Who Is Jurgen Klopp's Wife Ulla Sandrock? The Children's Author And Social Worker Behind Football's Most Beloved Manager

Jurgen Klopp is currently the Head of Global Soccer at Red Bull GmbH, having retired from club management after leaving Liverpool in 2024. The woman who stood beside him through Mainz, Dortmund and Anfield, through two Bundesliga titles and a Champions League, is a social worker and children's author from Germany who met her husband at a pub during an Oktoberfest celebration in 2005 and has kept a deliberately low profile for almost two decades since. Her name is Ulla Sandrock, and she is considerably more interesting than a single sentence can capture.

Ulla Sandrock's Career as an Author and Social Worker

Born in 1974, Sandrock trained as a teacher and social worker in Germany before spending time in Nairobi, Kenya, where she taught at a German school for three years and worked with children in need. That experience abroad shaped the humanitarian instincts that have defined her career.

Back in Germany, she pursued children's writing alongside her social work. Her debut book, Tom and the Magic Football, was published in 2008. It tells the story of an 11-year-old boy who discovers a magical football and uses it to become an extraordinary player, a concept that speaks directly to the world her husband inhabits while remaining entirely her own creation. A sequel set in Africa followed in 2010. Her second standalone book, Elli and Pit, continued her focus on young readers and reflects her lifelong passion for mentoring children through storytelling.

She has no social media presence and has given virtually no interviews across the entirety of Klopp's managerial career. The nickname the German press gave her, the First Lady of the Bundesliga, is one she has never publicly acknowledged.

The Acts of Kindness That Defined Her Public Profile

The moment that revealed the most about Ulla Sandrock's character came during the Covid-19 pandemic. In April 2020, she walked into a Waitrose supermarket in Formby, near the family home they shared at the time, and quietly distributed £1,000 worth of food vouchers to frontline staff on duty that day, handing out 20 separate £50 vouchers with no media in tow and no announcement made in advance.

It was a gesture entirely in keeping with who she is. Klopp himself cited her influence as a major factor in his decision to renew his Liverpool contract, and after his famous farewell speech in the Anfield stands in May 2024, he said simply that she was someone without whom none of it would have been possible.