After almost years at the helm of the Club and seven major trophies, Jürgen Klopp is leaving Liverpool.
He has been one of the most transformative managers in the club’s history and the English football era.
On the occasion of his departure, The Athletic presents you with the Real Jurgen Klopp, a series that paints the definitive portrait of one of football’s most outstanding figures.
In part four, Simon Hughes talks to the people of Merseyside about his influence on Liverpool and the region.
Real Jurgen Klopp of The Athletic
Mike Kearney was born with vision disorders and was declared blind from the age of seven.
He was 24 when Klopp appointed Liverpool manager and 27 when, overnight, he became a recognisable face among the club’s fans.
This is due to a video that shows him reacting to Mohamed Salah’s goal against Napoli in the Champions League, which guaranteed qualification from the organization of a festival that they would go on to win at the end of the same season.
Amid the chaos of the Kop, Kearney filmed in the front row celebrating, before his cousin Stephen bowed and described the goal.
A blind Liverpool fan celebrates Mo Salah’s goal against Napoli described by his teammate. ❤️ https://t. co/EuUMhSgU4T
Within 24 hours, Kearney’s overall situation had changed. Salah watched the clip online and invited Kearney to Melwood, Liverpool’s former ground, where he met most of the players and technical staff, including Klopp.
“As a user with a disability, in the back of your mind you need to be accepted,” Kearney told The Athletic. “This experience has made me feel accepted through the club I support. “
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He remembers Klopp appearing at the top of the Melwood stairs while waiting at reception. The headmaster immediately went downstairs, though Kearney felt he intended to head to another part of the establishment.
“There were no cameras filming and he wasn’t looking to be anyone yet. When you receive that respect from everyone you love, you feel good.
Kearney, who has attended Liverpool games since he was a child, has become a component of Liverpool’s history, a remarkable crusade that also nearly culminated in the club’s first league name in 29 years, but he’s not the only one to feel a connection to Klopp.
For all his strengths as one of the super coaches of the trendy game – tactics, signings, player control – one of the main reasons Klopp is so celebrated at Anfield is his ability to connect with fans and his city.
GO FURTHER
“Will you take me?” In the city, the city looks to life after Jurgen.
Many managers claim to have a bond with their club, to understand their others and their practices; Pay attention to the enthusiasts that Klopp has completed his nine years in charge and it is clear that with him it felt real.
“People laugh at this story of turning sceptics into believers, but it’s true,” Kearney says, referring to the most famous word Klopp uttered at his inaugural press conference in October 2015.
Kearney recalls Borussia Dortmund’s victory over Malaga in the Champions League in 2013, when they scored two goals in stoppage time to advance to the semi-finals, and the idea that Klopp would be smart for Liverpool. Under his predecessor, Brendan Rodgers, Liverpool lost 3-0 at home to Real Madrid with 3 goals in the first half, while, according to Kearney, “the attitude was, ‘What can you do, this is Real Madrid?'”
He continued: “With Klopp, that was never the case. Instead, the attitude has been, “I don’t care who you are, you’re on our turf and we’re going to try to beat you, whoever you are. “”.
Kearney’s condition is degenerative. He used to wear glasses and had more central vision, but now his vision is blurry. These disorders accelerated from 2010, when he entered adulthood, and it has become increasingly complicated for others like him to get what they needed under successive British Conservative governments. .
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“It’s always been about showing that I’m disabled enough and that I’m entitled to the help I get,” she says.
He blames the political landscape for this. Amid a wider leadership vacuum, Kearney says he is helping Liverpool have to run the club he believes in.
“Liverpool is a left-wing city and Klopp has left-wing values,” he said. “He never said or did anything absolutely different and that consistency is for the rest of the people at Liverpool.
“I thought we’d won the lottery when we got it, but never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d end up winning it all. “
Kearney says Klopp has tapped into the anger and frustration that is surging at Anfield. When that happens, the mix is irresistible, like when Liverpool overcame a three-goal deficit in the first leg to knock Barcelona out of the Champions League in 2019.
Kearney would later analyse images from Barcelona’s dressing room at half-time, when they were in the game but still leading 3-1 on aggregate.
“Everything is still in their hands,” he says. They were one of the most productive groups on the planet. They had one of the greatest players the sport has ever seen. However, some players were on the verge of tears. They may just see what’s going to happen. When Anfield is like that, you don’t stand a chance. And deep down, they knew. Much of that power is due to Klopp.
“When all is said and done and the smoke has cleared and he is gone, we can be grateful.
“Fans at other clubs say that under Klopp they only won one league and one Champions League, but they haven’t experienced it. We lived it and had a moment as a coach.
Klopp led Liverpool to 3 Champions League finals and at the end of the season, when they reached the first, a report by Deloitte revealed that in the 2017-2018 season, the club had contributed £497 million ($628 million) to the region’s economy. On the gross aggregate price (GVA, a measure of the financial impact of a company or sector).
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The same report states that the club’s activities and good fortune have contributed to the creation of 4,500 jobs in the city.
A competitive Liverpool FC is vital to the region and Klopp’s influence has been significant in many people’s lives.
Quietly, he would travel with a civic delegation to Hamburg to talk about business opportunities between the two cities that, as soccer-loving working-class ports with a strong ideology of choice, have a lot in common.
Steve Rotheram, mayor of the Liverpool metropolitan area, spent time at Klopp’s company, who he believes would be a leader if he wasn’t a football manager.
Klopp, in Rotheram’s eyes, is a social democrat with a German political tradition. It is those values that coalesce in Liverpool, once one of the largest ports in the British Empire, where the political landscape swung from right to left in the 1980s due to crushing unemployment and shows no signs of turning back. .
Despite intense local pride, Rotheram says you don’t have to be from Liverpool to run a Liverpool establishment and for other people to join you. Ayrshire-born Bill Shankly is proof of this when he revolutionised Liverpool FC after his appointment in 1959, instilling a set of values and expectations from paintings that are unconsciously ingrained even today.
While Shankly’s modest home was in West Derby, near Melwood, Klopp lived on ‘Millionaire’s Row’ in Formby, a leafy beach in the city 14 miles north of the city where many Liverpool and Everton stars have built their homes over the years. Klopp inherited his space from Brendan Rodgers and Steven Gerrard was a neighbour.
Most of his time in England has been spent commuting between his home and the grounds in Liverpool, first in Melwood and, more recently, at the AXA centre in Kirkby, an hour’s drive away. He wasn’t as visual in Liverpool as Shankly, who drove his brightly coloured Ford Cortina through traffic and headed to the city centre for some shopping.
Still, times have changed and the Liverpool manager’s success means it’s harder to live the general life Shankly once led.
The day before his appointment as Liverpool manager, Klopp was photographed having a drink at the Old Blind School restaurant in the city’s Georgian quarter.
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Perhaps it was at that moment that he knew it would be difficult to escape the attention on him. Since then, if Klopp has been away, it has been regularly in Formby, where he has been seen at the Freshfield pub (including on the venue’s quiz night), as well as in the town’s pine forests and beach, where he walks his dog. In 2016, he also participated in a green crown ball game at the local club.
He also visited the Sparrowhawk pub and restaurant in Ainsdale and a regular at the Hope Street Hotel, an active boutique in the city centre, after opting for it as Liverpool’s official pre-match base.
On one occasion, he saw it in the south of Liverpool, at the Dovedale Towers, but it was because he was filming an advertisement for Erdinger, the German brewing company that is one of his sponsors.
In 2009, Shankly was posthumously made an honorary citizen of Liverpool, 28 years after his death. Still, Klopp, in 2022, granted the city’s freedom while he was still the club’s manager.
It’s the first time and, according to Rotheram, when he speaks to The Athletic from his Mann Island office overlooking Liverpool’s Albert Dock, “it shows you the kind of principles he has and shows you that they’ve resonated with people. “
Rotheram speaks of a “spiritual connection” between Klopp and the city. “I’ve never met a Liverpool manager about whom fans at rival clubs would at least say impartial things. However, he fits better in Liverpool and Merseyside than I do. “I’ve known that. And if I were to go to another club, I’m not sure I’d enjoy the same synergies that exist here.
With Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, Rotheram co-edited an e-book titled Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain.
As a politician, he says he faced an anti-Liverpool bias in the Westminster committee rooms, where MPs from other parts of the country talked about Liverpool representatives showing up in London with their “begging bowls”.
Rotheram has done his part to replace this perception, which is based on an anti-Irish sentiment that dates back to the 19th century, when migrants came to the country by boat from Dublin and elsewhere, and says Klopp has contributed to this process.
“I don’t think Jurgen ever claimed to know the whole history of the city, but he knows enough to protect it,” Rotheram says. “He realizes that his words and movements go beyond what happens on a football field. “
GO FURTHER
The new air of the Sefton coastline: a place of inspiration for Klopp and Ancelotti
Ian Byrne grew up on Liverpool’s Cantril Farm before moving to the Anfield area, and as an MP represents the nearby West Derby constituency.
The 16-year-old was at Hillsborough in 1989, when 97 Liverpool fans lost their lives in the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. Although Byrne escaped the stampede, his father was seriously injured.
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In 2015 he co-founded the Fans Supporting Foodbanks initiative with Dave Kelly, an Evertonian.
Like Rotheram, Byrne sees the Liverpool manager’s task as a task that extends to civic duty, “adding a layer to the long list of day-to-day jobs; Any coach has to settle for it, whether it’s fair or not. “
Byrne says Shankly is “fully responsible” for Liverpool’s culture, where the manager’s word is sacred. Still, some of his successors have had more demanding situations than simply creating a football club, as Shankly did, taking Liverpool from the old-time department to the more sensible one in English football.
Since 1989, each and every manager has had to deal with the impact of Hillsborough. Kenny Dalglish was in office at the time of the crisis and attended many funerals of victims, totaling four in one day. It’s almost as mentioned, both for this and for his brilliant achievements as a player and coach.
“You have leadership on the football field, but you also have to show it off the field,” Byrne says. “People expect you to protect the city. A special user is needed to succeed in this job.
Klopp’s “global voice” has given Liverpool a wider audience, according to Byrne, who believes Liverpoolers have to fight “three, four or five times harder, just to make sure our voices are heard”.
This is due, he says, to “preconceived notions about who other Liverpudlians are and what they can achieve”.
Byrne stands in front of a freshly painted mural, marking Klopp’s tenure at Liverpool. There are several like the ones at Anfield now, adding those players from the Klopp era who are legends.
GO FURTHER
How Liverpool is the football capital of the UK.
The club’s appointments with local people at Anfield are higher than they were 15 years ago, when there was uncertainty about whether the club would stay or move.
The lack of permanence has hurt the neighbourhood, but now, with the expansion of Anfield, which has been influenced by the fortunes of Klopp’s teams, the mood has improved, although the appointments go smoothly.
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Byrne, who has a season ticket at Anfield, says that, for a long time, the ‘Liverpool machine’ was seen by many as the enemy, but under Klopp there has been a shift in mentality in terms of ownership.
On a healthy day, anxiety persists due to the number of other people entering the domain and the accumulation of antisocial behaviors. Meanwhile, interest in Liverpool’s fortune led to an explosion of rental housing and “children’s housing” options.
Byrne says the terraced Victorian houses of Anfield would be ideal first-time buyer homes, but the economic position of an area that remains one of the poorest in Liverpool means families are reluctant to move in.
Klopp, Byrne adds, cannot be judged by the position of a district that has struggled for a long time, however, he has done everything he can to build a world-class team and the benefits of that should be highlighted.
Pointing to the mural, he insists that Klopp is closer to Liverpool than Shankly.
“And I didn’t think it was possible. “
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)