Liverpool assistant manager Pep Lijnders is ready to become a head coach in his own right when both he and Jurgen Klopp leave Anfield at the end of the season.
Lijnders and fellow senior coaches Peter Krawietz and Vitor Matos will follow Klopp out of the club come summer, giving Liverpool a clean break for the future.
Rather than stay at Liverpool as an assistant to whoever the new boss will be, Lijnders believes the time is right to spread his own wings as a manager instead.
“I owe this club everything. They don’t owe me anything, to be honest,” he told LiverpoolFC.com.
“It’s ten years full of dedication. I always said I will finish with Jurgen; the moment I will not assist anyone else, that’s the moment I will go and I will manage.
“That was always the case. So when we spoke, it was clear for me: OK, then I go and manage, and we end this project together [that] we started.”
Lijnders has been linked with the top job at Liverpool alongside the likes of Xabi Alonso, Roberto De Zerbi and Ruben Amorim, but there are no decisions yet as to where he might end up.
“Probably in a few months’ time I will sit down with my [agent], now is not the time, but then I will see what kind of options do I have, which club really wants [me] and in that moment I will make a decision that is for me good,” he explained.
Lijnders has occasionally faced the media on behalf of Klopp during his time at Liverpool and has a prominent role in a variety of tasks usually the domain of a head coach or manager, so it stands to reason that he is well equipped to lead a team of his own.
“The way [Klopp] gives me the freedom to lead the team, to design the training, to make tactical decisions, that says everything, no? It’s sad that we go but I’m excited [for] what’s ahead. But this season didn’t end yet,” Lijnders said.
Having started his coaching career at PSV Eindhoven while still a teenager and later working under a succession of managers at Porto, the 41-year-old Dutchman first joined Liverpool back in 2014 when Brendan Rodgers was in charge. He briefly left Merseyside in 2018 to become head coach of second tier NEC Nijmegen in his homeland, but returned to Liverpool just six months later.
