Usually, whenever I want to release a blog I need to make sure it’s great. Maybe even more than great. But this blog feels different. In my mind, it needs to be perfect. Every news organization, blog, or internet landing point will write some retrospective on the man and the coach that Jurgen Klopp was. It’s relatively easy internet cred for the next week, especially because Britons watched his goodbye rather than the Man City trophy lift. And for me, Jurgen Klopp has been a pretty big part of my transition into adulthood. I wrote about how Jordan Henderson was always there (until he left). But Jurgen Klopp was even moreso.
Now that it is really all said and done (even if I was hoping Klopp would change his mind), there are so many things I want to say. Driving around this weekend I crafted entire 3000-word blog posts about every single thought and feeling I was processing. This was no more true than a Sunday afternoon drive across the city after watching the final moments of Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. After 9 years of watching a team create a cohesive culture and identity around a singular man, it’s incredibly weird to know that time, as it always does, has moved on. In his leaving announcement, Klopp said he was tired. And yet for me, the opposite is entirely true; even in the times Liverpool struggled, the Klopp administration never needed to come to an end.
I will speak on this a bit more later, but there has never been a coach that I’ve experienced that comes close to a Jurgen Klopp. Some may argue that Steve Kerr is a vaguely Americanized version of Klopp, and I don’t think that’s wrong. But in every characteristic and flaw, there is only one Jurgen Klopp who stands alone. When I started watching soccer and Liverpool back in 2013 (obligatory Bill Simmons quiz) little did I think about the emotional toll a German coach leaving the club would have on me.
Because It Is You
Pope John Paul did an excellent job of placing sport in its proper context. In reference to soccer, he said, “[a]mongst all unimportant subjects, football is the most important.” I think it’s pretty well established that Jurgen Klopp is fully aware of the importance of soccer. In the wake of all that life, it falls considerably down the ladder. And when he arrived at Liverpool, Klopp made it clear this was never about winning trophies, but about the people. In a way, he was the Ted Lasso when the show was just an NBC sketch.
As I said, this can’t be a blog detailing Klopp’s time at Liverpool. Nor can this be a blog teeming with little references to every little thing Klopp has done. I could make teeny references to the time he came to America and drank with fans. Or, the day after the 2018 Champions League Final (I took a long time to watch those highlights), he sang Allez Allez Allez with fans—all of which point to that clear line of demarcation between sport and reality.
I could even talk about how I used to wait unabashedly but refreshing Reddit in hopes the When I’m Liverpool’s would drop back in 2017-2019. Or write an ode to the 2017 Liverpool-City 4-3. Or the Citypool era of the Premier League, with Klopp and Pep locked in an eternal struggle (Klopp even brought Pep to tears). Somehow to prove I love the club in a way that makes me qualified to speak on this subject.
There’s some insecurity there, like I’m having to prove I know an understanding. Insecurity is something I have always lived pretty consistently with; it’s almost somewhere of a birthright. I’ve worked hard to overcome some of it, but it’s always there. But, surprisingly, in those moments when I need the most inspiration, I look to Jurgen Klopp.
“Because it is you we have a chance,” has become somewhat of a rallying cry in my own life. Before walking into the Bar exam last summer I remember watching that speech as a hype up. Some people prayed. Some people listened to a Zyzz playlist. I listened to Jurgen Klopp prepare for Barcelona. And then I looked at this meme at lunch.
One of the early Klopp sayings was turning doubters into believers. To make the red half of the city believe that Liverpool could be more than a club steeped in history (or, as Ted Lasso put it, the Dallas Cowboys). In all the championships, the 2019 Champions League, the Premier League, even that Dejan Lovren header, nothing about Klopp holds a candle to his man management. He always had the power of friendship on his side.
And while I, thousands of miles away and not on the team, can feel this inspiration, the players do tenfold. I mentioned relationships over trophies. And how more people watched the Klopp goodbye than a fourpeat. It why Virgil Van Dijk gave Klopp one last postgame hug, lost in tears.
It’s why Trent Alexander-Arnold, who got his first start under Klopp, was lost in tears during the final You’ll Never Walk Alone. (Side note: Listen to this podcast episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green).
And it’s why I feel so much for this one man—a soccer coach whom I caught at the tail end of his tenure at Borussia Dortmund. The most I knew of him in the early days was the Marco Reus connections. And now, as he walks away to a few years rest, he walks away as not just a great soccer mind, nor just a fantastic man manager, but an even better person. And while I could sit here and recall the tactical genius that was Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, winning with that genuineness is something I would happily live again and again.
The Last Six Minutes of Jurgen
There are those pivotal moments in life when you realize that it’s all changing. The moments in life where you’re driving away from your graduation and that sudden moment of clarity hits where everything that was is now in the past. As much as I consider myself a dirty realist, I hate change. Growing up, if my mom cut her hair I’d have a little mental breakdown. It’s not something I do well with.
So, even coming into Sunday, I don’t think I’d been willing to fully comprehend that the end was coming. I’m not going to sit here like Liverpool content was all I consumed. But, even from an ocean away I knew I’d tear up watching the end coming.
There were obviously great moments at the beginning and throughout. But the moments that stood out to me came in those final six minutes. This will be a weird comparison, but for whatever reason it reminded me of the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I’m not sure if only Americans watch it; I don’t know if Christmas specials are a uniquely American thing. But, as Anfield descended into one final, extended song for Jurgen, it was unrequited and unparalleled beauty.
At the end of the Grinch, the townspeople come out and sing. Their presents are gone. There is no thorn material, only the communal spirit of Whoville. As the crowd realized it was goodbye, they just sang. And they didn’t stop. No matter what happened on the pitch, this was a goodbye. Not a forlorn on. Not a forced one. A goodbye for everything every Liverpool fan around the world had been a part of for the last nine years.
At that moment the tears finally got to me. As I’ve been surrounded by storm damage and actuality thanks to the Thursday storm, the most important, unimportant thing in the world caused tears. They weren’t just singing a goodbye to a coach. It was a universal goodbye to a man who had been so much more than just a soccer coach. I don’t know how to categorize Klopp. But in those final six minutes, he didn’t need categorization. In those final six minutes, he was the recipient of a chorus.
All the thanks for the memories, the wins, the championships, and the inspiration enshrined in one, final moment.
The Upcoming Jurgen Klopp Statue
In the coming years, I’ll find myself drawn to memories forever enshrined in video. John Green talked about showing his child the 2005 Champions League Final; it was the first form of media that child ever consumed. If I ever am lucky enough to have a kid, the first thing that child will see is the second leg of the 2019 Champions League semifinal between Liverpool and Barcelona. I could speak about the indomitable human spirit or the inability to know when you’re defeated or any other plaque hanging in a high school coach’s office. As much as I want to philosophize the game, I love it because it rocked. It’s decidedly simple.
If you ask an Old Testament Scholar, depending on which section of the traditional-modern spectrum they come from, you’ll get two different answers on Goliath’s height. The traditionalist will say somewhere between nine and ten feet. A modernist will say somewhere around 6’9. By no means short, but still small for an NBA center. Of course, this was during the time when I imagine Sabrina Carpenter was considered tall; she’s the wrong size for a human.
Goliath, whether you believe to be a truth or a myth or somewhere in-between, is the story of human triumph despite the otherworldly odds. I’m hesitant to chalk something up to a miracle, only because, like love, that word is so overused. Getting to a flight on time isn’t a miracle, it’s good planning. Though so many people give his credit for miracles, I doubt Jurgen Klopp would ever chalk his own soccer success up to that of miracles. Even when you’re facing Inter Miami, but when they were good and on Barcelona. Even when a club wallowing in 30 years of domestic despair asks you to go up against a country-backed club. One of the better jokes I have seen is comparing the 2020 Premier League title (it’s not an asterisk if it was almost wrapped up before the pandemic) to the Cavs in 2016.
Jurgen Klopp was not a miracle worker. He was a human with infallible belief in those who looked to him as a leader. A human whose belief in people led an entire city to consider a man with no prior connection to the city one of their greatest sons. Even from America, the pride I feel when I see the Klopp tribute posts is something I wish I could explain better. I like to imagine that I’m pretty good at putting feelings into words. In this case, I am not.
One day, Klopp will return to Anfield for his statue unveiling. FSG may even throw in a stand named after him. But the nine years that Klopp spent at Liverpool FC can never truly capture the little moments, the essence of time, that embodied these nine years. There are days when I will look back on everything I experienced. Watching Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool made me fall in love with soccer. I liked soccer before, but watching a gergenpress fronted by Roberto Firmino still brings me joy in unimaginable ways.
I don’t know how to end this. I’m reality, I don’t think there’s a good way to end this. Sometimes there’s no perfect ending, there’s no Premier League title to cap everything off. But maybe that’s part of the perfect ending. Sometimes it just ends, with a smile and a couple of tears.
With all these things Jurgen Klopp has left the building. Goodbye, Jurgen.
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