Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp gave some advice to Brian Callahan
If anyone that had a Titans-and-Liverpool collab on their offseason bingo card, come down and collect your prize.
It started at Brian Callahan's opening press conference. Callahan, who's taking over in Tennessee after a stint in Cincinnati as the Bengals' offensive coordinator, spoke briefly about a quote from current Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp about what it takes to build a special team. That clip, if you can believe it, found its way back to Klopp, who was shown the footage in a segment that debuted during last Saturday's Premier League coverage:
Klopp, who's leaving Liverpool after the season ends after a nine-year stint with the club, then offered Callahan some more advice on what life is like as a first-year head coach:
"It's a drain," he said. "The next world class coaches in American football, or in football, they're already out there. And he might be one of them. Why not? Seems to be a nice guy, which I think is a really important part of it as well. Because if you lead a team of people, and if they hate you every day, that can work in the short term but it'll never work in the long term. Being a good person is quite helpful as well.
"It's all about results. It's all immediate results. One year you're the best manager in the world, the next year everybody thinks that somebody sucked your football brains out and it's just like, oh, he's not that good anymore, stuff like this. The more together you are, with the group of players and the staff and the supporters, the more likely it is you will get through those periods without any scars."
If anyone would know about succeeding under enormous pressure, it's Klopp, who's won both a Champions League title and a Premier League while with the club. With all the time off he'll have coming up, maybe he can make a trip to Nashville and lead Titans fans in a resounding, honky-tonk version of 'You'll Never Walk Alone.'