Cut from the same cloth - but now Jose Mourinho and Jurgen Klopp are on different paths

Managers only do so much. But English football loves nothing more than to place them on a pedestal, to paint the coach as the God-like determinant of everything about their team. Largely speaking, that view is nonsense. Just occasionally, it’s exactly right.

Most of the time it seems simplistic to assign the Premier League’s rotating cast of managers with sole responsibility for the performances of their 11 players, as is the popular wont. In the cases of Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho, though, it doesn’t seem silly at all. With the possible exception of Pep Guardiola, they are perhaps the two coaches who build their teams in their own image to a greater extent than anyone else in the world. Managers only do so much, but Klopp and Mourinho do as much as anyone.

A quick exercise: try to think of what a Tony Pulis team looks like – or a Mark Hughes team, or a Claudio Ranieri team, even a Carlo Ancelotti team. You’ll likely come up with a set of central traits that remain broadly similar, and a lot more that vary hugely from job to job. With Klopp and Mourinho, there is no such leeway: a Klopp side, just like a Mourinho one, is a distinctive beast. When you see one in action, you recognise it for what it is.

The parallels don’t end there. Mourinho and Klopp may be worlds apart in terms of style of play, but they share a core similarity: both pitch themselves as the embattled underdog. These days, though, only one of them can do so with any credibility.

While Mourinho’s past claims to the status of ‘little horse’ have often rung hollow, they’ve never actually been baseless: his Porto and Chelsea sides were genuine arrivistes, showing up to upset the established order; Inter had fallen off the European map when he took charge; and even at Real Madrid, he had Guardiola’s epochal Barcelona side to pitch himself against. The Chelsea he took over in 2013 had fallen away, neither the newest nor the richest of England’s noveau riche.

He can make no such claims now. He is in charge of England’s foremost superclub, in the throne of the most venerated manager of all time, presiding over the most expensive squad in football history. As much as he might flinch at the very notion, Jose Mourinho has become an establishment figure.

The transformation lays bare the essential paradox of his methods, one that’s become ever plainer as his career has taken him to bigger and bigger clubs: how can a wildly successful manager also be a beleaguered stooge, forever battling the odds? His challenge now, in the tradition of great United managers, is to keep up the act while all evidence points the other way.

It’s a task that Jurgen Klopp, no stranger to success himself, has not had to undertake. For the most part, this is due to the jobs he’s taken – Dortmund and Liverpool are no minnows but they are clear outsiders compared to their more moneyed, galactico-hoovering peers. A league title for Liverpool would be a surprise – an upset, even – in a way that would never be the case at Old Trafford.

The flip-side, of course, is that Klopp’s clubs have far slimmer chances of success. Underdogs are underdogs for a reason, and Klopp’s career trophy haul is equal to what Mourinho won in the 2009/10 season alone. Mourinho has won six major trophies for every one of Klopp’s. (“But over a far longer career,” you might think. Not so: their first managerial jobs came only five months apart, in the 2000/01 season. Mourinho has indeed had the lengthier career – but barely.)

In many ways, then, Mourinho and Klopp are the mirror images of each other: Mourinho, once a fiery young insurgent, now hops between Europe’s superclubs, gathering trophies each year, his place in the pantheon ensured. Klopp, meanwhile, continues to work outside of the gilded elite, his medal collection far smaller but his anti-establishment credentials intact and his dark-horse claims, relatively speaking, valid.

There’s no understating the enormity of Sunday’s clash for Klopp’s men, who have hit a brick wall after that seemingly credential-confirming win over Manchester City on New Year’s Eve, winless in three. The bookies have his opponents down as favourites – just as he’d like it – while Chelsea, the league’s pace setters, travel to the champions the day before. It’s not implausible that Liverpool could be within touching distance of top spot by the end of the weekend, with Conte and co due to visit Anfield before the month’s out.

Klopp’s men remain rightful outsiders for both this game and the league. But if there’s one thing the German has proven over his career – something that Mourinho, albeit in a former life, has demonstrated as well – it’s that, just occasionally, the little horse can win the race.