Liverpool’s Success About Patience and Hard Work Says Krawietz

The ultimate goal of Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool’s coaching staff when they signed on to manage Liverpool in 2015 was to win titles and to reestablish the club at the pinnacle of English and European football—but it was never about doing that overnight.

They knew it would be a long road to the top, and that they would only get there with patience and by setting achievable short term goals. So said assistant Peter Krawietz, who reflected this week on the journey he’s taken in five years since joining Liverpool.

“That was the target when we came here,” Krawietz told the club’s official website. “It’s never guaranteed, being successful and winning titles, so it was a long journey. What we wanted to be successful and success, for me, is always a question of definition.

“So even in the years before when we couldn’t fight for the league title, we still were already successful in terms of what was possible. We set the right targets and to really start a great development, which now comes to the point that we are allowed to fight for trophies.”

Now that they’ve gotten to the top, the goal is to stay there—but there’s nothing different about that goal, really, than about the goals they set along the way and the steps they took to achieve them. The basic recipe will remain the same, and patience is a big part of it.

Time, patience, and continuing development with the players they have and any new ones who may arrive in the coming weeks and months. And then putting in the hard work week in and week out, because you don’t get trophies for winning transfer windows.

“You can’t force anything,” Krawietz added. “You set the right targets and and you find the right set-up for the players you have. You start working and you start learning. Then we started to develop. These steps and patience—a healthy development, I would say.”