Confirmed: Pep Lijnders to join RB Salzburg alongside Liverpool cohort

Pep Lijnders will join RB Salzburg as their new head coach after leaving Liverpool this summer. He’ll be joined by another leaving Liverpool.

Liverpool have officially announced that Pep Lijnders will join RB Salzburg this summer. The current assistant at Anfield becomes their new head coach as he departs the Reds after 10 years.

Of course, that spell of 10 years was split in two, with Lijnders briefly trying his hand at management in 2018. He returned after just six months, however, and has remained Jurgen Klopp's no.2 ever since.

Lijnders previously announced that he would leave alongside Klopp in 2024 as he attempts to become a manager in his own right once again. He's now landed a sizeable job - and he's not the only one.

His assistant at Salzburg will be Vitor Matos. Matos became a first-team coach at Liverpool back in 2019 and is another leaving in the summer.

Salzburg have been something of a perennial Champions League side in recent times. They've become known for developing truly elite talent, too, with Erling Haaland, Dominik Szoboszlai, Naby Keita, Karim Adeyemi, Dayot Upamecano and Sadio Mané all coming through the club.

Lijnders will now hope to work with similar talent as he attempts to build his reputation in the game.

Jurgen Klopp on Lijnders

You can't really oversell just how highly Klopp rates Lijnders.

“The impact the boys had over the years, and especially the impact Pep had in the last few years on the football we play, is second to none and it’s absolutely incredible," he said earlier this year.

“I know that I have to be very thankful and grateful to him. And I am, I am, because he gave me a new vision and helped me develop over the last years. I’m pretty sure I could help him a little bit as well, that’s the idea when you work that closely together."

And Liverpool as a club actually hopes Lijnders returns eventually. That's according to a coach who recently talked with the Reds.

So if Lijnders thrives in Austria, perhaps we'll see him at Anfield again down the line.