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As a man three months into an indefinite sabbatical, Jurgen Klopp is seldom in the mood to indulge interview requests. But on a fleeting visit to the Paralympics, there is one subject for which he is happy to make an exception. For here at Paris’ La Chapelle Arena, just north of Montmartre, he finds himself reunited with Wojtek Czyz, the man whose inexhaustible spirit has sustained him for over two decades. “It is,” Klopp says, “the most inspiring story I’ve heard in my life. It has to be told.”
Unbeknownst to anyone outside his dressing-room walls, Klopp has long been informing his players about Czyz, citing him as the ultimate example of overcoming brutal misfortune. In his first season as a manager, at Mainz in 2001, he heard about a young midfielder who had just signed a professional contract at Fortuna Cologne, only for a goalkeeper to jump on his knee so violently that his lower left leg had to be amputated.
Fast-forward 23 years, and the same person is embarking on a pursuit of an eighth Paralympic medal – not in sprinting or long jump, his first loves beyond his horror accident, but in para-badminton, a sport he has only just learnt.
“He’s too crazy,” Klopp says of his friend, who, despite a 21-5, 21-2 thrashing by Britain’s Daniel Bethell, cannot stop smiling at this unexpected rendezvous. “We are completely different. He’s constantly doing things that I’m not brave enough to do. He told me only yesterday how easy it is to dive with sharks and I said, ‘Yeah, I heard it now, I’m still not doing it.’ He’s 44, by the way. I stood next to Elena, his incredible wife, and we had tears in our eyes. I know sport is always about the result and winning, but there’s much more behind that story, and being here was so touching that I couldn’t get my head around it.”
Through his connection with Czyz, Klopp has developed a saying: “The best, the most honest stories are in para-sports.” Where he is more accustomed to dealing with players earning £300,000 a week, he draws a deeper satisfaction, you sense, from his bond with an athlete whose response to a shattering twist of fate illustrates sport at its purest.
“We experienced the Olympics here in Paris and before that the world was in a big, big crisis,” he says. “For those 2½ weeks we forgot it, because that’s what sport can do. That’s what the Paralympics can do, too – there’s absolutely no difference. That’s what I love about sport, that it can change the world, sometimes only for moments and sometimes for ever.”
Klopp has consistently used Czyz as a reference point in his life. When Klopp failed twice to win promotion with Mainz, he staved off the gloom by thinking of the player who had seen his childhood ambitions thwarted in horrifying fashion at just 21 years old. “My experience,” as he puts it, “was like a kids’ birthday party by comparison.”
The pair first met in the early stages of a painful convalescence, when Klopp’s Mainz played a charity match against Kaiserslautern, for whom Czyz competed using a prosthetic leg. The relationship deepened when, unexpectedly, they saw each other on a beach in Lisbon in 2015, just as Klopp was waiting for a call from his agent to confirm his move to Liverpool. From that chance encounter, Klopp supported a sailing project that Czyz had hatched, even if it at first sounded too ambitious to be true.
Czyz’s intention was to buy a catamaran with his wife and then sail it around the world with a prosthesis workshop on board, so that they could provide artificial limbs in developing countries. They have been as good as their word, helping 90 amputees to receive prosthetics for free and teaching them how to walk. “Nobody else would have done that,” Klopp says. “Especially with not knowing how to sail.”
It is why he believes, passionately, that broadcasters should be injecting greater money into the Paralympics. “We are all ready to watch much more than we show,” he says. “Broadcasting is a business, 100 per cent, I understand that. But I really think we should show so much more, because it’s so encouraging, so wonderful.”
‘Jurgen is family’
To see Klopp and Czyz together is to recognise that they have similarly hyperactive streaks. Czyz, not content with being a four-time Paralympic champion in athletics, turned his attentions to badminton simply to set himself a fresh challenge in his fifth decade. While he is roundly beaten by Bethell on this occasion, you would not bet against him working out how to adapt. Here is a figure who has upended his life to such an extent that he has transferred his allegiance from Germany to New Zealand, having become trapped in the South Pacific in 2020 due to pandemic border closures. He and his wife have since set up their own honey-making business in Hamilton.
His joy at having Klopp back by his side is self-evident. “Jurgen is family,” he says. “It’s incredible that Jurgen wants to come. He has been involved in all my close decisions. For his 50th birthday, he said, ‘I don’t want presents, I want to make a donation to you to sail.’ He’s really an incredible guy. Now he wants to spend his time as a grandpa. When you dedicate yourself to something 100 per cent for so many years, then there is also a right time to say, ‘I’ve had enough.’”
At 57, there is a feeling that Klopp’s change of pace is merely temporary. Since those lachrymose farewells at Anfield, he has been linked to every job from Barcelona to England. Not that he looks ready to suspend his life of leisure any time soon. “Don’t worry about me,” he grins. “I can fill my time easily.”