Jürgen Klopp Named Top Manager in Bundesliga Poll

Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp has been named football’s top manager by Kicker this week, with the German magazine polling nearly 250 Bundesliga players who picked the current Reds boss ahead of Pep Guardiola, Zinedine Zidane, and Jupp Heynckes.

As part of their season-ending poll of the Bundesliga, players on all 18 teams were asked which manager in world football they considered the best, and Klopp earned more than a third of all votes, ending up with 35.7% and the victory over Guardiola’s 31.3%.

Combined, the Liverpool and Manchester City managers a full took two-thirds of all votes—at least as far as players in Germany are concerned, there’s a very clear top two here. The next two managers, ex-Real Madrid boss Zidane and Bayern legend Heynckes, earned 10.9% of the total vote.

And while Klopp might be getting a bump due to nationality—change it to a poll or Premier League or La Liga players, say, and it would be easy to imagine Guardiola besting Klopp—it’s difficult to argue that the top four aren’t indeed the game’s best right now.