan and Lance Armstrong both describe how they exaggerated rivalries with competitors to increase their urge to win.

While manager’s like Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho picked fights with soccer authorities and the media at various times to spur on their teams.  

It should be pointed out that Klopp was in a similar position around a decade ago at Borussia Dortmund.

Having won the side’s first title in ten years in 2010/11 he managed to repeat the feat the following year.

Then, as the team struggled to hit the same levels in the Bundesliga the following season, he reached the Champions League final, which they lost to rivals Bayern Munich.

The final proved to be the high-watermark of his reign and the team’s performance which gradually declined until his departure in 2015.

Having taken the same group of players to Champions League and Premier League title glory in successive seasons, the task at Liverpool is harder, the goals are not new, but are just as challenging.

The benefits of denial in elite athletes

There is another potential explanation for managers, like Klopp, being wary the topic of depression, the right use of denial can be beneficial to elite athletes.

A 1991 study by researchers Joanna Starek and Caroline Keating found that self-deception in athletes enhances motivation and performance during competition.

Starek and Keating used a self-deception questionnaire (SDQ) to measure the tendency of elite-level swimmers to perceive words with neutral rather than negative associations.

Those who reported fewer negative words were classified as having higher levels of self-deception.

Based on these scores, the researchers predicted who would qualify for a national championship.

They found that successful swimmers scored higher on the SDQ and reported fewer negative words than those who were unsuccessful.  

Interestingly the tendency to perceive words with positive rather than neutral associations was not clearly related to competitive success, which suggests blocking out the bad is more important than focusing on the good.

The benefits of being able to use denial in a positive way include stress reduction, a positive self-bias, and increased pain tolerance, which the researchers point out “could enhance motivation and performance during competitive tasks. “

There are of course lots of negative aspects to self-deception too and the theory that it is beneficial in elite athletes should not be viewed as universal.

But opening up the discussion around mental wellness would be beneficial to everyone involved in elite sport.

The role of the mind remains one of the last relatively unexplored areas in soccer, hopefully, that will change.

Klopp’s career shows that top-level managers are adept at dealing with failure, in the future maybe we will be able to understand exactly how he does it.

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