EPL TALK: Forget all the Jurgen Klopp tributes for now and focus on the football, Liverpool

TWO things were always going to happen when Jurgen Klopp announced his decision to step down at the end of the season. Liverpool fans were going to wallow in their melancholy for a bit. And rival fans were going to mock the Reds’ tendency to wallow in their melancholy for a bit. Both things came to pass over the weekend.

A quick search for “Klopp” and “cried” on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, returned enough posts to suggest a tragedy had befallen the great manager, as opposed to his decision to take a sabbatical in the summer. At Anfield, fans posed in front of improvised shrines, showed off their tattoos and lifted hastily-produced Klopp scarves (there’s always money to be made from the melancholy.)

Klopp knew this was going to happen, because he gets the club. That’s been said a lot in recent days, too. Klopp gets Liverpool in a way that even Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t get Manchester United, apparently. The German understands the proud, working-class port city, its hard times and committed socialist principles. As they demonstrated in the song that he didn’t want them to sing, Jurgen is a Red.

And this is not to be flippant. It’s a statement of fact. From spending time with a local bowls team when he first arrived to his comments about community coming first during the pandemic and the promise to never manage another club in English football again, Klopp gets Scousers. And Scousers can’t get enough of him.

There’s a shared taste for melodrama. The touchline histrionics. The triple fist-pumps, the slapping of the bird on the chest, the one that captured his heart, the heavy-metal football and the hysterical comebacks, it’s hard to recall a manager who had a deeper, empathetic understanding with a club’s psyche. Both club and coach believe in Liverpool’s motto: This means more. It doesn’t. Obviously. The suggestion is patently absurd to every other fan base. But both Klopp and the Kop sincerely believe it. That was always key.

And it may become a slight problem. Klopp’s sense of theatre made him the perfect fit at Anfield, but he needs the football now. Just the football. The memes and emotional meltdowns can come in May. He wants silverware not sorrow and his discomfort was noticeable when he stepped out for the sincere, but slightly awkward, reception ahead of the Reds’ 5-2 FA Cup win against Norwich. He knew it was coming and appreciated it – he’s not made of wood, as he pointed out – but he doesn’t need it every week.

Nor do the players. Whenever they hear ‘Jurgen is a Red’, they hear a tribute act, the end of an era, a looming full-stop. They hear a eulogy for a man still alive and kicking and goading fourth officials with the energy that powered Liverpool towards every trophy in the game, but a finite energy that cannot be sustained indefinitely. Klopp is wise to monitor his personal reserves. Those around him should do the same.

Healthy dose of reality needed before the tributes

The manager who turned raw emotion into something that pushed his players beyond the acceptable limits of human endeavour against Barcelona and Manchester United may now call for restraint, or at least a redirection of sorts, because he doesn’t want one of his finest achievements to be misconstrued, i.e. he took the martyrdom and turned it into silver.

Klopp understood Liverpool’s socialist sense of being downtrodden, neglected and forgotten by the wider community, the authorities and by the sport, to a degree, but he channelled it into something positive. Rather than just thrash around tunelessly, he turned the working-class plodders into a heavy-metal stadium outfit. They no longer whined. They roared. Previously, there was always the idea of them being the soft outsiders: principled, but pointless. Klopp changed all that.

In Trent Alexander-Arnold, for example, Klopp turned a mixed race local kid into a football aristocrat. Klopp fills his line-ups with Harvey Elliott, Curtis Jones, Conor Bradley and James McConnell not because the Reds are a dysfunctional, ill-disciplined mess, as they once were, but a devoted band of brothers with a collective cause. Rival supporters may giggle, but these boys really do believe this means more. It’s Liverpool Football Club, performing a greater good for their people. Because Klopp told them so. Over and over again.

Manchester United had the Class of '92. Liverpool still have the class of Klopp.

And their teacher’s priority now is focus. His message will be unequivocal, on both sides of the line. Don’t succumb to the melancholy. Klopp has channelled Liverpool's unique community spirit to his advantage for almost nine years, pulling a fractured club together by utilising that socialist heritage and difficult history to rebuild a global franchise without losing the human touch. But he can do without the melodrama that comes with that human touch. He needs a healthy dose of reality to temper the inevitable, gushing tributes that are heading his way. Manchester City are rising. Kevin de Bruyne is back. Erling Haaland will soon re-emerge from the shadows, like Thanos looking to wipe out half of football (the red half).

And that’s the problem with excessive melodramas. They often lead to weepy, unhappy endings. The tributes really should be saved, hopefully, for the open-top bus parade. In the meantime, there’s the small matter of maintaining campaigns on four fronts. As the song goes, Jurgen is a Red. But he’s also a winner and would very much like to combine the two.

Klopp has already followed Bill Shankly in knowing when it’s time to go, leaving the crowd wanting more, not less; the greatest showman to the end. Whatever happens, there will be fresh tears and tattoos on the final day of the season. But there really should be a few more trophies, too.

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