Robert Huth on Klopp’s Germany: Time for Heavy Metal Football
Jürgen Klopp has not taken charge of a single game as Germany boss, but the mood around the national team has already shifted. You can hear it in Robert Huth’s voice.
The former Germany defender, a World Cup winner in 2014 and Premier League champion with Leicester, has watched the national side drift for a decade. Early exits, flat performances, a disconnect with the public. Now, with Klopp signed up on a long-term deal that runs beyond Euro 2028, Huth believes the demands on the new coach are brutally simple.
“Be less sh*t!” he told GOAL, speaking via SportsbookReview.com. “The bar isn't very high, I think, at the moment.”
It is crude, but it cuts straight to the point. Germany, in Huth’s eyes, have been miles off their own standards since lifting the World Cup in Brazil.
“We've been sh*t since 2014 so a semi-final would be all right,” he said. The ambition remains high, the realism even higher.
Klopp’s instant jolt
Klopp has not needed a training session to make an impact. His appointment alone, Huth says, has jolted a fractured football nation back into some kind of unity.
“What that appointment has done already in Germany, without Germany having played a game yet, is kind of brought that togetherness straight away,” he explained. “That kind of happened on the day he was appointed. Everyone was going, ‘yes, yes, now we've got that guy who we wanted 10 years ago’.”
The regret is obvious. Germany could have had Klopp years earlier, before his dynasties at Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool. They get him now, though, with a Champions League title, a Premier League crown and a reputation as one of the game’s great energisers behind him.
Huth is convinced those qualities are exactly what the national side has lacked.
“He's got that personality, the mindset, the knowledge of what it takes to get a nation back together,” he said.
A press conference that made an ex-pro itch for his boots
The first public glimpse of Klopp as Germany coach came in his opening press conference. No tactics board. No long theory. Just a clear challenge.
Huth watched it like a fan. He ended up feeling like a player.
“I don't know if you saw his first press conference,” he said. “I was like, ‘oh, where are my boots, I want to put my boots back on and start playing again!’ Not that I would be selected, but do you know what I mean? Like, I was watching the press conference again.”
For Huth, the power lay in the simplicity. No slogans. No spin.
“I can only imagine being an active player and listening to a press conference because there was no BS. There were no clever words,” he said. “It was like, ‘listen, if you want to play for Germany, you're going to have to run a bit harder, you're going to have to fight harder, this is going to mean a bit more when you put the badge on’.”
That, in his mind, has been missing. Not just the pressing and the patterns, but the raw meaning of the shirt.
No excuses, no blame
Klopp could easily have walked in and torched what came before him. Germany’s recent record at major tournaments gives him plenty of ammunition. Huth noticed that he didn’t take it.
“It could have been very easy to throw the previous managers under the bus, ‘that was rubbish’, which I don't think he did,” Huth said. “He just went, ‘well, we need that bit more when comparing Germany to other nations that got further in the Euros and in the World Cup’.”
The message: standards, not scapegoats. Germany must run more, fight more, care more. And they must do it against the best.
Klopp and his staff know the landscape. “There's France, there's England, there's Brazil, there's Argentina, there's some proper other football nations out there,” Huth noted, echoing the coach’s own caution about instant glory. The aim is to win, the expectation is to compete, the non‑negotiable is to “leave everything on a pitch”.
“That hasn’t been the case in Germany’s situation over the last few years,” Huth admitted.
Early signs and rising expectations
So far, the groundwork has impressed him. Feedback from Bundesliga clubs, he says, has been positive. Klopp has been visible, present, engaged.
“The feedback's been good from the Bundesliga clubs. He's gone to plenty of games in pre-season and in the club games. So it looks great on paper,” Huth said.
“On paper” is the key phrase. Nothing has been won yet. No crisis has been navigated. No knockout tie has been survived. Still, Huth is convinced that the trend line, after years of decline, is finally pointing upwards.
“I fully imagine Germany is going to be a lot better in the upcoming tournaments than they have been in the past,” he said. “Not to say that they're going to win it. I think even themselves said, ‘listen, we're going to try and win it, of course, that's the aim… but we're going to get out there and certainly leave everything on a pitch’.”
For a fanbase numbed by underachievement, that alone would be a start.
“So I'm excited,” Huth added. “Come on, Germany!”
Chasing Klopp’s “heavy metal” with a national team
The real question now is how much of Klopp’s trademark football can be transplanted from club to country. That relentless, surging, “heavy metal” style defined his best Liverpool and Dortmund sides. Huth would love to see even a fraction of it in a Germany shirt.
“If Germany can replicate any kind of Liverpool's and Dortmund's intensity, pace, energy, spirit, I'm getting excited!” he said. “I know it's difficult to replicate it in the national team, but if they can do it, if you can do it, that would be heavy metal football!”
A semi-final, he repeats, would already mark a step back towards the elite. After a decade of drift, that sounds almost modest. With Klopp in charge and the country waking up around him, the bar may not stay “very low” for long.
