By Oliver Trust
BERLIN, May 23 (Xinhua) -- It is not hard to tell what the village of Glatten will look like this Saturday evening while the Champions League final being staged - the tiny place situated in the northern part of the Black Forest will be empty.
The local bar will, however, be serving more beer than usual. You will hardly find one of the 2,350 inhabitants not sitting in front of a television keeping their fingers crossed for the village's most famous son - one of Europe's top football coaches.
Most people in Glatten, 80 kilometers southwest of Stuttgart, can tell you a story about Liverpool's head coach Juergen Klopp, whose team will take on Real Madrid in the 2018 Champions League final in Kiev.
Even the very youngest can point to the house where Klopp grew up, and they know about his time in the primary school.
One of his closest friends, Hartmut Rath, was his "life insurance" at school. Klopp admitted that he "always pushed me and always knew the right answers to the teachers' questions." And while his mate Hartmut went for an A in his exams, Klopp was more than happy about a C. Both are said to have been rascals in their early years but were always in good terms with their fellow pupils.
He was a football fanatic, playing every minute he could and had talents in many other sports like tennis. Although he was gifted, Klopp only managed to play second division football for Mainz 05 (325 games).
"In my head, I was first division but my legs only were second division," Klopp said.
The real talents of the former striker and then defender lay in coaching; he admires full speed football. Before he felt ready for a big club like Liverpool and the Premier League, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur unsuccessfully tried to convince the 50-year-old to join them.
The 2011, 2012 league championships and the 2012 German Cup with Borussia Dortmund tell the story of the coaching genius from Klopp, who also led them to the 2013 Champions League final where they lost 2-1 to national rivals Bayern Munich.
In Mainz, Klopp developed his strong mentality in seven years of battling relegation as he did in endless training sessions with his father Norbert, an able goalkeeper and tennis player at the village club, SV Glatten.
His father and his later coach at Mainz, Wolfgang Frank, influenced him the most. Norbert Klopp passed on his sporting talents and charismatic character to his son, while to coach Juergen Klopp was shaped by Frank, who is described as being obsessed with football.
Isolde Reich, one of Klopp's two older sisters, says she will never forget the day she first saw her brother. Because doctors couldn't exclude possible complications occurring during pregnancy and birth, Klopp's mother Elisabeth went to a better equipped hospital in Stuttgart.
"They told us we would get a present when Mum returns," Reich remembers. "But all we got was a crying little brother." The disappointment wasn't a long-lasting one. Klopp's sister soon discovered "from now on I would not be required for the football sessions with my father. When Juergen was born my new life started," she says before adding she was the only girl in the entire Black Forest that had to play football.
From now brother Juergen carried the family's footballing hopes. He did much better at the pendulum header down at the little pitch near the little river Glatt fringed by lush green meadows and farm-houses.
Playing tennis, athletics, skiing, football - Klopp's father was a sports lover and the son willingly stepped into his footprints. "He once broke his collarbone. After only a week he turned up to team training with his bandaged shoulder in a sling and played ball-boy," said Klopp's first junior coach Ulrich Rath.
The Rath family is still in close contact with Klopp and are regular visitors to England. "Juergen has never forgotten where he comes from," said Rath.
Now the former little boy from the Black Forest, who has been infected with a never-ending passion for football and coaching, is challenging the world's most famous football club with his inspired team.
"To again reach such an important final as an underdog is a great achievement," commented Hans-Joachim Watzke adding that "he will motivate his side to the utmost and will be making jokes up right until the last minute to get everybody in the right mood."
The Borussia Dortmund CEO is still fond of what he calls Klopp's "special gift as he can combine his positive attitude for life with seriousness."
