If Liverpool are hurtling towards a bold new era, post-Jurgen Klopp, then the very same can be said of their owners Fenway Sports Group.
It was back in November when FSG learned of Klopp’s decision to step away at the end of the Premier League season as he announced the shock move to stand down after nearly nine, often trophy-laden years.
The subsequent search for his replacement did not immediately begin, though, with the Boston-based owners taking a step back to first assess their options. Before making a call on just who would be the man to step into the shoes of such a wildly popular and revered figure like Klopp, it needed to be first established what the best working practices were to even begin the pursuit.
It was a measured approach but the idea of sounding out successors before it was common knowledge that Klopp would be leaving was a troubling prospect for the club. Liverpool were desperate to ensure so the news of their departing manager was delivered on their terms, through official channels and only when the time was right.
Days later, the first step towards an entirely new structure was taken when Michael Edwards was contacted about a potential return. The respected Edwards, who served at Anfield for around a decade, with six of them coming as the Reds’ first-ever sporting director, developed something of a mythical reputation among fans during his time due to the low profile he kept alongside the club’s success in the transfer window.
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Having stepped away to kick-start his ‘Ludonautics’ firm with Liverpool’s former head of research Dr Ian Graham, though, Edwards had little appetite to return to his old role. Instead a new position was offered within the Fenway fold itself.
Face to face talks were held in Boston in early March and shortly after Edwards was named as FSG’s ‘CEO of football’ with a broader remit drawn up for him to embark on the American’s plan for a controversial multi-club model while effectively replacing Mike Gordon as the day to day head of Liverpool FC.
Gordon remains on the Fenway board that Edwards will report to but the decision to finally step back completes a plan that has been in the works for the best part of 18 months, even if the FSG president might find it hard to fully keep out of the loop at Anfield after keeping in regular, almost daily contact with Klopp during his own tenure.
“I’ll be pleasantly surprised if Mike Gordon can keep his hands off because he loves to be involved,” laughs former Liverpool CEO Peter Moore, in a chat with the ECHO from his Santa Barbara home. “With Jurgen gone now that might be different because they had such a close relationship but Jurgen appreciated calling him every day.
“For that perspective, it is almost a clean sheet of paper you’re starting with and Mike truly is stepping back and letting Michael do more day-to-day operational things then that is fine. It is kind of just a reset like it was when I got there in early 2017.”
Edwards’ experience and what was privately described as his “existing institutional knowledge” is viewed as a firm foundation to build out from and the return of Julian Ward, Edwards former assistant and successor at Anfield, as FSG’s technical director was also undertaken with the same lines of thinking.
Perhaps inevitably the idea of both Edwards and Ward once more being associated with Liverpool has led to speculation that their initial exits were down to tense relationships with Klopp, whose powerbase grew organically but considerably due to his success as manager. That was a theory the German laughed off in one of his final chats with the press last week.
“It’s great but did anyone make a story that they have all come back because I am leaving?” Klopp joked. “It was really not because of me. It’s nothing. You can ask Michael Edwards if he will speak in public, but our work together was really, really good.
“We worked well together and Richard Hughes, who I know, is a great, great guy. I liked the signings a lot. Who the club is bringing in, I like them all. We have a good team, a really good manager is coming in and we have all these guys too. The club is in good hands.”
Moore, who served as CEO during a three-year period between 2017 and 2020 that saw Klopp’s team win the Champions League, Club World Cup and Premier League, believes Edwards’s new title is an “empty vessel” and presents the returning executive with a blank canvas within both FSG and Liverpool.
He says: “Michael has a very powerful position, obviously and I think they have given him the role of ‘CEO of football’, and whatever that means, it’s one of those where it’s a radical overhaul and the title is empty vessel where Michael will have to figure out what it all means, it was certainly the case for me.
“I guarantee what he thinks his role is now will be different in a year’s time as he figures out what is needed. And how he interacts with the new manager and where Billy Hogan fits into this alongside Mike Gordon, because he is very hands-on, there is some sorting out to do and I am sure it will be for the best but it will need some sorting in terms of who does what, where and how. What works for everyone and how it is all going to work.”
The addition of Pedro Marques, from Benfica, also strengthens the core of the expertise within the setup itself, with the Portuguese answering to Ward as their director of football development. Marques is seen as a leader in developing players and coaching methods, while his attention to detail in analysis has been spoken of highly.
With so much uncertainty around the future of a club that has also seen assistants Pep Lijnders and Peter Krawietz depart alongside long-serving goalkeeping coach John Achterberg and elite-development coach Vitor Matos, Moore believes FSG are tapping into what they know with the return of Edwards, as a steady hand to guide during such a period of transition.
“Look, I look at it from a corporate level and when you have changed – and I have been in business nearly 50 years – and you want to recapture the magic before you bring back people who knew the culture and you trusted them. It’s when you know what the task ahead is and you know there is no-one better for that task,” Moore adds.
“So when you’ve got the coach who it is going to be and the outgoing coaching staff – Pep, Vitor, Andreas Kornmayer, John Achterberg – that dugout has gone. You have to replace them and you need stability and you need people you can rely upon and clearly the ownership places trust in Michael, bringing back Julian. The core of Dave Fallows and Barry Hunter, the chief scouts, so that core is still there.
“So I think what the ownership is trying to do is bring in a structure that has given us so much success in the past and bringing Michael back took more than just giving him his old job back. Back in 2017, I quickly realised that we needed a vision to help support Jurgen on the pitch. So that is where it was at and that is where Michael is at now.”