2024-01-27 06:41:56
Nine years, historically, is a very short period of time, a tiny comma. Nine years, at the crazy rate of events of the modern world, feels like a much longer period of time, but nine years for a football coach, in one club, is already an eternity.
Shock and astonishment, that’s how you can describe the reaction of the football world to Jurgen Klopp’s announcement that he is leaving Liverpool at the end of the season. This message from the German coach came out of nowhere, in the middle of a season in which his team, at least at the moment, is strongly in the race for all the titles, and when Klopp has a contract until the end of the 2026 season. In a short video, less than a minute long, that went up in the middle of Friday, Jurgen Klopp announced to every fan Liverpool in a world where the moment he feared is coming.
And we, as Liverpool fans who remember what was before Jurgen Klopp, had good enough reasons to fear this moment. Even if he doesn’t win any titles this season, he will finish his tenure at Liverpool with a win in every major title possible, and will forever be remembered as the coach who ended the 30-year drought of the magnificent club without a championship, but Klopp’s tenure, it will be impossible to examine only by the titles.
First, it is important to remember which team Klopp got, and more correctly, which club. He took on Liverpool in one of its lowest moments, a club that had finished the previous season in 8th place, parted ways with its legendary captain Steven Gerrard with a 6:1 defeat to Stoke, and one whose run to the Championship just two years earlier had looked like nothing more than a fluke. Klopp, who was sitting on the sidelines at the time after leaving Dortmund, was marked in advance as the man who must take the job, and the Liverpool management, not in an obvious step on their part, did exactly the required thing.
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Klopp. It is important to remember which file he received (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
As a Liverpool fan, I’m a little less willing to refer to the German’s numbers and statistics. They were chewed up to the bone, and written everywhere and will be written again. For me, and for every Liverpool fan in the world, Klopp is the man who has done what to most of us would have seemed an impossible task at one point after so many years of disappointment – brought the club back to being one of the biggest and most competitive in the world, one that reaches three Champions League finals, one that can run Every season for the championship, and does everything in his own style, for better or for worse.
Klopp, from the first moment, knew how to transform himself into a “Liverpool” in every inch of his body. His football excited the crowd, his passion brought Anfield to life, his hugs after matches were a moment every fan was waiting for, and also his famous passive aggressive attacks Liverpool fans understood. The coach, for the past nine years, has been the figure to lean on, the figure who stood above all controversy, even in times when everything was going smoothly.
Jurgen Klopp’s departure is a fatal blow to Liverpool, and it is not an easy blow to the Premier League as well, which will lose one of the best football coaches in the world, and one of the most entertaining people in the sport. This season becomes the last duel between him and Pep Guardiola, one of the greatest battles of minds we have seen in football, with enormous respect between the two.
On the one hand, Pep “prevented” Klopp from two more championships that would have put him in a completely different historical position. On the other hand, the German is the only one who managed to be a competition for the Catalan in the last five years, and the meetings between City and Liverpool have become real classics, a classic that we will probably miss starting next season.
One of the biggest brain battles we’ve seen in football (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
The list of memories that Jurgen Klopp burned into the mind of every Liverpool fan in the last nine years is endless. The turnaround against Dortmund in the Europa League, the first Champions League final, the 0:4 against Barcelona, the Champions League win, the league win, 0:5 and 0:7 over United, that run after Divac Origi’s goal against Everton, the anger at journalists , the hug with opponents, the fist gesture to the crowd at the end of every game at Anfield, and above all one broad smile, from side to side, that almost never disappears.
So degrees? As Liverpool fans, we saw more of them than we could even imagine, somewhere in October 2015, but they were just the bonus, the icing on the cake in a wonderful, stormy journey, one that sometimes encountered bumps and difficulties, but with a driver that you always trusted with absolute faith and eyes closed. Now, this amazing ride also has a final stop.
As Liverpool fans we have seen more titles than you could ever imagine (Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)
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