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Bring on the Klopp and Ibrahimovic show

I am already looking forward to next season’s Premier League. Two things happened this week which suggested that the entertainment value of England’s national football competition could be about to be enriched, that its soap opera narrative may be poised to take a delightfully diverting turn.

I am already looking forward to next season’s Premier League. Two things happened this week which suggested that the entertainment value of England’s national football competition could be about to be enriched, that its soap opera narrative may be poised to take a delightfully diverting turn.

This is because the chances of Jurgen Klopp and Zlatan Ibrahimovic seeking employment in this country have just increased hugely. With Klopp announcing his departure from Borussia Dortmund on the same day that Ibrahimovic’s PSG were eviscerated in the Champions League, thus precipitating the Swede’s divorce from a footballing nation with which he has already publicly fallen out, both could be on their way to the big-money league. Hang on to your hats, things may be about to turn vibrant.

For sure, the pair may not be the most accomplished practitioners on the continent. If we were talking about improving the English game technically, of trying to redress the slip in Champions League performance of our clubs, then it would be far more profitable were Pep Guardiola and Lionel Messi to come over here to work. Not to mention Diego Simeone and Cristiano Ronaldo.

But in terms of amusement and theatre there could be no better additions around than these two. So much would they add to the sum of things, the League’s chief executive, Richard Scudamore, should be lobbying his constituent members as we speak to ensure someone offers them a job here next season.

Because when it came to increasing the Premier League’s overseas television rights, there could be no better sell to foreign markets than a competition with this pair in it.

And there can be few fans in the country who would not value signing either of them at their club. Take Klopp. A footballing cavalier in an era of roundheads, he is a manager who believes in football’s romantic core, in building things rather than buying things, in the primacy of victory over possession stats.

A man of vibrant emotion, he behaves like a fan on the touchline, feeling every second of every game, occasionally erupting in volcanic spasms, as likely to kiss his players on the cheek as slap them around the face. He is the same away from the pitch, a vibrant, passionate, funny presence. How Klopp would cheer up the Premier League, a competition woefully convinced of its own importance. How he would bring a lightness of touch, a sense of proportion, a little hint of humanity to the manager’s role. There are not many of the current cohort of managers, after all, who have admitted weeping when obliged to sell their favourite player. Or been quite so jovially open about their recourse to personal cosmetic enhancement in the form of a splendid hair piece. He would be different. He would be fun.

More to the point he would help reconnect many a club with their supporters. What a coup it would be for Mike Ashley, for instance, to unveil him as the new manager at Newcastle, or for the porn magnates of West Ham to do the same ahead of the move to the Olympic Park. As for Manchester City, he would certainly shake up a first-team squad grown complacent by success. Not to mention a management structure always keen to shift blame away from its own shortcomings.

But wherever he went, he would enliven every press conference. The Laughing German: how he would bust many a wearisome stereotype.

Then there is Zlatan. There is not a club in the league who would not be improved by his arrival. For sure he is high-maintenance. For sure every dressing room in the land would have to be enlarged to accommodate his swollen ego. But, as his magnificent haul of goals for Sweden against England a couple of years ago attested, the rewards are significant. What a transforming effect he could have at Liverpool, for one, replacing that most saccharine, Zlatan-lite Mario Balotelli. Equally he could prove to be Louis van Gaal’s Eric Cantona, a player whose self-certainty infected his new colleagues with a contagion of belief.

True, Ibrahimovic’s sense of his own significance may not allow him easily to settle at Arsenal, a club who once dared to suggest he might undergo a trial.

But imagine the revenge he could wreak at Tottenham, linking up with Harry Kane and reminding Arsene Wenger on a weekly basis why precisely it is that Zlatan does not do auditions.

And like Klopp, the Swede would provide such lively off-field copy it would be impossible to turn your back for a moment for fear of missing a gem. We can only hope it happens. Our game could do with such an injection of fun. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

Jim White is a sports columnist for the Daily Telegraph

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