Anthony McIntyre ⚽ On the door leading into this study, pretentiously so-called, hangs a Jurgen Klopp flag.
It was my good fortune to pick it up in a charity shop, a year or tow back. In this home Jurgen Klopp is revered for what he has brought to the wonderful republican city of Liverpool, where a kaiser but not a king is welcome. If my wife were to believe in saints, he would be at the top of the heavenly heap.
Today after nine years in charge of Liverpool Football Club, in which he oversaw 489 matches, the German maestro rides off into a Majorcan sunset.
It would be churlish on such an occasion to comment on the team's failure to lift a league championship this time around which would have put a silver shine on the departure of this mercurial manager. Comment on that can wait for another day.
Perhaps it is age with me but the nine years Klopp spent at the club seem to have passed in the bat of an eyelid. Bob Paisley, who was at the helm for the same length of time, seemed, back in the day, to have been in the position forever.
Klopp may not have brought the same degree of silverware to the club as the prodigious Paisley - nineteen trophies in all between 1974 and 1983 - but he was a much more charismatic and coherent character than the wily but dour and inarticulate Hetton-le-Hole soccer genius. Still, the points required to win a title in today's finance saturated environment are astronomical.
Klopp produced one of the best ever Liverpool sides, runaway English Premier League champions in the 2019-2020 season. He also created the only team to pause the dominance of Manchester City. The wry eye might see matters with a certain tinge - that Klopp was the only manager to have won the title fairly.
He had a connect with the fans and the city of Liverpool. As one pundit said today managers are more often being run out of town whereas Klopp, who has never been sacked in over twenty years of management, was given a huge sendoff at Anfield this afternoon. The city of Liverpool wants to pull him in rather than push him out.
I hope the supporters of Liverpool Football Club manage to extract success from the replacement coach next season but already there are echos from the time when David Moyes replaced Alex Ferguson. Manchester United have never looked forward since. There is more to this than the changing of the guard, a feeling that the end of an era has just kicked in. I have this foreboding that I will never see another Liverpool side lift the league title. In my lifetime I feel I have seen with Klopp's departure the last of the great Liverpool managers. I also believe I have seen the last of the great Liverpool teams even if this current side was not one of them.
From Hail the Chief to Farewell the Kaiser, despite the setbacks and disappointments for Liverpool fans, it was an amazing nine year journey to be remembered for its highpoints of panache, passion, brilliance, exhilaration and scintillating soccer. A friend just texted me to say 'he changed football and society for the better.' If that is to be his epitaph in the decades after we have all shuffled of this mortal coil, his footprint will be much more than a face sketched on the sand, to disappear with the first lapping tide.
Slan, Jurgen.
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He was impossible not to like. Says a lot about the man really.
ReplyDelete11 weeks since the Forest game ; same length of time until the new season starts ! City's # 91 points tally is a level Fergie only reached once , Wenger's Invincibles fell 1 short .
ReplyDeleteArteta will finish second again next season & either he or J K will decamp to Camp Nou .
Reds 2019 - 2020 are as good a side that has graced European football ; only J K , Pep & Fergie have won the Champions Lge & title & an English club .
A Europa title on Wed night would of been a perfect send off ; beating the incredible Leverkusen might be a step too far even for Ancelotti / Pep to take .
Disappointed the Main Stand wasn't named after J K .