Klopp

There’s an advert doing the rounds – something utterly forgettable, probably flogging car insurance or lager with an identity crisis – featuring Jürgen Klopp and two other blokes with perfectly ordinary teeth. You know, the sort of teeth that suggest a diet of Yorkshire puddings, not activated charcoal smoothies. And there, slap bang in the middle, is Klopp, grinning like a Bond villain halfway through a whitening strip bender.

Now, I like Jürgen Klopp. Who doesn’t? Charismatic, passionate, prone to fits of touchline lunacy – everything you want in a football manager. But his teeth? His teeth deserve a credit in the advert all to themselves. “Starring: Jürgen Klopp and The Illuminated Manuscript Formerly Known as His Mouth.”

They're so white, I’m fairly sure they’ve been classified as a navigational aid by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. In the advert, the contrast is so stark you’d think he was digitally inserted from a Colgate campaign in Qatar. The poor sods next to him look like Dickensian chimney sweeps by comparison. One imagines them quietly resenting his molars’ ability to trigger lens flare.

And this, I think, is the perfect metaphor for late-stage capitalism. We no longer accept success quietly. We have to radiate it. Subtlety is for losers. Your average Premier League manager used to look like a hungover geography teacher in a Matalan coat. Now they turn up with personal stylists and teeth so white they can broadcast DAB radio. Klopp’s are simply the logical conclusion – pearlescent monuments to performance dentistry.

It’s not just Klopp, of course. We live in a time when being normal is treated like a medical condition. Everyone's either a lifestyle brand or a cautionary tale. The middle-aged bloke with the average smile? Invisible. The bloke who looks like he’s had his gob airbrushed by Pixar? Centre stage, mate.

Soon, there’ll be boosterism for bicuspids. “Do your incisors project confidence?” “Are your molars monetisable?” It’s only a matter of time before Sky Sports hires a dental analyst. “Gary, you can see here Klopp’s second premolar is really pressing high up the pitch...”

The worst bit? The teeth now speak louder than the man. You don’t notice what Klopp says anymore – only how many lumens his canines are putting out. It’s visual tyranny. A smile that blinds before it charms.

Still, perhaps there’s hope. Maybe, just maybe, one of those unassuming, natural-toothed co-stars in the ad will spark a revolution. A quiet uprising of the coffee-stained and the mildly crooked. A molar mutiny.

Until then, I’m wearing sunglasses during the ad breaks. Safety first.