Peter Krawietz Reveals the Halftime Hustle of Liverpool’s Dressing Room

Before every half-time, Jürgen Klopp’s assistant Peter Krawietz disappears from the Liverpool bench. He’s off on a mission. No, I don’t mean the toilet.

Krawietz is a busy bee over the final ten minutes of any first half. He’s been compiling a list of pros and cons for the Reds in an effort to determine the proper corrections the players should make for the restart. He’s also tracking down video examples to present and communicating his findings with Pep Lijnders and Klopp. In the end, the manager will only have a handful of minutes to get new information into the players heads.

Speaking to the club’s official site, Krawietz provided a detailed description of Liverpool’s halftime extravaganza.

“You probably always see me with the book, writing things down,” says Krawietz.

“What I’m doing there is knowing exactly the situations where we do well or the situations where we have problems, where we don’t probably find the solutions. I notice situations where we have problems in defending so probably the opponent can create chances against us.

“Then we try to create an overview and shortly before half-time, with around 35 minutes played, I try on the bench, together probably with Pep and Jürgen as well, to get an idea on what are the talking points for half-time. Always the question is: ‘How can we help our players? What is necessary to do in the second half?’

“Is it to keep going like we do, so we realise our ideas are right and we just have to follow them, or we played very good so the information will just be ‘keep on going like this’?

“Or, we have problems so we have to think already about the solution or what we have to change in the second half. All these are considerations and for the solutions for the second half, I try to find pictures and clips which can help and support Jürgen’s half-time talk.

“As you can imagine, all the manager has is probably five or six minutes to talk and then it can be possible - it’s not like this in every game, but it’s possible - that we find the right clip to show the players in order to support the half-time talk of Jürgen.

“Three or four minutes before half-time, I leave the bench and go to the dressing room. I meet there Harry [Kingston] and Mark [Leyland] and I try to choose the right clips I noticed during the first half, I will have a look again to decide if this clip is the right one and if we can use it.

“Of course, because of the time pressure it’s stressful! You don’t have too much time, to be honest, so it has to be very precise. These are very intense minutes and then when I am happy that I have found a maximum of one, two or three clips which I think can help, my colleagues Jürgen and Pep come in and I present the clips and tell them what I think could help.

“Then we make a decision together, if we want to show it or not, and the question behind this decision is always orientated on the solution, or one solution, for the second half and if it is helpful for the players that we show it.”

It’s an interesting window into the club’s approach to tweaking their game plan and there are plenty more snippets to enjoy. Honestly, we don’t get enough Krawietz in our lives. Hit the link in the article and get on it.