Jurgen Klopp: When funerals and wakes collide

What do you do when the person you're both mourning and celebrating is actually present for the combination funeral and wake? And why does the departure of a football manager feel so much like grief?

It doesn’t matter whether it’s sudden and unexpected, or whether we’re given ample notice and at least an opportunity to say goodbye. Nothing can fully insulate us from them no longer being there for the simple reason that they are, until they aren’t any more.

Liverpool supporters had more notice than many; four months, in total. But by the time of their final match under Jurgen Klopp at home to Wolves on Sunday afternoon, it felt somewhat as though both would have to be rattled through almost simultaneously. And this particular amalgamated funeral and wake would be taking place in the presence of the person being both mourned and celebrated. Living funerals have become more fashionable in recent years. Now we all know what one looks like.

All Things Must Past, written by the late former Beatle George Harrison, set a tone, but then The Real Thing came along and saved the day. You to Me Are Everything had been used in one of the club’s goodbye videos on social media last week, performed by the lads from Toxteth who sounded like they were from Phila-goddam-delphia. A small nod toward the city’s multi-cultural past, present, and future, and enough to lift the mood before a routine win against mid-table opposition with no particular place to go. Oh baby.

So it was an emotional afternoon at Anfield, but not really one the club would have wanted. They won the League Cup back when the evenings were much longer, but their runs in the FA Cup, Europa League and Premier League all ended up coming to very little, all the more so for the fact that the quadruple was a distinct possibility at the time of the original announcement in January.

And while yes, it will all have been a bit too much for some, the reaction to the outpourings of emotions this weekend perhaps hasn’t been quite as derisive as you might have expected it would be. Perhaps there is a recognition that yes, this can be a universal condition. All clubs have a manager of that nature. Revie at Leeds. Clough at Forest and Derby. Bill Nick at Spurs and Busby and Ferguson at United. So we kind of all know what it feels like. “Bloody hell, he’s not dying”, isn’t quite the zinger you think it is when your inner voice is saying, “Well, it felt like it when it was [insert name here]”.

In football, to add the the grief at what has just passed, there is always trepidation about the future. Arne Slot is a fine head coach, though Feyenoord did miss out on repeating their 2023 Eredivisie title to PSV and were knocked out of the Champions League in the group stages. When the announcement that Klopp was to leave was first made, it was almost assumed that Xabi Alonso would be offered the job and accept it.

But he didn’t, and that’s been Bayer Leverkusen’s undoubted gain. They now stand at the cusp of what could be the most extraordinary season in the entire history of European club football, with only the DFB Pokal and Europa League finals separating them from a clean sweep at the end of an unbeaten season in all competitions. Slot, for all his qualities, has not just coached a team to that sort of season. As such, the feeling going forward feels slightly more muted than it might otherwise have been.

Of course, yesterday wasn’t a day for looking forward. It was a day for looking back over a period which has been transformative for the club. It’s the way things sometimes turn out with managers. Bill Shankly didn’t win as many trophies as Bob Paisley, but he’s the man who defined Liverpool FC through the last four decades of the 20th century, two of them after he died.

Klopp may have taken that role himself for the 21st century. He won close to a clean sweep with Liverpool; the Premier League, the FA Cup, the League Cup, the Champions League, the European Super Cup and the World Club Cup, but only once each, apart from the League Cup. Of course, in the age of sovereign wealth fund billions, doing much more than that was always going to be an extremely uphill battle.

But Klopp’s role at Liverpool was greater than this. His was more institutional, rebuilding both the inward and outward direction of the club. At that time, after Brendan, Kenny, Roy, Rafael, Gérard, (other) Roy and Graeme, the club’s identity, so formidable throughout the 1970s and 1980s, was all but gone to the extent that even winning the Champions League in 2005 and reaching the final again two years later felt more like a tribute act than a return to former glories. That previous… Liverpoolness returned under Klopp.

Just as his exit stage centre from Anfield turned out to be, Jurgen Klopp could be a little extra at times. But the overwhelming impression that you come away with following any spell of Klopp-watching is of a a fundamentally decent person whose histrionics on the touchline were a reflection of the increasingly performative era in which we live.

You can hate the cartoon character all you like, but the human being is a different matter altogether. When you're glowering your way through another 90 minutes of glumness overseen by Generic Football Head Coach #45, the idiosyncrasy is appealing, as is the feeling that supporters of other clubs have to grudgingly admire him even if he really boils their piss. If he's got your team playing football to which the only appropriate music is The Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin and it's winning more matches too, then all the better.

That will be the legacy of Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool. The blood and thunder football. Returning the English title after 30 years. Taking Liverpool to the top of Europe for the first time in fourteen and then the world for the first time. Giving a club that had lacked a cohesive identity with in the 21st century a new one in his image, and a building a team that could occasionally put one over the vast amount of money at the disposal of their rivals. The records books will show the numbers, but the influence was vastly, vastly greater.

Good luck, Mr Slot. May you be more Paisley than Souness.