When Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool reign finally comes to an end, there will be many, many moments to look back on with a mixture of pride, joy and sheer wonderment.
The German coach arrived at Anfield in October 2015 with the club still consumed by the psychological hangover of the agonising failed Premier League title bid 18 months previously which had seen Brendan Rodgers’ exhilarating but flawed side confound expectation and logic by putting together a remarkable 11-match winning streak which took them to within seven points of ending the club’s quarter-of-a-century wait for a 19th league championship but cruel fate intervened.
The new manager rapidly identified one of his most important jobs as shifting the mentality from ‘doubters to believers’ and immediately set about reviving the bond between supporters, team and manager - the ‘holy trinity’ so revered by the man Klopp’s transformative arrival has since gone on to be compared to, Bill Shankly - which had been fractured (some feared terminally) by years of under-achievement on the pitch and mis-management off it, most notably earlier the same decade when the cataclysmic ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett plunged the club to the brink of bankruptcy.
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The healing process began with the smallest of baby steps, Klopp initially being subject to ridicule from some quarters after taking his players to salute the Kop after Divock Origi’s 96th minute equaliser salvaged a point against lowly West Bromwich Albion less than two months into his stewardship. “How the mighty have fallen!”, they mocked, wilfully or otherwise missing the point that German’s insistence on communing with his players in front of Anfield’s most iconic stand was a show of gratitude for heeding his words in the wake of his first home defeat weeks before to Crystal Palace, after which he had spoken of ‘feeling alone’ as disillusioned supporters trooped out of the ground before the match was over, and this time staying with their side in body and spirit.
Three and half years later, the Liverpool manager and his players were again lined up arm in arm in front of the Kop after the most astonishing fightback in even the Reds’ glorious European history saw them overhaul Barcelona’s three-goal first leg advantage to reach a second successive Champions League final. The parallels and contrasts with that post-game tribute against the Baggies were inescapable and proof positive in Klopp’s faith in the power of collective effort, bearing its ultimate reward three and a half weeks later when victory over Tottenham Hotspur in Madrid brought, after three anguished cup final defeats, the first trophy of the German’s reign and the bedrock future triumphs have been founded on.
For many, that febrile May night at Anfield when an injury-ravaged Liverpool team - carrying also the emotional burden of their relentless pursuit of Manchester City and eventual 97-point season which Vincent Kompany’s blockbuster the previous evening had ensured almost certainly still wouldn’t be enough to end the club’s near three-decade quest of the holy grail of that elusive 19th title - somehow shackled Messi, Suarez, Coutinho and co to break through their glass ceiling and write new history will always be the most significant juncture.
Everyone of course will have their own personal favourite moments depending on their own circumstances and context, and strong cases can be made for the dramatic late Lallana and Lovren winners against Norwich City and Borussia Dortmund respectively in Klopp’s first (part) season in charge, the second-half turnaround at Stoke which proved pivotal to Champions League qualification at the end of the following campaign, the manager’s 5am rallying call following the Kyiv heartbreak against Real Madrid, Divock Origi’s surreal cross-bar inspired winner against Everton, the late late fightback at Aston Villa and Mohamed Salah’s late clincher against Manchester United in the 2019/20 title season to name but a few.
But, in this observer’s opinion, when it comes to assessing the Klopp era as a whole it is impossible to over-state the importance of the late, late mind-boggling goal scored a year ago today which may well be looked on as the moment which set in motion the second great period of success under the German coach.
Alisson Becker’s 95th-minute header at the Hawthorns deserves to be held up forever as a prime example of the marvellous insanity of football, a moment of such jaw-dropping incredulity that the memories of it should bring smiles to faces whenever it is recalled, regardless of context. There could not have been a more fitting full stop to the excruciating eleven-month period of behind-closed-doors football imposed on us all due to the coronavirus pandemic, coming as it did in the final seconds of Liverpool’s final match before limited crowds returned for the next fixture away to Burnley.
But given the unbearably difficult circumstances the Brazilian goalkeeper, like countless others it should be added, had to face in those bleak early months of 2021, it is hard not to feel that moment perhaps more than any other restored the soul of Klopp’s Reds and helped give back to the manager himself - who had walked a similarly painful road to Alisson during this period - his belief in the vision of football and life itself he had instilled throughout the club in the preceding years.
From the earliest stages of his arrival on Merseyside, it was clear Klopp knew the emotion which has always been a key component of Liverpool Football Club was something he had to tap into. After all, it had always been an essential ingredient of his footballing philosophy since his adaptation from (in his own words) a bang-average Bundesliga striker to world-class coach.
“It’s very emotional, very fast, very strong, not boring, no chess. Of course tactical, but tactical with big heart. Tactical things are so important, you cannot win without tactics, but the emotion makes the difference. It’s the only sport where emotion has this big of an influence”, he was quoted as saying long before becoming Liverpool manager and that early, and some would say courageous, admonishment of Anfield’s early-darters following that infamous home defeat to Crystal Palace showed he was not frightened to use his position of influence to ram his point home.
His ideology of how the game should be played also bought into this principle, the much-vaunted brand of ‘heavy metal football’ being based on the idea of the ‘Gegenpress’ - meaning ‘counter-press’ - and operating on the basis of immediately seeking to win the ball back when its lost to regain possession as high up the pitch as possible and exploit open space before the opponent can regroup.
"The best moment to win the ball is immediately after your team just lost it”, is how he explained it. "The opponent is still looking for orientation where to pass the ball. He will have taken his eyes off the game to make his tackle or interception and he will have expended energy. Both make him vulnerable. I don’t like winning with 80 per cent (of possession). Sorry that is not enough for me. Fighting football, not serenity football, that is what I like. What we call in German 'English'— a rainy day, heavy pitch, 5-5, everybody is dirty in the face and goes home and cannot play for the next four weeks."
For many, Klopp’s approach was a refreshing change from the stifling, conservative tactics adopted by many of the leading managers in the area which preceded him like Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez and, while having fundamental differences to the more possession-based brand propounded by the game’s other growing coaching force Pep Guardiola, spoke of a new more progressive way which would always appeal to those as interested in the entertainment and aesthetic side of the game as much as efficiency through results.
“He loves to have like an organised chaos, if you know what I mean!”, said his old friend and Borussia Dortmund colleague Edin Teric, a coach at West Ham by the time Klopp arrived at Anfield. "What I mean is that there are rules in defence for organisation, but in the offense it is as fast as possible and scoring as many goals as possible, so for watching their games it is very good.”
The changing economic and stylistic evolution already underway in the English and European game following Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi takeover and the arrival of Guardiola at the Etihad nine months or so after Klopp landed at Anfield soon made it apparent it would take an element of control as well as ‘organised chaos’ to bring success, a fact acknowledged by the German when assessing the impact of one of his most important signings. The raw brilliance of Mohamed Salah’s 44-goal debut season in 2017/18 had helped propel Liverpool to the brink of Champions League glory before Real Madrid’s experience and assuredness on that dramatic night in Kyiv showed the distance still yet to travel and, having brought in Brazilian midfield general Fabinho from AS Monaco in the wake of their disappointment in Ukraine, Klopp later said of the man who has gone on to become the lynchpin his midfield is based around, “Inside the organised chaos that we want, that we like, he is like a lighthouse, he controls it. His timing, his vision, his calmness, it gives another dimension to our midfield.”
The arrival of ‘Flaco’ - the ‘Skinny One’ - in the summer of 2018 along with his compatriot Alisson Becker completed following the £75m purchase of central defensive totem Virgil van Dijk the new, more resolute spine Klopp knew his Liverpool side needed to balance out his world-class attacking triumvirate of Salah, Mane and Firmino, and was the foundation for the successes just around the corner. Despite Manchester City’s far greater financial muscle, heavily resourced squad and experience of the title race terrain, the Reds made them sweat right up until the finishing line before seeing their Premier League dream fall agonisingly short despite gaining the third biggest points tally in top-flight history and then smashed through their disappointment by winning the Champions League three weeks later to gain some measure of reward at least for their herculean efforts.
At various points during the previous 29 years, cup triumphs and valiant but flawed title bids had raised false hopes that yearned-for 19th league championship was only one step away but this time looked, smelt and felt different which proved very much to be the case. Having won their final nine league matches of the previous campaign, Klopp’s men simply obliterated any hopes City had of a third successive title by winning 26 and drawing one of their first 27 Premier League games of 2019/20, their 38-game record between the March 2019 5-0 Anfield win over Watford which sparked their incredible form and the shock 3-0 defeat ironically at Vicarage Road which ended their club-record 44-game unbeaten run reading a scarcely-believable and unlikely ever to be repeated Won 36 Drew 2 Lost 0.
Although the dream of matching Arsenal’s unbeaten ‘Invincibles’ league season of 2003/04 died after that loss to the soon-to-be-relegated Hornets, confirmation of the hallowed 19th league championships many Liverpudlians feared they would never live to see was still only barely a handful of points away when Covid-19 struck and brought the world to a standstill, changing countless lives forever in the process. With some domestic leagues in Europe being cancelled and declared null and void, the unthinkable prospect of the championship Klopp’s men had laid indisputable claim to being snatched away from them loomed but common sense eventually prevailed and, soon after the season resumed in mid July, the Reds finally regained their crown as the kings of English football when Manchester City’s defeat at Chelsea meant they couldn’t be caught with seven matches still to play.
Tears of joy and relief were shed by Klopp, many of his players and countless supporters all across the world at the fulfilment of such a long held ambition even if the moment of triumph, and the presenting of the Premier League trophy to skipper Jordan Henderson weeks later had something of a bittersweet feel due to the inability of supporters to be inside Anfield and celebrate together with their heroes due to the continued restrictions on public gatherings due to the pandemic. With uncertainty remaining over how long it would be before it was deemed safe for fans to return to stadia, the hope for many Reds fans was being deprived of that moment of ultimate glory with their adoring followers (having already sampled what a victory parade was like after their Madrid success) would imbue Klopp’s side with a sense of unfinished business and motivate them to win the title again the following campaign so it could be celebrated properly.
When the 2020/21 season began a month later than usual following the delayed finish to its predecessor, three impressive opening victories hinted they were very much of that mindset and, although it was followed by a shock 7-2 defeat at Aston Villa which in hindsight gave some hint as to the woes which would follow, a home win over West Ham on 31st October as Merseyside tried to mark a socially-distanced Hallowe’en restored the Reds to the top of the table. A fortnight earlier however a nightmare Merseyside derby had taken place at Goodison Park, the harrowing implications of which would be felt through the rest of the campaign.
Jordan Pickford’s reckless and unpunished challenge on Virgil van Dijk ended the Dutchman’s season there and then, and while the noises immediately coming out of Anfield following Richarlison’s dangerous late lunge on Thiago Alcantara (for which the Brazilian forward was dismissed) were that the damage to the Reds’ new Spanish midfielder was not too serious, he would not be seen again for another two and half months and in truth would not be able to display anything like the form which had induced Liverpool to bring him in from Bayern Munich until the closing weeks of the season.
The harsh disallowing of skipper Jordan Henderson’s stoppage time winner at Goodison due to a wrongly-adjudged borderline offside call added further insult to injury and, although Liverpool’s results held up in the short term at least to see them top of the league at Christmas again after a 7-0 win at Crystal Palace, the absence of the emotional connection between players and crowd which Klopp had worked so hard to revitalise and channel through virtually every aspect of his work had taken something significant away from his team and indeed the manager himself.
The German’s humanity and outlook on life had from the very start been one of the main aspects which led so many on Merseyside and beyond to warm to him, based on his philosophy that football is ‘the most important of life’s unimportant things’ and something ultimately that should be enjoyed. But who could enjoy this? Listening to players’ shouts echo round cavernous, empty stadia with the added imposition of VAR and the increased stop-start element that was adding only further increasing the sense what was being experienced now was a far cry from the visceral sound and fury all involved had come to know, love and expect.
This unprecedented and unforeseeable turn of events had come only three months after Klopp had signed a contract extension which would keep him at Anfield until 2024, news which had been manna from heaven for Liverpool supporters who were aware he had spent seven years in charge at both Mainz 05 and Borussia Dortmund and were already bracing themselves for a possible 2022 departure. But suddenly everyone was now living in a different world with no indication as to when life would return to normal, and although none of Klopp’s post-covid public utterances ever seriously suggested a change of tack, the manager’s own hangdog demeanour at times smacked of a man who was fed up with the situation he and his team now found themselves in. And the injuries woes continued even after Goodison with Joe Gomez soon also being ruled out for the season with a knee problem and Diogo Jota, Joel Matip, Fabinho, Naby Keita and others all missing large chunks of time as the Reds' squad was stretched to breaking point.
Klopp's generally personable attitude in front of the camera had done much to endear him to the wider football community but there was now a perhaps understandably spiky edge to him at times, particularly noticeable when a late contentious VAR-awarded penalty at Brighton in late November which cost Liverpool two points led to a difficult-to-watch post-match interview with BT Sport’s Des Kelly in which the Reds boss seemed to hold the interviewer personally responsible for the Saturday lunchtime kick off, coming only two and a half days after midweek Champions League fixtures.
And when Liverpool’s form really nose-dived in the new year with a shocking run of six successive home league defeats after going unbeaten in the Premier League at Anfield since April 2017 torpedoing any chances of retaining the title, rumours began to circulate that Klopp could quit the club and opt to take up the role as manager of the German national team in place of the outgoing Joachim Low. A harrowing 3-1 defeat at Leicester City in mid-February saw him concede the title after the match, ashen-faced and bereft of the usual vigour which many found so charismatic, and by the end of the weekend bookmakers had made him the favourite on the ‘next Premier League manager to leave his job’ market.
There was more to it than football. Three days before the match at the King Power stadium, it emerged that Klopp’s beloved mother Elisabeth had died the previous month and, due to the ongoing travel restrictions around the pandemic, he had been unable to visit her when she was ill or attend her funeral. His expression during those awful months was of a man who looked exhausted and mentally drained, which football can do to anyone at the best of times let alone the worst of them which this was rapidly turning into. That same month, devastating news came from Brazil where Alisson Becker’s father, Jose Agostinho Becker, tragically drowned at a dam near his holiday home with again the continued coronavirus situation preventing the Brazilian from returning home to grieve with his family.
Liverpool as a club and a city did what it always does in times of sorrow and put its arms around those in need, the relentless and remorseless nature of the modern game meaning only minimal compassionate leave was taken as the manager and goalkeeper tried to channel their pain into salvaging something from a season few were enjoying or would want to repeat. Eliminating RB Leipzig to reach the Champions League quarter-finals helped sparked an upturn in league form with consecutive wins over Wolves, Arsenal and Aston Villa lifting the Reds back into fourth spot to raise hopes of at least achieving the minimum requirement of qualification for Europe’s top table. Two successive draws away to Leeds and at home to Newcastle however, both featuring damaging late equalisers, dropped Liverpool back to sixth, leaving them four points adrift of Chelsea in fourth with only five games left to play and meaning Klopp’s men’s European fate was no longer in their own hands.
“We want to deserve the Champions League, we don't want to be cheeky and come in somehow”, Klopp said after Joe Willock’s late leveller for Newcastle as talk of a recently-mooted but rapidly-scrapped 'Super League' project continued to swirl around football. “We want to earn it and with these results you don't earn it. If we don't finish games like this off, why should you play Champions League? It’s all on the table and we will go for it, and now we will talk about it, you can imagine that. But in the moment it feels really close to being unacceptable, but we have to accept it anyway.”
Liverpool’s next match was due to be away at Manchester United, a venue Klopp was still yet to see his team win at during his six years at Anfield, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side - comfortably clear in second place although still ten points champions-elect Man City - relishing the chance to potentially deliver a decisive blow but protests by United supporters against the Super League project and their own ownership caused the match to be postponed. It gave the Reds some valuable breathing space to rest weary legs and minds and, after a 2-0 home over Southampton sealed with Thiago’s first goal for the club, they scored a resounding 4-2 victory in the rearranged match at Old Trafford which meant - given the two sides above them, Chelsea and Leicester City still had to play each other, three more Liverpool victories would almost certainly guarantee an against-the-odds top four finish.
The first of them was the following Sunday away to already-relegated West Brom, surely a formality for a Reds side now with confidence coursing through their veins after such a significant victory away to one of their biggest rivals? Not in this most difficult and topsy-turvy of seasons. The lowly Baggies took an early lead through Hal Robson-Kanu and, while Mohamed Salah drew the visitors level soon afterwards, Klopp’s men huffed and puffed without ever really asserting their superiority over Sam Allardyce’s side. The generations of Liverpool supporters who lived through those thirty years without a league title despaired time and again at their side’s ability to beat the best teams on their day only to slip up against the lesser lights and, having somehow clawed themselves back into Champions League contention, it seemed history was repeating itself.
The five additional minutes at the end of the 90 were almost up when the Reds won one last corner and goalkeeper Alisson Becker, as he had done earlier in the year during that shocking run of home defeats, charged the length of the field in desperation to add his height to those in the box and timed his run to perfection, arching his neck as Trent Alexander-Arnold’s delivery curled perfectly into his path and guiding the kind of header which would have done any of his Brazilian predecessors proud into the top corner of the net to become the first goalkeeper to ever score for Liverpool in the club’s 129-year history. He was immediately mobbed by delirious team-mates, the looks of sheer incredulity on many of their faces encapsulating the sheer wonderful madness of the moment and matched on the touchline where Jurgen Klopp, with the kind of glint in his eye not seen for months, turned around to his backroom staff as if need of confirmation that what he had just seen with his own eyes had actually really happened before being embraced by assistant Pep Lijnders.
Alisson, a devout Christian, pointed to the skies in memory of his recently-departed father as the celebrations wound down and spoke emotionally afterwards after what the moment meant to him. "You can't explain a lot of things in my life”, he said. “The only reason is God and he put his hand on my head today and I'm feeling very blessed. I just tried to run into a good place and be there to try and help my players, to bring a defender, but no one followed me and I am lucky and blessed, sometimes things you can't explain. I'm too emotional, this last month for everything that has happened with me and my family, but football is my life, I played since I can remember with my father. I hope he was here to see it, I'm sure he is celebrating with God at his side. I can’t be more happy than I am now.”
Many of Alisson’s team-mates had spoken of their love and admiration for the Brazilian goalkeeper in the wake of his tragic loss and took to social media to pay tribute, with Andy Robertson telling the club website those final dramatic moments at the Hawthorns proved again the never-say-die attitude was still running strong through the squad despite their struggles in recent months.
"I've given up now trying to describe it," he said. "This team, I've said it time and time again – of course it was maybe when we were going for titles and things like that – but we just don't know when to give up. We keep fighting, we keep going, we keep probing. We had some really good chances [in the] last 10 minutes and we just couldn't find the chance. Then you get a corner and I see Ali sprinting by me and I'm thinking, 'I'm not sure about this.' I go back to the halfway line and any striker in the world I think is happy with that header – it's unbelievable. For him, for his family, what he's been through, everyone's been through a rubbish time but him particularly. Not being able to go back to Brazil after losing his dad and everything like that, the amount of emotions that man has probably felt throughout this whole year, welcoming a baby boy into the family, it's incredible. We are one big family. When one of us hurts, we all hurt and we all felt the impact of when his father sadly passed away. It's an incredible, emotional moment for him and I'm sure there won't be a dry eye back in Brazil for him. Clearly his dad is looking over him."
Watching a seemingly-liberated Jurgen Klopp speak afterwards, the moment seem to have restored in his faith in the glorious unpredictability of football coming as it did during the last knockings of a difficult match which seemed to have encapsulated Liverpool’s difficult campaign. "That game is our season in a nutshell," he said. "A lot of good stuff, we got hammered for the first mistake and then had to work like crazy. But nobody got over the top, we had shots and kept playing football and its really difficult against these sides, how they defend, how they set up, and in the end we needed Alisson to sort it. Nowadays you cannot be sure, is something wrong? So I turned around, ‘Am I right, did we score?’ It's an unbelievable header, I've never seen anything like that, good technique. I wasn't sure what I was seeing. We are really close and know exactly what it means to Ali, it's outstanding, really touching. It's only football but it means the world to us. It’s great for the boys, it means a lot for us, we are still in the race, that’s all we can do.”
Given Liverpool’s travails at the Hawthorns, the two remaining games - away to Burnley and at home to Crystal Palace - ended up being surprisingly straightforward with 3-0 and 2-0 victories ensuring Klopp’s men actually ended up finishing in third place, a remarkable salvage job from the depths of despair in early March when soon-to-be-relegated Fulham’s win at Anfield dropped the Reds to seventh. It meant one of the most difficult on-field seasons the club had ever had to endure could be to put to bed without the damaging loss to status and of course finances missing out on Champions League qualification would have imposed. A year on, Alisson’s header now assumes even greater significance with a Paris date with Real Madrid at the end of May looming but perhaps more than anything else, the Brazilian’s heaven-sent moment should be treasured for being the small acorn from which grew the blooming tree of Liverpool’s stellar 2021/22 campaign and Jurgen Klopp’s further commitment to the club and its future.
