David Wagner

Huddersfield Town Manager.

- Chris Dunlavy

DAVID Wagner was once asked by a reporter from the Daily Mail if he was merely a clone of his friend and mentor Jurgen Klopp.

“Who is telling you this?” said the German. “You should sue them. He is 1.93 metres tall, I am 1.83. He is fair skinned, I am dark-skinned. He has blond hair, I have black hair. If each spectacle wearer with a three-day beard is a Klopp clone, we have 49 million of them in Germany!”

Wagner takes all such comparisons with good grace. His relationship with Klopp – and the debt he owes the Liverpool boss – ensures that.

Friends since they played together at Mainz in the nineties, Wagner would try to persuade his lanky room-mate to stop smoking during long-distance runs. “The annoying thing was, he could still run forever,” said Wagner.

When Klopp got married, Wagner was best man. When Wagner had a daughter, he asked Klopp to be Godfather.

The pair bounced off each other. Wagner more studious and thoughtful, Klopp extrovert and dynamic. “We would go to parties and, at the start nobody there would know him,” Wagner once said. “Afterwards, everybody would be like ‘Wow, Jurgen is great’.”

Over time, their qualities would rub off on each other.

In 2011, after both journeymen had gone the distance, it was Klopp’s turn to offer advice, persuading his old team-mate to join him as Under-23 coach at Dortmund, instead of completing his training as a teacher.

“I spoke to David,” said Klopp. “I said ‘You played as a professional. Now you studied two subjects at university.