Klopp’s restless urgency the key to restoration of a city’s pride
EVEN as he approached the exceptional moment to crown a season of momentous magic, Jurgen Klopp did his best to remove himself from the dam-burst of his adopted city’s cocoon-shattering celebration.
Pressed as to how he will react to the closure for one of his sport’s most enduring, exhausting yearnings, he could not have fulfilled more the caricature of numbing Teutonic pragmatism had he tried.
“I watch the game not to prepare a celebration, but we play City a week later and also Chelsea,” he said drolly.
It is too easy to detect deception in the answer, as the cynic recalls the adopted Liverpudlian’s wind-milling, whitetoothed celebrations from Madrid to Manchester – and all points in between – as his gilded team now survey their flailing rivals from an improbable height.
After all Klopp, a man who has at once borne the hopes of an expectant city but without ever being weighed down by it, has demanded that his long-suffering devotees celebrate each little moment along the way. Just as he himself has done, so joyously in a dug-out which often doubles as a personal dance floor.
For Liverpool as a city, and as a club, have suffered too, too much not to afford themselves the chance to wallow whenever a ray of sunshine deigns to appear and release its denizens from despair.
For those of us are not of the city, who do not have its trauma dug deeply into the bones of existence, it is difficult to appreciate just how joyous the impending release is; perhaps it is too impossible even to articulate.
Which, itself, is the purpose of sport, to fill in the space where words cannot express feeling.
And so the city will embrace – and literally so, too, despite the inevitable pandemic of self-styled social media police who will seek to aggrandise their pernicious influence – as they emerge from a generation and more of crushing ordinariness, wherein each false dawn merely compounded sporting anguish.
When the very thing which is supposed to lift you from the sorrow and the grief, so often seemed to serve as a mocking accompaniment, these people deserve their moment.
And Klopp would never seek to deny it for them, either; it is almost as if, by supposedly secreting himself from any demonstration of naked triumph, he is, at once, assuring his flock that they have earned every right to make merry and, perhaps, indulge in something a little more intimate than an elbow bump over their neighbour’s garden wall.
And when they can sing their adopted anthem, knowing that, for now at least, instead of serving as a sentry to innumerable funerals or memorial services, they have finally reached the other end of the storm.
They made it through the rain to greet “the golden sky and the sweet silver song of a lark.”
So spare us the delusion; Klopp will celebrate as raucously as any other citizen encased in red colours tonight.
And yet, it is also not so hard to swallow the scarcely traceable grain of truth when Klopp demurs from delivering what others might perceive to be a distasteful acceptance speech.
He knows the eyes of the world will be on his side still more now and, for that reason, his eyes need to remain seared into the rest of the world more than ever before.
“This game is a really important game to watch for plenty of reasons,” he continued after the side’s latest, irrepressible rise against Crystal Palace.
“Whatever happens, we have no influence on it so I have no interest. It will happen when it happens.”
Already, humbled into accepting that nothing in this life, in this sport, can last forever, his commitment to ensuring that his side’s remarkable run can continue remains uppermost in his mind.
The drive to become even better than they were has brought them to this summit of achievement.
And that commitment to furious energy will be the only thing that keeps them there, too.
That much will have impinged upon every note-taking minute of Klopp’s typically restless evening session watching Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
He will have scribbled furiously, all the while cognisant of a maxim that does not need to be penned in the margin – the knowledge that no matter how imperious the force, no reign is immune from sudden splintering.
To absorb this, he need only reflect on the very reason Liverpool FC will celebrate their league title with much more abandon, it seems, than last summer’s Champions League triumph.
For while it remains uncertain how his
Spanish rival and their lavishly assembled squad may react to this season’s adversity, regardless of its elongated uniqueness, we can be sure how Klopp will respond.
For one thing, he appreciates the muscle memory of the decline that seeped into the club in the aftermath of that 1990 title win under Kenny Dalglish, his own spirit soon to be quenched of former fire, a warning from history as to the dangers of complacency.
Bill Shankly’s fabled “great bloody bomb in the sky” was then to be predominantly rendered into a slapstick novelty item which would explode in the club’s faces, as they tumbled to earth from the grand perch, toppled by their own inadequacies and a furiously urgent shaking by Alex Ferguson.
Their 1990 triumph would serve as a coda, not a continuation, of the accumulated glories plotted in the ‘Boot Room’.
Dynasties end when those in charge attempt to forget what makes them great.
Institutions
Liverpool merely joined a long list of institutions in all walks of life who lost their way. Klopp has helped them re-discover themselves.
True, others have opened the door to the illusions of lasting resurrection, from Gerard Houllier’s singular seasonal haul to Rafa Benitez and his Istanbul miracle but, as perhaps best exemplified by Brendan Rodgers’ tantalising tilt, none have smashed the door down and stormed though it.
Until now.
When he arrived, Klopp’s insistence on such a frenetic, furious pace to everything he did threatened to burn himself and his team out and their faltering efforts seemed to typify yet another typically grand delusion.
But faith has wedded the club together with a collective ambition and that unity has inspired them.
And when the manager sought reinforcements – from Virgil van Dijk to Allison Becker – those twin defensive titans that finally added real back-bone to their thrilling attack – he was served with the requisite funds.
Their certainties embellished the beauty that already resided within – the comfort of preventing a not insignificantly talented Crystal Palace side from breaching a millimetre of their penalty box this week.
It was in marked contrast to the shimmering mirage of hesitation that gripped Steven Gerrard and the rest of his team, when the Palace of 2014 confirmed the fatality of the captain’s Chelsea clip.
Klopp’s indifferent beginnings were cloaked in cultural transition in an unspectacular opening gambit. His first full season lit the flames beneath the red rocket which would soon zoom into orbit.
Mo Salah and Sadio Mane were recruited to add craft, from rather less promising pastures, Andy Robertson and Jordan Henderson would provide graft. It would prove to be an intoxicating cocktail.
Trent Alexander-Arnold emerged as a legend in his position and, like all truly great sides, including the one they sought to depose, their all-action style invited immediate and obvious comparison with their manager.
And a city that also paraded itself in artful humour and darting quick grace soon added their voice to the choruses of approval.
Soon all were as one. And tonight they unite to celebrate, not just this moment, but all the moments that brought them to a paradise once thought irredeemably lost.
And the moments that their manager will now redouble his efforts to ensure are not frittered away for another generation.
They may build him a statue but that would represent the end of history. This must instead be the start of it. For Klopp’s work is only beginning now.