David Wagner has known best friend Jurgen Klopp longer than his wife... but now the two managers are set to go head-to-head on the biggest stage

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It may not have been Jurgen Klopp, but somebody did Huddersfield quite a favour back in 2011. David Wagner, the story goes, was going to become a secondary school teacher when he ended his playing career. 

In his own words, he wanted to 'get out of the little world of football, where everyone tells you what you should drink and when you should go to bed.' Luckily for Huddersfield, Wagner was hauled back into the little football world when he got a call from Borussia Dortmund in 2011. 

Jurgen Klopp had just won his first title at Dortmund, and Wagner was invited to join forces with his old friend, taking over the Under-23 team. The rest is history. Klopp insists that it was not his idea to bring Wagner to Borussia, but that is somewhat hard to believe. 

Jurgen Klopp (left) and David Wagner embrace ahead of a pre-season clash back in July

Wagner has known Klopp longer than his wife, and the Reds boss was best man at his wedding

Theirs is a friendship which runs deeper than most in football. As Wagner says: 'I've known him longer than my wife, and I've known her for 25 years.' 

The friendship has been thrust into the limelight like never before this week, as Wagner's Huddersfield prepare to take on Klopp's Liverpool at Anfield on Saturday. 

Interviews with Sky and the BBC have introduced the British public to a friendship well-documented back in the two friends' homeland. Room mates in their playing days at Mainz 05, Wagner would eventually be best man at Klopp's wedding, before joining him at Dortmund six years later. 

The wedding, and more importantly the stag do, have tickled British football this week. The story of Wagner, Klopp and Co going to the Mainz Christmas Market, all dressed as Santa to avoid detection, and Wagner eventually taking Klopp home to his wife after too much Glühwein, is undoubtedly a good one. 

It is also emblematic of Klopp and Wagner's shared appeal. Klopp 'The Normal One' and Wagner 'The Klopp Clone' are loved for their authenticity, and a certain boyish sense of fun. It is there in their playing style as well as their demeanour off the pitch. 

This weekend, the pair will meet competitively for the first time in English football

If you want to understand why Klopp in particular is so popular, try to imagine Pep Guardiola or Jose Mourinho necking mulled wine in a Santa costume on a market square.

The 'normality' is well-packaged, but it is no less authentic for it. When Klopp confessed that he burst into tears watching the Huddersfield's promotion triumph last season, it is entirely believable.

On Saturday, the two friends meet for the first time as opposing managers in a competitive game. That they should do so at Anfield is, in Wagner's words, 'brutally cool'.

'This game would be something special for us even if it were a fifth division league game in Hessen,' Wagner told SportBild this week. 'But now we're meeting each other at the top level, in England, in the Premier League. It's strange.'

Klopp, pictured at Dortmund back in 2011 - the year his best friend joined him at the club

The first time the two men faced each other as opponents was in a second division game back in 1999. Klopp, still at Mainz, faced Wagner, who had by then moved on to Gutersloh. It was Wagner who triumphed, with Gutersloh winning 6-1. The night before, Wagner jokes, he had had Klopp round for dinner, just to weaken him up.

A similar triumph seems unlikely on Saturday, even after Huddersfield's shock defeat of Manchester United last weekend. Nonetheless, the build-up to this game has certainly shown that Wagner is beginning to move out of Klopp's shadow. 

'Klopp's best man is shaking up English football,' wrote 'Die Welt' in the summer of 2016. You wouldn't see that headline now. In both England and Germany, everybody knows who David Wagner is.

At the moment, Wagner is perhaps doing even better than Klopp, overachieving at Huddersfield rather than, in the eyes of some, underachieving at Liverpool. It is an idea which the Huddersfield manager won't countenance for a second. 

Wagner has impressed in England, perhaps more so than Klopp given his team and budget

In an interview with SportBild this week, he leapt to the defence of his friend. 'I can understand the criticism of the points tally, but I can't understand the criticism of Liverpool's performances,' said Wagner. 

'I have no idea what people expect from them. They way they create chances, the way they defend, that's great entertainment. You can't play much better than that.'

Quite some praise, and anyone who has watched Liverpool defend this year will of course detect a certain amount of biased loyalty in Wagner's words. But then, this is a man who has been friends with Jurgen Klopp longer than he has been friends with his wife. Of course he is going to be loyal.

Wagner is quick to leap to the defence of his best friend when Klopp comes in for criticism