Jurgen Klopp shifted from foot to foot. Everyone at Anfield did. Thursday night, 30 minutes into the second half and Liverpool were drawing 1-1 with a Sheffield United side soon to be relegated. The ‘as it stands’ table showed Arsenal on top of the Premier League. Had someone brought the wrong script?
Klopp watched on, big hands clasped behind his big back. He wasn’t hopping mad, but then this man who — when announcing his decision to leave — said he is no young rabbit any more, wasn’t hopping happy either.
It was tense. It is 10 weeks since Klopp made public his intention to depart at the end of the season. Since then, Liverpool have played 15 games and won 12 of them — but for a spell turning into a stretch on Thursday, it seemed the total might be 11 and with it, Liverpool’s rolling participation in this absorbing three-way title run-in would be punctured.
Then Alexis Mac Allister scored the sort of goal children — and adults — dream of, Anfield burst with relief and Klopp’s coaching staff leapt from their seats onto the touchline to punch home their glee. Another goal came and this team, which is top of the ‘second half’ league table, had done it again.
Liverpool were back on top and basic mathematics tells us if they win their remaining eight games, they will be Premier League champions next month.
As Sheffield United showed, however, that’s rather easier said than done. And next, it is Manchester United at Old Trafford where, three games ago, Liverpool lost an epic FA Cup tie having clearly been the superior team.
Sunday is an enormous day for United, but it is pretty large for Klopp, too. Since his January announcement, the 56-year-old has been determined to keep the focus on his squad, rather than himself (albeit the club is making a documentary of these final months).
On Wednesday, he shut down questions about himself and whether he has the room to consider how each game now brings some form of ‘last’ for him. Given he said he will never manage another club in England, these are reasonable questions. But long after the final whistle on Thursday he dumped his backpack by the side of the stage and did some more fending off.
Sunday could be his last ever visit to Old Trafford, quite a career moment, but when asked if he thinks he will miss these occasions, Klopp responded: “No. I’ve had them often enough.”
He said he understood the source of the question and added: “It’s all fine. I will miss probably all of them. We’ll see how I deal with missing football.”
On the extra-time FA Cup defeat, he was asked what he had learned from it.
“That the 10th interview after the game is not as good as the ninth,” was his knowing reply.
This was a smiling reference to the short spat with a Danish television reporter post-United. As with Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta, it was a small window into these driven personalities and the pressure they are under to deliver on and off the pitch.
Jurgen Klopp’s last trip to Old Trafford ended in disappointment (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
It should counter-press any desire to paint Klopp as some folksy bloke of grins and bearhugs. At times, he is a serious, hard man in an earthy profession. He took off a head-shaking Mohamed Salah after an hour. Another thing to deal with; another thing he won’t have to deal with.
The level of scrutiny is part of why Klopp is stepping away. As he said in January: “I did this job for 24 years and sometimes, I need to have a look at how life is, actually. Because I don’t know, I just don’t know.”
Klopp’s achievements at Anfield over eight and a half years already place him on the Mount Rushmore of modern Liverpool managers alongside Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley and Kenny Dalglish. But he shares more than silver and glory with them: there is attitude, too.
There may well be more tetchiness because all of them — and Guardiola and Arteta — are terrible at losing. You probably need to be.
Shankly once offered a counterpart, Bob Stokoe, for a fistfight at the back of the stand during a game. “He’s my type of man, he’s a bad loser,” Shankly said.
Paisley, from a coalmining background in Co. Durham, once told his players, “I’m only a modest Geordie, but back me into a corner and I’m a vicious bastard.” It was at odds with the knitted cardigans Paisley wore. Dalglish could also be flinty as well as funny.
Kenny Dalglish, pictured with Ronnie Moran (left) and Roy Evans after winning the 1990 league title, had steel (Dan Smith/Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive)
All three also reached similar stages in their managerial tenures at Anfield. When Klopp explained his decision to go as “the one I have to take – I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again,” there was an echo of Shankly in particular.
“Whilst you love football,” Shankly reflected in retirement, “it is a hard, relentless task which goes on and on like a river.”
Shankly said he sat in the dressing room at Wembley after Liverpool’s 1974 FA Cup win and felt “I was satisfied, and I was tired”.
He was 60. He had been at Anfield since 1959. But even a figure of his legendary dynamism is allowed to get weary. It’s a human condition Klopp understands. Thursday was game 48 of a season that may take him past 60 pre-match team talks; it began last July, pre-season. He said he could not face another of those.
Like Shankly, Klopp has a Wembley triumph in his last season — the League Cup — and there is so much more to play for. And while he does not like it, there is a personal countdown. There are now, for instance, only three league games under him left at Anfield.
Seeing 20-year-old Conor Bradley receive the ball in central midfield, as Thursday came to a close, was a reminder that, as with Paisley, Klopp is handing over real potential to his successor. Paisley departed having introduced two 20-year-olds, Ian Rush and Ronnie Whelan, into the team. They won more medals than some clubs.
The Liverpool succession also returns Klopp to Old Trafford and to what might have been. Ten years ago this month, Manchester United’s executive Ed Woodward flew to Germany to speak to Klopp as David Moyes’ days at United had numbers on them.
As Raphael Honigstein details in his book on Klopp, Bring The Noise, Woodward sold United as “an adult version of Disneyland”. It was not an offer too good to refuse; by contrast, on Thursday night, Klopp said, “We are not living in dreamland.”
Eighteen months after United’s approach, Klopp moved into a disbelieving Anfield and revitalised Liverpool. Sliding doors, as they say.
At Old Trafford tomorrow, Klopp is likely to meet another multi-dimensional manager often portrayed as the opposite, Sir Alex Ferguson. The Scot will see a man energised by the knowledge of a finishing line, just as Ferguson was in 2013.
Sir Alex Ferguson acknowledges Manchester United fans before his final game at Old Trafford in 2013 (Andrew Yates/AFP via Getty Images)
In his book Leading, Ferguson spoke of the hazards of succession planning and said he was “sure the length of time I had been in the role made things trickier. I know it did not make them easier”.
Ferguson also said that “leaving is complicated” and added it was “almost impossible to get right”.
But most of the time, Klopp and Liverpool look like they have achieved that. Ferguson will witness a team displaying the very qualities Klopp said he fears dwindling — energy and endurance. Klopp’s battery is charged. A six-week surge looms.
(Top photos: Getty Images; designed by Eamonn Dalton)
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