Ragnar Klavan was born on October 30th, 1985 in Viljandi, Estonia to Tiina and Dzintar Klavan. His father was a professional soccer player for many teams in the Meistriliiga (the top soccer league in Estonia), and he played nineteen times for the Estonian National team.
As a child, Ragnar would play soccer on hard gravel roads in Viljandi. He was an avid soccer fan and idolized Zinedine Zidane and Mart Poom, two very different players. Zinedine was an elegant French midfielder who won everything the sport has to offer, playing for superclubs such as Real Madrid and Juventus.
Mart Poom, on the other hand, was a Tallinn-born goalkeeper who spent his time at mid-table clubs. But similarly to Klavan, Poom was an Estonian soccer player, and until that point, the best player the nation had produced. Poom was the first-ever Estonian in the English Premier League (“the Best League in the World”), where he played primarily for Derby County, and had a handful of appearances for Watford and Arsenal.
“[Mart Poom] was really my hero, because of growing up and seeing [that] from a small country like Estonia it is possible to make it to the big [leagues].”
(Ragnar Klavan)
Poom played 120 games for the Estonian national team, was named Estonian Footballer of the Year six times, won the UEFA Golden Player in 2003, and also an award for being the most outstanding Estonian player of the last fifty years. He was the standard for Estonian soccer excellence and allowed Klavan to dream.
In 2016, Klavan told the Premier League “[Mart Poom] was really my hero, because of growing up and seeing [that] from a small country like Estonia it is possible to make it to the big [leagues].”
Poom was such an inspiration to Klavan that at the age of 13, he gave himself the goal of reaching the Premier League just like Poom did. This would be far from an easy task, but Klavan, who had been at the JK Viljandi Tulevik academy since the age of six, was on the right path.
On April 8th, 2001, at the age of fifteen, Klavan would play his first senior match for Viljandi Tulevik’s reserve team in the Esiliiga, Estonia’s second tier of soccer. Under a year later, on March 31st, 2002, Klavan would play his first game in the Meistriliiga, which began a long and successful professional career.
He would play a couple of seasons for Viljandi before joining FC Flora, a Tallinn-based club that’s the most successful in Estonia’s history, having won a staggering fifteen Meistriliiga titles and thirty-seven domestic trophies. After a year in Tallinn, he would move to the Netherlands to play for Heracles Almelo, and this was when his career took off.
For many players, a jump from Estonia to the Netherlands could have proven to be too large, but Klavan was playing regularly for Heracles at the age of twenty. He established himself as a highly versatile defender, and after three and a half seasons at Heracles, he joined another Dutch side (a team, in this case one built around fluid positional play, as popularized in the Netherlands) at AZ Alkmaar.
Louis van Gaal, Alkmaar’s Manager at the time, was eager to get him at the club, saying “Ragnar is a player we have been watching for a while.” Kind words from someone who managed FC Barcelona, Manchester United, and Bayern Munich.
Despite joining AZ halfway through the season, Klavan would make a huge impact on the team. His addition to an injury-riddled side would give them a second wind that carried them to the title, AZ Alkmaar’s first title since 1981, and the second in the club’s history.
In 2012, after another three years at AZ, he would finish with over one hundred games played for both Heracles and Alkmaar and take another step towards his goal.
On July 2nd, 2012, at the age of twenty-six, Klavan joined German side Augsburg, and for the first time in his career, he was playing in one of the elite European soccer leagues.
When asked about his transfer to Germany, Klavan told his new club “The Bundesliga has a great reputation in Europe. I am happy that the deal has gone through and I am looking forward to the challenge offered to me by Augsburg.”
Klavan’s first two seasons in Germany would be relatively uneventful. Augsburg would finish in 15th and 8th, not bad for a team promoted in 2011, but nothing to write home about. But in 2014/15, the side would outperform expectations thanks to a strong defense and impressive results against Bundesliga heavy hitters like Bayern Munich, Wolfsburg, and Borussia Mönchengladbach.
Klavan had no small part to play in this feat. He started all thirty-four of Augsburg’s games and played every minute of those games, being one of only two outfield players to achieve this feat. Augsburg’s hard work and impressive play helped them finish in 5th place, to this day the club’s best finish in the Bundesliga. Klavan would spend four seasons at Augsburg, his longest spell at any club up to this point, and would play 140 matches for the club.
In the summer of 2016, something happened that would allow Klavan to reach the goals he set out to achieve back when he was thirteen. During the off-season he received a call from Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp and could not believe it.
“When Jürgen called me, I didn’t believe it was him. So we hung up the phone and he sent me a selfie confirming that it's him. And then, after that, we talked about football,” Klavan told Liverpool fan site DaveOCKOP.
This call would convince Klavan to join the Merseyside club, and at thirty, he would finally achieve his dream of playing in the Premier League. Following in the footsteps of his idol Mart Poom, and becoming the second Estonian to play in England’s top flight. The transfer was a huge deal in Estonia, and even as it happened Klavan struggled to wrap his head around it.
“When I made the move to Liverpool, it was a big deal in Estonia. I think everyone was as shocked as I was, to be honest,” he told DaveOCKOP.
Once at Liverpool, Klavan would become a cult hero, helping the team take down rivals Everton in December 2016 and keeping Everton star striker Romelu Lukaku scoreless on the night. Klavan would also score a stoppage time winner on New Year’s Day in 2018 to help Liverpool win 2-1 against Burnley, his most iconic moment with the Reds.
Klavan would only spend two seasons and play fifty-three games at Liverpool, but it was enough for him and the fans to fall in love. “I guess it’s nice to be a cult hero because I had such amazing experiences with Liverpool fans—in the city itself and all over the world. I can tell you the admiration was on both sides,” he told Liverpool.
In the summer of 2018, a thirty-two-year-old Klavan would leave Liverpool for Italian side Cagliari in search of more playing time in the twilight of his career.
He would play three years in Italy before returning home and playing soccer in Estonia for the first time since he was a teenager. He would play a couple of seasons at Paide Linnameeskond, and then Kalev Tallinn before retiring on December 10th, 2024, at the age of thirty-nine.
Klavan would ultimately lose to Aivar Pohlak, longtime President of the EJL, but his goal has always been to develop soccer in Estonia. He has helped guide the Estonia Talent Project, a youth development initiative created for young Estonian soccer players aged twelve to fifteen.
As a kid, Klavan was inspired by Mart Poom, but looking back on Klavan’s career, he practically mirrored Poom’s. He became the second Estonian to ever play in the premier league, was capped 130 times for the Estonian national team, and won Estonian Footballer of the Year seven times, one more than Poom and six times consecutively between 2014 and 2019. If you were to ask someone who the greatest Estonian player ever is, you would almost certainly get one of these two names.
Today, Ragnar Klavan plays a big role in Estonian soccer. He is the President of Esiliiga side JK Tallinna Kalev and even plays every now and then for the club. In 2025, he launched a bid to be the President of the Estonian Football Association or Eesti Jalgpalli Liit (EJL), with the goal of making Estonia a top five soccer nation.
Klavan would ultimately lose to Aivar Pohlak, longtime President of the EJL, but his goal has always been to develop soccer in Estonia. He has helped guide the Estonia Talent Project, a youth development initiative created for young Estonian soccer players aged twelve to fifteen.
There is no telling if an Estonian will ever have the career that Klavan had, but he is working to give kids the chance to become as great as he was.
This article was written by Marc-André Perron as part of the Local Journalism Initiative.
