The German football association will seek talks with Jürgen Klopp after Julian Nagelsmann resigned as Germany head coach on Friday, opening a new search for the man who could lead the national team into its next cycle. The DFB said Klopp had already signalled a general willingness to take on the job.
Nagelsmann’s exit came with Germany still raw from a 4-3 penalty defeat to Paraguay after a 1-1 draw, a result that ended the team’s World Cup run and pushed the federation into action. For readers searching his name now, Klopp is no longer just a former Liverpool manager in the background of speculation; he is the person the DFB has chosen to pursue as the next coach.
That interest is not happening in a vacuum. Klopp has been out of management since leaving Liverpool at the end of the 2023-24 season, and he later took on a role as Red Bull’s global head of soccer in October 2024 before starting the job the following January. His name has been linked with coaching opportunities ever since he left Liverpool, which is why the DFB’s move lands with real weight rather than as idle chatter.
But Klopp has also made clear that he is not ready to be drawn into the conversation. On Monday, after Germany’s penalty shootout defeat to Paraguay, he said it was not the time to discuss the national team job, adding: “I haven’t thought about that yet.” He said, “I have a job that I enjoy very much,” and noted, “As far as I know, it’s not a part-time job.”
That hesitation matters because the federation has already moved past the point of simply acknowledging a vacancy. It confirmed the departures of Benjamin Gluck and Benjamin Hubner alongside Nagelsmann’s exit, and the scale of the reset is obvious. Nagelsmann, who succeeded Hansi Flick in September 2023 after being sacked by Bayern Munich six months before taking the Germany job, leaves after guiding Germany to the quarter-finals of the 2024 European Championship, where it lost to eventual champions Spain after extra time.
His resignation also comes after a painful pattern the federation can no longer ignore. Germany’s defeat to Paraguay was its first ever World Cup loss on penalties, ending a perfect record in its four previous World Cup shootouts, and it marked a third successive World Cup in which the team failed to reach the last-16 stage after group-stage exits in 2018 and 2022. Nagelsmann said in a DFB statement that the players deserve “the chance for a fresh start,” and thanked the squad, the staff and the fans, saying it pained him that they could not give them more memorable nights.
The next move now belongs to the DFB, which must turn interest into a real conversation while Klopp keeps his distance. If the federation wants him, it will have to persuade a coach who says he enjoys the job he already has and who has given no public sign that he is ready to leave it.
