Jurgen Klopp hasn't missed coaching. Not once — until he walked into the New York Red Bulls' new performance center in New Jersey.
"This morning was a moment where I walked in — oh, okay. That's something I could miss," Klopp said at the ribbon cutting for the RWJ Barnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center. "Thank God the weather was not great because otherwise maybe I would've gone back."
From a man who has spent over a year insisting he has zero urge to return to the dugout, that's a telling line. Whether it's a compliment to the facility, a rare crack in the facade, or both — it lands differently than the usual corporate ribbon-cutting noise.
What they've actually built
The facility is genuinely serious. Eight full-size pitches. High-end recovery rooms. Individual player spaces. Classrooms for academy players. A test kitchen where the club's younger players receive cooking lessons. It took a decade to build and houses the first team, an MLS Next Pro side, and a full academy under one roof — the kind of vertical integration Red Bull has been chasing in New York for years.
Michael Bradley, now in his first head coaching role, and sporting director Julian de Guzman have leaned hard into youth since taking charge. Eighteen-year-old Julian Hall already has five goals and two assists this season. Seventeen-year-old Adri Mehmeti — in his first professional campaign — has a goal and two assists. Those aren't academy numbers. Those are first-team contributors.
Klopp was direct about the project's ambitions and its limits: "You cannot be the best immediately so try to be the most exciting. From time to time, we will get smashed. That happened already. But in other moments, we will be surprisingly good because the boys are extremely talented."
That honesty is refreshing, and it matters for how you read the Red Bulls right now. This is a team built for the long arc, not the current standings — which makes their odds in any given week something of a volatile bet. Talented teenagers in meaningful minutes means unpredictable results, in both directions.
Brazil, Ancelotti, and what comes next
The facility also has a high-profile summer tenant. Carlo Ancelotti's Brazil will use it as their base camp for the 2026 World Cup. They'll train on pitches that will normally host academy matches, while the Red Bulls retain their own locker rooms and training fields throughout the tournament. The two operations will coexist in the same building without stepping on each other — which is a logistical statement about how much space this place actually has.
Klopp made the point plainly: "I didn't have to convince Brazil to come here. They saw it and wanted to be here. Carlo, definitely not. He knows what's good when he sees it. He saw it."
The Red Bull multiclub model is quietly shifting too. Klopp described it less as a pipeline funneling players to Salzburg or Leipzig and more as building environments so compelling that players want to stay and grow — New York included. Whether that vision holds when a 19-year-old Hall gets a serious European offer will be the real test.
For now, the building exists. The players are young and genuinely exciting. And even Klopp, the man who said he needed to step away to recharge for years, had to check himself before he wrecked himself on a gray Wednesday morning in New Jersey.
