It was a long farewell week for manager Jurgen Klopp. On Tuesday, soon-to-be former Liverpool manager Klopp was at Anfield, the stadium that has sung his name and excited his team for the past nine years, to bid farewell to hundreds of club staff. On Thursday, he and his players enjoyed a final barbecue at Liverpool's training facility on the outskirts of town.
During that time, he had to sign countless jerseys — “I don't know how many, but everyone has one now,” he said — and countless more. There was also a handshake. There is still uncertainty about Sunday when he takes charge of Liverpool one last time. He will then address the crowd at Anfield. “It was the most intense week of my life,” he said. “There were a lot.”
The most emotional moments came in private. Klopp is inundated with so many emails, messages and letters from his fans that he cannot even read them all, let alone reply to them. Each piece includes “a story about what it means to them,” he said. They moved him so much that when he was asked by the club's in-house TV channel to read a handful of books, he hesitated. “I would have started crying,” he said.
Klopp pretends to understand, if not entirely, why Liverpool fans – what he calls the club's “people” – have such deep feelings towards him. I haven't. His instinct is to downplay it. “When you're a Liverpool manager, you know people are going to like you,” he said. “Until we let them down. And we never really let them down.”
That's an understatement. Klopp won (almost) every major trophy during his almost 10 years at Anfield. Under his watch, Liverpool became European and then world champions. A year later, in 2020, he led the club to the Premier League title. This was the club's first English Championship in 30 years.
They also have the honor of winning the domestic cup three times, and Liverpool, once a fading giant, have returned to the forefront of European football powerhouses despite experiencing a number of near misses.
But that still doesn't fully explain how difficult things have become for Klopp, both as a fan base and as a place. There is also a bar and hotel named after him. And his face, his bright white smile and beard now more salt than pepper, shines from six murals across the city.
The first piece was installed in the Baltic Triangle in 2018, painted on the wall of a bike garage by French street artist Axe. Negotiations were surprisingly easy given that the building's owner, John Jameson, is a huge fan of Liverpool's city rivals Everton.
“He thought it was good for business,” said his son John Jameson. According to his son, even promoting Liverpool was thought to be “good publicity”.
Other murals soon followed, some commissioned by the club itself, some by fan groups and more recently as more blatant advertisements.
Liverpool can sometimes feel like a city of football-themed murals. Several more are dedicated to current or former players. “It's starting to feel a bit like an insult that we don't have one,” said Sean O'Donnell, co-founder of BOSS Nights, a live music brand for Liverpool fans.
But none are more popular than Klopp, whose boss even lent his name to one of his earliest murals just outside Anfield, playing on the word's dual meaning in Liverpool – both “in charge” and “great”.
O'Donnell was conscious that he didn't want to seem like he was “jumping on the bandwagon” by creating another mural. However, Klopp was prepared to make an exception. “We owe him everything,” he said. “Everything we have been able to do so far is thanks to Jurgen.”
Initially, BOSS Nights was a distinctly small-scale event. Dozens of friends from a long post-Liverpool road trip gathered in bars around the Baltic Sea area to listen to live music. Klopp's arrival, the jolt of electricity he ran through the club, changed it into something else.
In 2019, when Klopp led Liverpool to victory in the Champions League, BOSS held a show at Madrid's Fan Park, where the final was played. It attracted tens of thousands of fans. Jamie Webster, who started appearing on O'Donnell's show, currently has over 50 million streams on Spotify. His rendition of 'Allez Allez Allez', one of the most enduring fan chants of Klopp's time as manager, has been viewed 16.5 million times.
“This wouldn't have happened with any other manager,” O'Donnell said. “Maybe it's his charisma, but there's something about him. It raises the atmosphere on the field. He makes you want to contribute. You get the feeling that they need us as much as we need them.”
O'Donnell frequently receives calls from pubs and bars around Anfield asking if he can recommend a singer or guitarist for the pre-match show. “That never happened before,” he said. “There was no such thing as live music or football here. It wouldn't necessarily have been cool to have someone do a Liverpool song. He made it cool.”
It's part of what Neil Atkinson, co-founder of Anfield Wrap, the most prominent outlet in Liverpool's blossoming fan media scene, describes as “a renewed commitment to wanting to support the team”.
Atkinson said Klopp had always demanded “unconditional support” for his team. Early in his tenure, Klopp regularly challenged the fans closest to Anfield to make more noise. More than once, he has railed against people who leave early to avoid traffic jams. “Instead, he creates an atmosphere where everyone can have fun the way they want to have fun,” Atkinson said.
That inclusivity is a key element of Klopp's appeal. In an open letter to Klopp, local Labor MP and Anfield season ticket holder Alison McGovern said: “We need to publicly demonstrate that women, gays and all women are part of the club. He also expressed his gratitude to manager Klopp. It can place soccer in its correct context.
“When COVID hit, you screamed at the fans who lent you their high fives,” she wrote. “You told people what they needed to do: get tested, get the vaccine.” His explanation that football is not a matter of life and death was important, she added. . “It's meant to be enjoyed. It should be the fun of family life and should never force or justify abuse.”
She found even the manner of Klopp's departure welcome – he admitted in January that he had “run out of energy” and announced he would leave at the end of the season. “By making clear that we understand that honesty and openness are appropriate responses to feelings of exhaustion and exhaustion, no one can see that our hero is better as a real human being. “You will understand,” she wrote.
His ability to keep the football in perspective is perhaps the best explanation for Klopp's enduring and soaring popularity. He also said this week that it's not the destination that matters, but the journey itself. Because of his sincere beliefs, he was able to maintain the trust of his fans even during his weight loss period.
“My most enjoyable year supporting Liverpool was 2018,” Atkinson said. “You see the team naturally take off. Let's see how it goes.
“We didn't win anything and it didn't matter,” he said. “That's Klopp's biggest gift.”
Klopp is not looking forward to Sunday and his final farewell. He's not even sure he'll be in the right mental state to address the team before a game. “It's never nice to say goodbye,” he said. “But if you say goodbye without feeling sad or hurt, it probably means the time you spent together wasn't right.”
If anything, it will be even more difficult for the fans and for the city. A few years ago, when the contract for Klopp's original mural outside his bike garage expired, the owners asked artist Axe if they could paint over it. he refused.
Instead, he would come by from time to time over the years to fix it. “Sometimes Everton fans come and destroy it,” said young John Jameson. “When you come to the house on Monday morning, you'll see graffiti.”
He sees no reason to do anything other than keep it together now. “At least every day we get a lot of tourists on buses,” he says. “It's like being on tour. First you stop at the Cavern Club and then you stop at Klopp's mural.”It's been nine years since Klopp arrived in Liverpool, and his image has faded from the city's iconography. It's now a part that doesn't exist. “It looks like he's going to stay,” Jameson said.