Jürgen Klopp Walks on to the Golden Sky

The football world experienced a collective shock last Friday when Liverpool Football Club manager Jürgen (Norbert) Klopp announced that he would be retiring at the end of the season. The team currently sit in first place in the English Premier League and are still alive in all 3 of their cup competitions. It’s always a surprise when a coach announces mid-season that he or she will step down, but this was something decidedly different.

I woke up Saturday morning and read the report, quickly texted my other football (okay, soccer) obsessives to see if they’d heard the news. I shot messages to fellow Liverpool supporters to gauge their reaction, and of course I opened Twitter to see what the fan accounts were saying. What did I find? Chaos, despair, denial, heartbreak. Grown men picking up their children from school early to grieve. Weeping. Tweets about fathers, role models, therapists etc. Here’s a taste on what social media had to offer in the wake of the news:

Of course, we know that sports fans can be a bit much. Take a look around a stadium when the home team is knocked out of the playoffs, and you’ll get a sense of what it all means to people.

After chuckling to myself about the fan reaction, I watched the video announcement. Please, watch the whole thing or at least this two minute clip of it:

So raw, so human, so honest. Klopp put it very simply: “I’m running out of energy.” He acknowledged that the life of a professional coach is incredibly taxing, that he can’t keep up the intensity required to operate at this level. He wants to spend time with his family. He wants to live a normal life. In his own words: “I came here, and I said it on the first day, as a normal guy. I am still a normal guy, I just don’t live a normal life for too long now. I don’t want to wait until I am too old for having a normal life.” And we can’t fault him for it, can we?

This was not a typical exit interview. In most cases, the coach is fired (“sacked” in Britspeak) and unceremoniously  ushered out the back door. Or, in rare cases, there is some sort of health issue that keeps him from fulfilling his duties. Some wondered why announce it now, in the middle of a season? Doesn’t this put the spotlight squarely on him? He was just awarded the key to the city for God’s sake! Why not wait until the games have been played? In short, he wanted to make sure that the other employees at the club are given the time and space necessary to make their own transitions. Pretty selfless stuff.

I am not a lifelong Liverpool fan. I didn’t grow up on Merseyside. I’m no Scouser. I don’t have season tickets or a Liverpool Crest tattoo. I’m not a hooligan or ultra and my week isn’t ruined if a group of men I’ll never meet lose on a field thousands of miles away. And yet, I love this team. I wake up at 7am to watch them play. I tell my wife that I’m happy to get up with our boy on a Saturday morning. “Don’t worry babe, you can sleep in.” She knows what’s going on.

Sports fandom is illogical, borderline absurd. But maybe that’s what makes it so beautiful, so authentic. When I punched the couch last Sunday after my Buffalo Bills were knocked out by the Kansas City Chiefs (again), my wife just sighed. She doesn’t get it, but she gets me. She understands that this is part of my identity, part of my personal history. But we have to also remember: it is just a game.

Liverpool have enjoyed a period of tremendous success under Klopp and of course that’s a major factor in the fan reaction to his departure. But it’s not the only thing. When Nick Saban announced his retirement from Alabama, the “Roll-Tide” crowd was upset, sure, but mostly because they were angry because they were losing the most successful coach in college football history. They weren’t going to miss him. He wasn’t a father figure. He wasn’t hugging his players after a loss.

Liverpool, the club and city, will miss Klopp. His ethos and playing style befit the city: Work hard, play hard. He’s dubbed his playing style as “Heavy-Metal Football” or to borrow the German expression “Gegenpressing.” It is a sort of manic, balls to the wall style that requires each player to bust their asses for the full 90 minutes. It is taxing, impossible at times, but so fun to watch and so easy to root for. Klopp knows that working-class Liverpudlians want to see their heroes suffer. The fans, card carrying members of the club, want to be proud of the effort their team is putting in. And of course, they want excitement. They want passion. They want a guy who desperately wants to win, but is actually ok with losing sometimes too, as long as the team really went for it. “If we can do it, wonderful. If we can’t do it, let’s fail in the most beautiful way.”

But it turns out the fans want something else too. They want a guy who pulls his hamstring celebrating a goal, or breaks his glasses in a group hug bull ring. They want a guy who pounds his chest and salutes the crowd after each game. The one who hugs his players in victory and defeat. The one who even finds time to hug the opposition!

But perhaps more than all of that, they want someone human. Someone who rearranges practice schedules to accommodate Muslim players. Someone who learns the backroom staffer’s names. Someone who takes the time to meet with disabled fans and form relationships with them. Someone who sends messages to fans with terminal diagnoses.

At the end of the video message linked above, he extends hope and encouragement to this fan. On the eve of the biggest game of the season, he offers these words to someone he’ll never meet: “We try to give people some joy, some hope, good moments to remember. And we share these moments … we share these experiences and that actually makes us friends. I’m a Christian, so, see you.” And it’s perhaps this final phrase that sets Klopp apart.

He is, of course, charming and handsome. There are physical attributes that draw people towards him: his accent, his smile, his verbal gaffes. Most recently he mistook the term “brain-fog” for “brain-f*ck” and couldn’t understand why people got so upset when he said it!

But really, it’s the hugs and it’s the love. When asked by Roger Bennet, co-founder of the Men in Blazers media company and co-host of their excellent podcast, what might be the strategic value in hugs, he responded, “the hugs are for me!” He needs that connection. And perhaps he recognizes that others need it too. After all, as Klopp says, “we are human beings, we are weak.”

Jurgen Klopp comes out to a brilliant reception at Anfield.

My cousin, 15, has just told me there were people crying in his school when Klopp announced he was leaving.

Win the lot for him, Redmen! pic.twitter.com/OWbrxipaov

— Sam Millne (@sam_millne) January 28, 2024

I’m a little surprised that I wasn’t aware of Klopp’s faith before last week. He is open to speaking publicly about it, but it doesn’t come up in every interview. I wonder if it is this faith that makes his teams so much fun to watch. There is the security blanket of the cross and for the players, his hugs!  “In the end he took all of our sins on his head and let them nail him to a cross. For me as a Christian, it’s the most decisive thing that ever happened, obviously, because it changed everything … It’s the greatest act ever accomplished, and there’s no way we could ever do it, and we don’t need to because we have someone who did it for us. That’s a huge, huge comfort.” Of course it is!

He continues, “If life should be judged at the end, when we stand in front of the (heavenly) door, they ask, ‘Did you win something or not?’ that would be really strange. They should ask, ‘Did you try everything to improve the place you have been, the house you have lived in, the mood, the love?’ And I will say, ‘Yes, I tried it every day.'”

Isn’t this who we want as our coach? Klopp isn’t Jesus and a sporting comparison won’t do. We can’t really imagine Christ prowling the sidelines of a football match, barking at the referees after a missed call or pounding his chest after a goal. But we can imagine what a coach who knows Jesus would be like. Yes, demanding: play your heart out, give it your all, don’t be afraid to fail, play to win. And when it’s over, win or lose, there is that hug, the one that says it’s all just a game in the end, let’s enjoy the ride and remember to play with bellies full of love.

The fans realize that an era is coming to a close. Maybe surprisingly, there is a level of gratitude amongst these Liverpool supporters that we don’t see too much. They know they have it good.  Recently, the Liverpool fans held up a sign that said, “Imagine being us.” It’s cocky, I suppose, but also an honest acknowledgment of how good they’ve had it. Klopp will leave and life will go on of course, but there’s a recognition of their position that feels so flipping joyful. Life is hard. We are weak. Let’s find joy when we can and give each other a lot of hugs along the way.

Liverpool’s club anthem captures this sentiment better than I ever could:

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of a storm
There’s a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
For your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone.