Who was the last football manager to transcend his sport in the way that Jürgen Klopp has? Arsène Wenger? Brian Clough? Bill Shankly? Since arriving at Liverpool in 2015, Klopp has revived the fortunes of a club that had for too long been trading on past glories, bringing with him a thrilling style of play he has himself described as “heavy metal football”. So there was a palpable sense of shock when, in January, he announced that at the end of the season he would be leaving the club and taking a break from football.
The reverberations from Klopp’s decision to step down have been felt far beyond those for whom Gegenpressing is a familiar concept (and far beyond Merseyside – for the record, I have never had any great affection for Liverpool FC, except when they’re playing Manchester City or Newcastle). In an era when sports “personalities” go to great lengths not to express anything that could be construed as an opinion, he has been refreshingly honest about politics (he’s leftwing), Brexit (it “makes no sense”) and Covid vaccinations (comparing anti-vaxxers to drink-drivers and, when the Omicron variant appeared, making a direct plea to Liverpool fans to get jabbed). Couple this outspokenness with a natural charm, a sharp sense of humour and an irrepressible enthusiasm, and it’s easy to see why the German coach’s exit is not just a loss to British football, but to the wider country, too.
Fittingly, Klopp’s final game as Liverpool boss is a home match, against Wolves on Sunday, and it will be an emotionally charged occasion. There will inevitably be plenty of looking back, assessing the many highlights of the past nine years. And there will also be one last display of mutual appreciation between Klopp and the Liverpool fans with whom he has developed such a strong bond. Whatever happens on the pitch on Sunday, Jürgen Klopp will deservedly leave on a high.
And that’s how it should be. When an important phase of your life comes to an end, it’s healthy to take a moment to take stock, to celebrate the highs and mourn the lows, to make sense of the experience. But endings are not always as well telegraphed or as well anticipated as Klopp’s.
This is partly because we – individually and societally – place such a heavy emphasis on the first time something happens that we too often fail to appreciate the ending of something in the same way. Everybody remembers their first kiss, their first lost tooth, their first foreign holiday, the first death of a relative. Each of us also has our own individual list of significant personal firsts, and this ratchets up another notch if you become a parent, with an expectation that first smiles, words and steps will be recognised and dutifully catalogued as the milestones they undoubtedly are.
Collectively, all of us bar a handful of conspiracy theorists know the identity of the first man to walk on the moon. Not so many people know that the late Eugene Cernan was the last person to do so. Cernan was one of 12 people to achieve that feat in just over three years, but when he left the lunar surface, in December 1972, there was no reason to suspect that nobody would be back for at least half a century, maybe ever.
And this is the other, bigger reason for the ends of things not always getting the recognition they deserve: too often they just sneak past us, unnoticed. They’re something we take for granted. There will always be a “next time” … until one day we realise there won’t be.
With friendships that gently degrade rather than explode in rancour, the final interaction only becomes evident long after the chance to say goodbye has passed. How many years of mutual silence must pass before you’re no longer friends? It’s a redundant question – once you ask that, you’re acknowledging that it’s over.
Likewise, in my 30s, I didn’t realise that I’d never play football (ineptly) again until seven years after I’d last trundled around Regent’s Park, like a more mobile, less well paid Harry Maguire – but that was how long it took my snapped ACL to get diagnosed. As we age, the examples pile higher and higher.
It’s sometimes those quotidian actions that on the surface seem the least significant that are actually the saddest to realise have passed. A couple of years ago, I realised that I would never again carry either of my sons, and that the final time of thousands had recently passed, unnoticed and unmarked. I can certainly still lift my younger son, now a teenager, but he is far too tall for me to actually carry without it being awkward and uncomfortable for both of us. The way our bodies once fitted together, him sitting on my hip with his arms wrapped tightly around my neck, is very definitely a thing of the past. And on some level it still saddens me that I was unable to savour that final time.
He still takes my hand sometimes, and every time he does my heart soars, but I know in time that that, too, will pass. But I am also aware that the sense of loss I experience then will mirror the joy I still feel now; that it’s an equal and opposite force that will be acting on me. And I’m thankful that I can appreciate what I have now before it disappears.
Of course, the bond between fan and football manager is not the same as that between parent and child, and it would be reductive to pretend otherwise. But Klopp is a one-off, and his fundamental humanity has touched people in a way that just doesn’t happen with his robotic, yet weirdly tetchy, peers. Liverpool fans are fully aware of all that they’re losing. And there is beauty in them acknowledging and embracing that.
Phil Mongredien is a deputy production editor for Guardian Opinion
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