Jürgen Klopp's Challenge: Reviving Germany's Football Spirit
Robert Huth doesn’t bother dressing it up. Asked what Jürgen Klopp has to deliver with Germany to justify the huge expectations around his appointment, the former international fires back: “Be less sh*t! The bar isn't very high, I think, at the moment.”
Blunt, yes. But it captures the mood of a country that has watched its national team drift since lifting the World Cup in 2014 and now suddenly feels alive again.
Klopp effect before a ball is kicked
Huth, speaking to GOAL via SportsbookReview.com, says the change was instant. Germany have not played a single game under Klopp yet, but the shift in atmosphere, he insists, was felt the moment the deal was announced.
“What that appointment has done already in Germany, without Germany having played a game yet, is kind of brought that togetherness straight away – which kind of happened on the day he was appointed,” Huth explains. “Everyone was going, ‘yes, yes, now we've got that guy who we wanted 10 years ago’.”
Klopp’s CV is well known: the transformation of Borussia Dortmund, the Champions League and Premier League titles with Liverpool, the thunderous, emotional football that turned stadiums into cauldrons. For Huth, though, it’s more than tactics and trophies.
He's looking at the man, not just the manager.
“He’s got that personality, the mindset, the knowledge of what it takes to get a nation back together,” Huth says. That, in Germany’s current state, might be as important as any tactical tweak.
A press conference that made ex-players itch for their boots
The first real taste of “Klopp with the eagle on his chest” came at his unveiling. No game, no training session, just words. Yet Huth found himself reacting like a player again.
“I don't know if you saw his first press conference,” he says. “I was like, ‘oh, where are my boots, I want to put my boots back on and start playing again!’ Not that I would be selected, but do you know what I mean? Like, I was watching the press conference again.”
What struck him was the absence of gloss. No spin. No long-winded corporate jargon. Just a direct challenge.
“I can only imagine being an active player and listening to a press conference because there was no BS. There were no clever words,” Huth says. “It was like, ‘listen, if you want to play for Germany, you're going to have to run a bit harder, you're going to have to fight harder, this is going to mean a bit more when you put the badge on’.”
That demand – intensity, work, pride – has been the foundation of every Klopp side. Now it’s being nailed to the door of the national team.
No blame game, just standards
Klopp could easily have turned his first appearance into a referendum on his predecessors. Germany’s recent tournament record would have given him plenty of ammunition. Huth noticed that he didn’t go there.
“It could have been very easy to throw the previous managers under the bus, ‘that was rubbish’, which I don't think he did,” Huth points out. “He just went, ‘well, we need that bit more when comparing Germany to other nations that got further in the Euros and in the World Cup’.”
The message was clear: this isn’t about excuses, it’s about catching up. France. England. Brazil. Argentina. The benchmark is obvious, and Germany haven’t been close enough.
Klopp has started the hard work early. Huth has liked what he’s seen behind the scenes: “So far, he talks a good game. The feedback's been good from the Bundesliga clubs. He's gone to plenty of games in pre-season and in the club games. So it looks great on paper.”
Expectations reset – but not lowered
Germany will host Euro 2028 before any World Cup tilt under Klopp, and the pressure on the new man will be enormous. Yet Huth isn’t demanding an instant trophy to call the project a success.
He is, though, demanding a Germany that looks like Germany again.
“I fully imagine Germany is going to be a lot better in the upcoming tournaments than they have been in the past,” he says. “Not to say that they're going to win it. I think even themselves said, ‘listen, we're going to try and win it, of course, that's the aim, but there's France, there's England, there's Brazil, there's Argentina, there's some proper other football nations out there, but we're going to get out there and certainly leave everything on a pitch’.”
That last line is the crux. Leave everything on the pitch. It sounds basic, almost cliché, yet Huth is adamant that this has not been the reality in recent years.
“That hasn’t been the case in Germany’s situation over the last few years,” he admits. “So I'm excited. Come on, Germany!”
From decline to “heavy metal football”?
Huth doesn’t sugar-coat the decline. “We've been sh*t since 2014,” he says, a brutal summary of a decade that brought early exits and bruised pride. In that context, his first tangible wish under Klopp is modest.
“A semi-final would be all right,” he says. Not parades down the Straße des 17. Juni. Not a new golden era guaranteed. Just a proper run at the business end of a major tournament.
The real dream lies in something else: identity. A recognisable style. A national team that looks like Klopp’s Liverpool and Dortmund in all the right ways.
“If Germany can replicate any kind of Liverpool's and Dortmund's intensity, pace, energy, spirit, I'm getting excited!” Huth says. “I know it's difficult to replicate it in the national team, but if they can do it, if you can do it, that would be heavy metal football!”
That is the promise hanging over this new era: not just results, but a soundtrack. Noise, chaos, power. After years of flat notes and early exits, Germany have hired the man who built entire seasons on that kind of rhythm.
Now the question is simple: can Klopp turn the national team into his loudest band yet?
