Liverpool sings its goodbye to Jurgen Klopp, 'an artist and a scientist' (2024)

Boss Night, a tribute show described as a “musical journey of Jurgen’s tenure at Liverpool FC”, rolls out 24 hours before Klopp’s last engagement at Anfield. Tickets for the event at Liverpool Olympia sold out in 47 seconds. At the end of the month devotees will have another opportunity to commune with Klopp at the M&S Bank Arena, where Scouse emblem John Bishop hosts an Evening With Jurgen Klopp. And on that occasion the great man himself will be present.

Gatherings such as these are one way of distilling the importance of Klopp to the city with which he has become synonymous. They are an expression of the depth of feeling of this community for a figure who saw himself as one of them, and whose departure most are still struggling to process.

That the city should choose music and dance to say goodbye to their hero reflects the deep connection in Liverpool between those classic expressions of working class culture, football and pop music. Ian Broudie, Liverpool fan and veteran frontman of the Lightning Seeds, who is perhaps best known for composing the ultimate football anthem Football’s Coming Home, will be performing at the M&S Bank gig.

He shares the sense of unreality surrounding Klopp’s farewell on Sunday. “I don’t know if there has ever been this situation before. Usually managers are fired. You have this funny situation where no one wants Jurgen to go. Maybe he has just had enough, who knows? But he obviously loves the club and the club wants him to stay. So no one wants this to happen but we understand that it has to,” Broudie told i.

A son of the 1950s, Broudie was called to the Kop, as so many were, in the dizzying days of Bill Shankly. The parallels with Shankly come easily.

“With Shankly there was this idea, this socialist thing that as a people, together, we can achieve anything. Klopp in a similar way had this thing about the importance of the journey as much as the end. For fans it is about the suffering, the wanting. What helps on a Saturday is everyone believing and everyone enjoying this process. If we all believe and enjoy this process, even if we don’t win it, it will be great, and if we do enjoy it, we probably will win anyway.

“I remember him saying to the fans early on, I don’t want you leaving when we are losing. We lose together and we win together. Now, no one goes. And at the end he goes over to the Kop and everyone wants to clap him. It has been an amazing transformation. Everyone bought into it, players and the fans. He was the catalyst for everything working.”

As Broudie notes, the only Merseyside band that wasn’t into football was the most famous. “The Beatles. No interest at all. How crazy is that?” Like so many of his Indy contemporaries, Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen included, the football experience in Liverpool is as much a part of their lives as the music they produce. Broudie affords himself a degree of philosophical reflection over the parting, just grateful that the light from Klopp’s star shone at Anfield for so long.

“I relate everything to music; you could have a genius in the wrong band and you would never know he is a genius. You have to have the right guy in the right place. It’s a stroke of luck, a moment of serendipity.

“The same way [Sir Alex] Ferguson was the right guy for United at that moment, Shankly for Liverpool at that moment, Jurgen was fated to be. It might be that we have Bob Paisley (i.e. Klopp’s replacement Arne Slot) coming in and winning everything. But I don’t think there will ever be the love we had for Jurgen and Shankly.”

Broudie’s 33-year-old son, Riley, is both a member of the band and of the Liverpool sect. It could hardly have been otherwise. Unlike his father Riley’s football youth was largely barren. He grew up under the red shadow of Manchester United and though he knew the cosmic joy of Istanbul when Liverpool won the European Cup for the fifth time in 2005, Anfield was largely a cold corner of the Premier League until the arrival of Klopp.

“It felt different to anything I had experienced as a Liverpool fan. I don’t know if that is different for my dad because he watched Shankly and Paisley and those teams. Even though we won the Champions League, everything felt different under Klopp, even when we haven’t won things or the season hasn’t been great, I have never felt for one moment I wouldn’t want Jurgen in charge. I have been going to Anfield since I was five and it’s only in the last eight or nine years that it has become really, really special for me.”

Broudie junior was speaking whilst on holiday in Barcelona, where the distance is helping ease the pain of separation. Klopp’s final game will be the first he has missed at Anfield this season.

At 33 he is still young enough to look forward with optimism, yet he knows that nothing will ever be the same. “There is such a connection with Klopp. I’m excited for what’s to come. It’s a new era. You have to be positive but under Klopp football is such a unique experience. The character of the manager was transmitted to the players. Klopp’s force of nature got some of those big results over the line.”

Both agreed that the magic lay in Klopp’s ability to make players better. Andy Robertson became one of the finest left-backs in the world under Klopp’s aegis.

They cite Klopp’s ability to tease from fringe players match-winning efforts in key moments, like Divock Origi’s unforgettable night against Barcelona. And then there are those who suffered a downturn after leaving Anfield, including Philippe Coutinho, Sadio Mane and Gini Wijnaldum.

“To succeed under Klopp with his style, footballers have to sort of become more than they are,” Broudie Snr says. “All these forces come together to make you better than you really are. That’s what Klopp does with those players and with the club, he sort of gathers it all together. It’s almost like watching an artist as much as a scientist. I know he is hot on the science of football and all that. But he is unique and we love him.”

Joe Blott, a committee member of the Spirit of Shankly, the Liverpool supporters’ group, thought the good days were gone for good at Anfield. Even when Fenway Sports Group assumed control from American prospectors George Gillett and Tom Hicks, the fans were forced to endure six months of Roy Hodgson and the failed return of Kenny Dalglish before Brendan Rodgers briefly inspired hope.

And then in October 2015 the arrival of Klopp transformed the landscape. Now it’s over. Auf Wiedersehen. And Blott, like the majority, is struggling to grasp the finality of it all.

“In terms of values and principles, his demeanour, his understanding of fan culture and the holy trinity of the players, manager and fans, Klopp reinstated all of that,” Blott tells i.

“At the end of the Villa game we should all have been deflated after being 3-1 up with five minutes to go and finishing 3-3, but when he came over everyone just sang his name. No one moved. That just showed what a man he is and the esteem we have for him. The despondency came when we got back on the coach and someone said: “We have only six days left of Klopp, six days left of this man.”

Blott if a contemporary of Broudie. Though he lived through Shankly and Paisley, Joe fa*gan and Dalglish, years of plenty when Liverpool set the standard at home and abroad, the rise of empire 30 miles to the east in Manchester recast the Liverpool experience entirely.

“I’m 63, you think at my age that you are not going to get those days again. That is what Klopp brought back to me, some of the best nights and games that I have ever been to, and I’ve seen a lot. I’m thinking Barcelona, Kyiv, Man City away, all joyous games. He made me, an old man, very happy again. He has not only motivated the players but the fans as well. He electrified us.”

“Part of the sadness for me is we are losing a fantastic human being as well as a brilliant football coach, the best since Shankly in terms of the warmth and celebration he has brought. I’m dreading Sunday. I don’t want Sunday to happen. I never thought Istanbul would be topped, but we have touched the sky again under Klopp. He turned doubters into believers.”

Like it or not the red sun will rise soon enough on Slot. Broudie Snr is hopeful that Liverpool will avoid the convulsions still tearing at Old Trafford 11 years after the exit of Sir Alex Ferguson.

“That happened to us before. We have been through that. We don’t want to repeat that process. I think this guy [Slot] is probably really good but whether that means it will work out we don’t know.

“I feel confident that there is a structure at the club and people seem to know what they are doing. So at least someone is coming into a structure. The difference, of course, is Klopp understood the relationship to the city, understanding that energy and making it work. Can Slot make the magic happen in the same way?”

To have any hope the connection he must forge first is with the fans. On Thursday night at the Hotel Anfield, a select event run by the owner Peter Schriewersmann was hosted 150 fans from various supporters groups, fanzines, flag-makers, away coach organisers et al, all gathered to say thank you to Klopp and his backroom staff.

Though Klopp did not attend, his staff accepted on his behalf to receive Liverpool shirts signed not by the players, but by the fans themselves as a token of respect for a figure who made them feel special again.