Jurgen Klopp moved on quickly after Liverpool break-up no-one saw coming

On this day in 2018, it was announced that Zeljko Buvac, Liverpool’s assistant manager, would not work with the first team for the rest of that season

It was one of those stories that you didn’t see coming. That you couldn’t actually believe.

Eight years ago today it was confirmed that Zeljko Buvac, Liverpool’s assistant manager, would not work with the first team for the remainder of the 2017-18 season.

It was a huge shock. Buvac was Jurgen Klopp’s closest confidant and the man the Reds boss affectionately called ‘The Brain’.

And what about the timing? Just two days before the crucial Champions League semi-final second-leg in Rome versus Roma.

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Naturally, speculation was rife that Buvac would never return; speculation that proved to be true.

But at the time Liverpool would not comment other than to say that Bosnian’s departure was for ‘personal reasons’ – and that his position as Klopp’s right-hand man was unaffected.

And he was very much Klopp’s right-hand man. Buvac had been by the German’s side for 17 years – at Mainz, Borussia Dortmund and then at Liverpool.

They were clearly close. But sources at the time suggested Buvac had become increasingly distant and withdrawn, with the 0-0 draw with Stoke City at Anfield on April 28, 2018, proving to be his last match of the season – and his last for the club.

The 64-year-old never returned to Anfield. Again, at the time, there was fear among Reds fans that they had been here before.

Liverpool were not quite the same after Gerard Houllier lost his number two, Patrice Bergues, in 2001. So, too, Pako Ayesteran after he left his position as Rafa Benitez’s assistant manager in 2007.

History, however, did not repeat itself. Yes, the Reds went on to lose the 2018 Champions League final, going down 3-1 to Real Madrid in Kiev.

But from that moment on they were virtually unstoppable, winning the 2019 Champions League final in Madrid, where they beat Tottenham Hotspur 2-0, and following that by lifting the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA World Club Cup, and eventually, the one supporters wanted the most, the Premier League title.

And a key feature of the Reds’ rise was the man who ultimately replaced Buvac, Pep Lijnders.

Lijnders returned to Anfield in June 2018 after a stint managing in Holland, but it was not until Buvac officially left his post, in January 2019, that the Dutchman was confirmed as Liverpool’s assistant manager.

In the updated version of his biography on Klopp, German football expert Raphael Honigstein said that Buvac had become unhappy at the club due to Lijnders’ growing influence at the club before he left for a six-month stint back in his native Holland.

“Buvac gave the impression that he wasn’t happy with the increasing influence of the fourth assistant coach Pepijn Lijnders, ” wrote Honigstein.

“The relationship between Buvac and Klopp had survived, but both could simply no longer work together.”

Buvac had been linked with the Arsenal job, following Arsene Wenger’s departure, but he did not return to football until February 2020, when he was announced as the new sporting director of Dynamo Moscow in Russia, where he remains.

By that stage, Klopp and Liverpool had already proved they could move on from the man who was such an important figure on the training ground at Melwood.

And not just move on, but get even better.

Later, both Buvac and Klopp spoke about the end of their working relationship.

“By and large for all these 18 years (with Klopp) I felt myself in charge,” Buvac told Nobel. “I did all the same work, I just didn’t have that much attention – all these interviews, but I didn’t need it.

“Everyone asks how and why, but people live together for 30 years and then they break up. It happens.”

While, in an interview with BT Sport’s Boot Room Boys, Klopp said: “I worked together for a long time with Zeljko Buvac, who was a more experienced coach than I was when we started because he was older and worked already a little bit.

“We worked very close for a long time together and then it didn’t work out anymore and we brought in Lijnders and Vitor (Matos) now. They are like energisers, they are the next generation.

“They have a different view, they are like training machines. I say ‘I want to play like this’ or ‘I want to play like this’ and they shoot like 25 sessions out of the hip like, ‘which one do you want?’

“They keep you really young and on your toes. That’s really good. So in my case, I would be nowhere near [where I am] without the people over the years around me.

“But I think the people around me know that they are only here because I am around as well and together we are pretty okay.”