What really happened between Jurgen Klopp and Michael Edwards before his 2022 Liverpool exit – report

The high-profile signing of forward Darwin Nunez in the summer of 2022 is widely cited as a key moment that demonstrated Jürgen Klopp’s increasing transfer power, potentially contributing to the departure of highly-rated Sporting Director Michael Edwards later that year.

While Michael Edwards officially stated his exit was planned after a decade and driven by a big believer in change, reports have suggested an underlying tension between Jurgen Klopp’s personal preference and the club’s established data-driven recruitment model.

James Pearce of The Athletic reveals that Klopp insisted on the £64m deal for Nunez despite opposition from the analytics department, which favoured other data-backed targets like Christopher Nkunku or Alexander Isak.

Former Liverpool Director of Research Ian Graham also recently revealed that while the data had ranked Nunez and Isak highly, Klopp ultimately chose Nunez, which caused frictions.

However, as per the report, there were no bust-ups as such and eventually both Edwards and Ward stepped down in the pretext of over exhaustion.

Replying to a question about whether there was a power struggle between Klopp and Edwards, Pearce said: “It’s certainly fair to say that with longevity and success, Klopp’s influence increased across a host of different areas, including recruitment.

“A good example would be the signing of Darwin Nunez from Benfica in the summer of 2022, which was predominantly pushed by Klopp. Liverpool’s former director of research Ian Graham has talked about how that wasn’t a data-driven decision. Christopher Nkunku (then at RB Leipzig) and Alexander Isak (then at Real Sociedad) were two of the alternative names put forward.