JUERGEN KLOPP may be Herr Charisma but don't expect him to take up a position with the Ruhr tourist board any time soon.

The silver-tongued Borussia Dortmund manager, fluently alternating between German and English, set the scene for tonight's all-German Champions League final at Wembley by painting a beguiling word picture of the contrasts between the big corporate beasts Bayern Munich and his plucky little underdogs from Dortmund.

If it was hardly the most flattering portrait of the town in North-Rhine Westphalia – indeed it even began to mitigate the apparent desperation of the likes of Mario Goetze and Robert Lewandowski to swap Borussia for Bavaria – but Klopp fairly had his audience eating out of his hands by the end. Indeed, listen to it long enough and you might forget all about the fact that it was Dortmund, and not Munich, who claimed the Bundesliga crown in 2011 and 2012. Which, presumably, was precisely his intention in the first place.

"The reason people go to Munich and not Dortmund is that in Munich they have the Oktoberfest and the weather is better," said Klopp. "In fact over all that area is very pleasant for taking holidays, but in Dortmund we have a lot of heart. We don't want to sell our town short, it is fun to live there, but the Ruhr area in general is not so beautiful. You could take a holiday in Dortmund now – I could show you all the best places – but one thing it is for sure is a region where football has a very different significance: it is very important to us.

"Now Bayern are in this success rut," the 45-year-old added. "I can't remember them ever being worse than third or fourth in the Bundesliga. But along comes a club that is pretty good as well, and has a pretty big following. The stadium could have been turned into a monument, but thanks to a few decisions from some clever people, it has risen from the ashes. It is a good story. End of.

"This team has been growing over the last five years, and we think this could only have been done in this club. Maybe that's why things are a bit more emotional for us compared to a situation where success is pretty much normal. We are not a favourite, but people have climbed Mount Everest. Maybe 10km before the summit they have to turn round but at least they have tried."

Dortmund hardly made it beyond the foothills of a league challenge this season, finishing 25 points behind today's opponents in the league, and failing to beat them in four attempts this season. But the Champions League has clearly been their priority. And rather than mask the fact, Klopp embraces the special nature of an all-German Champions League final – only the fourth time a final has been contested by teams from the same country – as if it was his very destiny.

"It is an absolutely special game," he said. "If you want you can see it as the next game, but it is not a normal game because it is the biggest game in the world. At this moment it feels normal. But it is a special thing if two teams from one country play against each other. For me, if this will be my only final in my life, it is a perfect place and a perfect opponent. If I will die when I am 60 I can say it was not so bad."

It doesn't take too much digging to discover positive omens for Dortmund, either. Those of a superstitious disposition can identify eerie similarities with Ottmar Hitzfeld's side – featuring a certain Paul Lambert – which won this competition for the only time in the club's history in 1997. That team, so the story goes, also went into the match as underdogs, having freshly surrendered back-to-back Bundesliga titles to Bayern in a year when Stuttgart reached the German Cup final. Players of that era such as Lars Ricken, now youth team co-ordinator, and sporting director Michael Zorc are still on the payroll.

"It is quite amazingly similar but if you only justify things then you say the signs are all for us and I don't think that is really sensible," said Klopp. "What is important to me is that Borussia Dortmund are a team who can win titles, and we are not without a chance on this occasion."

Dortmund are living a charmed life after receiving the benefit of some dubious calls by a Scottish officiating team in the quarter-final against Malaga, while the only previous penalty shoot-out between today's finalists – back in the 1992/93 German Cup second round – was won by Dortmund. Goetze may be out injured but Mats Hummels, a fine ball-playing centre-half signed from Bayern, has declared himself fit after injury. They also have Marco Reus, an emerging world superstar. "We have to stretch ourselves to bring them down to our level, then when they are on our level we can beat them," Klopp said.

Don't be fooled by the false modesty: there is an alchemy about this bearded, bespectacled 45-year-old which may just be capable of moving mountains, not just climbing them.