Juergen Klopp is the voice of reason in trying times: Richard Buxton
Reds boss shows calm head while others lose theirs in rushing back the EPL
Whenever football requires a voice of reason, the floor is invariably handed to Juergen Klopp.
In the past 18 months, Liverpool's exuberant manager has become the Beautiful Game's moral conscience on myriad subjects from Brexit and fixture congestion to the Covid-19 pandemic.
To borrow the German's own words, why him?
A man who, by his own description wears a baseball cap and has a bad shave, does not profess to be an expert on any of the topics that he is forced to field questions about, yet answers them with a level of common sense seemingly beyond football's leading arbiters.
Not all superheroes wear capes; most are currently working round the clock in hospital wards.
But Klopp is a rare commodity in these chaotic and trying times. He keeps a calm head while those around him continue to lose theirs with frantic efforts to rush back the English Premier League.
Top-flight clubs are unanimously committed to finishing the 2019/20 campaign, but equally increasingly divided on how to do so.
Some have already resigned to ending it early due to the logistical minefield, while the vast majority are still prepared to see it through to the bitter end.
A series of radical proposals continue to be floated, including the prospect of teams being quarantined at St George's Park and playing multiple games each day at a vacant Wembley.
Desperation clearly leads to bad ideas, as one of Klopp's predecessors proved earlier this week.
Former Liverpool boss Gerard Houller made his worst call since replacing Nicolas Anelka with El-Hadji Diouf by suggesting that his old club should allow supporters to descend on Anfield to celebrate their long-awaited EPL title triumph rather than risk them converging in the streets.
The Frenchman has a long-standing propensity for putting his foot in it.
In 2005, he ventured into the Reds' jubilant dressing room following their memorable Champions League final victory in Istanbul - despite being replaced in the managerial hot seat by Rafael Benitez a year earlier.
Houllier's bizarre logic is highly flawed but his concerns over mass gatherings are valid.
Even if games are played behind closed doors, some Liverpool fans will still be gearing up for the biggest party in a lifetime once they are finally crowned league champions for the first time since 1990.
When it happens, Klopp will be front and centre of the celebrations but similarly does not want his greatest triumph at the Anfield helm to be overshadowed by a serious dereliction of duty.
As a self-confessed sufferer of "helping syndrome", he feels duty-bound to care for people and to take responsibility for them far more than many of his esteemed contemporaries would.
Liverpool's slogan of "This Means More" has taken on a new-found significance for the 52-year-old.
In between learning how to cook scrambled eggs and mastering the dishwasher, he has taken the time to emphasise a need for exercised caution about elite-level football's return.
Every pronouncement from Klopp is at odds with the arm-flinging wild man persona that most football supporters saw prowling the touchline in the EPL during the past 4½ years.
His level-headed approach is one which the game's authorities must heed, rather than pandering to broadcasters still intent on receiving their pound of flesh from the current hiatus.
Klopp previously offered to help with discussions on how to best handle fixture pile-ups.
Football could do far worse than having him in the room for its post-Covid-19 conversations.
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