“In retrospect you have to say: Liverpool would have been better.”
After returning to the Bundesliga with Eintracht Frankfurt, Mario Gotze has admitted he regrets his decision not to join Liverpool in 2016. And not for the first time.
The World Cup winner has regularly bemoaned his decision to re-join Borussia Dortmund rather than link up with Jurgen Klopp again at Anfield that summer in recent years, with his latest interview with Bild acknowledging his Reds snub came down to the lack of Champions League football.
“Liverpool had finished eighth in their first season with Jurgen and had not qualified for the Champions League,” he said. Even in previous years, it wasn’t the club that always played at the top.
READ MORE: Liverpool might have dropped biggest Jude Bellingham hint yet
READ MORE: Naby Keita could be key to Liverpool blueprint for life after Sadio Mane
“Dortmund had previously played a top season under Thomas Tuchel. BVB was on the up. Jurgen was still building something. In retrospect you have to say: Liverpool would have been better.”
It’s rather easy for Gotze to rue that decision in hindsight. Having seen a lack of game-time undermine his switch to Bayern Munich, a metabolic disorder then wrecked his Dortmund return, with the playmaker only reigniting his career with PSV Eindhoven over the past two seasons before returning to Germany this summer.
In contrast, while Liverpool might not have qualified for the Champions League in 2016, they did in 2017 before reaching the final in 2018 and then being crowned champions of Europe in 2019. Following that up by becoming champions of England and the world, they have won every major honour going under Klopp, leaving Gotze to wonder what could have been.
The German had already broken his manager’s heart once before rejecting a reunion, having been lured by the prospect of playing for incoming Bayern Munich manager Pep Guardiola back in 2013. With confirmation the Bavarians were paying his €37m release clause coming just hours before Dortmund’s Champions League semi-final clash with Real Madrid, Klopp was understandably not impressed.
"He is the player that Pep Guardiola absolutely wanted,” he said at his pre-match press conference. “That means that if anybody is to blame that he has decided to leave, it is me.
“That said, I can't shrink 15 centimetres, learn Spanish, have them play world-switching football and preach tiki-taka. That is just not possible. It could have been worse, it could have happened a couple of hours before the game.
“But on a scale of one to 10, this is a nine. We all know why it has come out now. We don't know why the people who have leaked this have done so at such a delicate time. We can only speculate but we are all making the same suppositions.”
"It was like a heart attack. It was one day after [the 3-2 victory over Malaga," he later told The Guardian when recalling finding out Gotze was leaving. “I had one day to celebrate and then somebody thought: 'Enough, go back down on the floor'. At our training ground Michael Zorc [general manager] walked in like somebody had died.
"Michael asked if I wanted to talk and I said: 'No, I have to go'. That evening my wife was waiting because there's a very good German actor, and a good friend, Wotan Wilke Mohring, in a new film in Essen and we were invited to the premiere. But I walked in and told her: 'No chance. I cannot speak. It's not possible to take me out tonight'.
"Bayern told Mario: 'It's now or never'. I told him they will come next year. They will come in two years, and then three years. But he is 20 and he thought: 'I must go'. I know how difficult it will be to find a player to replace Gotze but, next year, we will play differently. It just takes time."
Gotze’s final game from his first stint with Dortmund would come against Bayern in the 2013 Champions League final, with the Bavarians coming out on top at Wembley. They would then break up Klopp’s Dortmund side further 12 months later when signing Robert Lewandowski on a free transfer, with such exits playing a part in the German’s decision to leave the club in the summer of 2015. A few months later he was Liverpool manager.
At Anfield, Klopp has achieved what he always wanted at Dortmund, to not only build a great team but to be able to keep it together, win further trophies too and build a legacy. Therefore, from a certain point of view, Gotze’s decision to join Bayern set in motion a chain of events that would result in his compatriot winning everything on Merseyside.
And the playmaker would play another vital role too in the Reds’ rise by snubbing them in 2016. After missing out on the German, Liverpool would instead target Sadio Mane from Southampton. The Senegalese would top-score for the Reds in the Premier League in his first season at Anfield to help them qualify for the Champions League and the rest, as they say, is history.
A wrong move for Gotze turned out to be a blessing in disguise as Klopp looked to reinvent the Reds attack. Now looking back, having seen Liverpool develop into this all-conquering machine under Klopp, you wonder where they would be had they not signed Mane and if the German had arrived instead.
While the Reds have been famous for their pacey attack, had Gotze been their marquee signing, their set-up would have proven to be rather different. His fortunes over the past six years, compared to Mane’s record of 120 goals from 269 appearances while helping bring six trophies to Anfield shows how Liverpool had a lucky escape. Throw in the fact that Klopp’s men would have qualified for the Champions League had they not lost the 2016 Europa League final, and it really was a bullet dodged.
Gotze might continue to regret snubbing the Reds’ advances, having also regretted his decision to leave Klopp and join Bayern, but, in contrast, his former manager should be rather thankful. While he might never have pulled on the famous red shirt, had the playmaker not made the career decisions he did, Liverpool’s story over the past decade could have been very different indeed.
READ NEXT
Liverpool youngster labelled 'super' by Jurgen Klopp scores first senior goal
Liverpool stance on Roberto Firmino as Jurgen Klopp prepares for new season
Gini Wijnaldum lined-up for 'swap deal' with Juventus midfielder linked with Liverpool
Goalkeeper begged Liverpool manager not to be sold after training ground telling off
