DECISION TO LEAVE
The year is 1974, it’s Friday and a young reporter from Granada TV, Tony Wilson, is vox-popping by Liverpool Lime Street, asking the people of the city about the utter shock news that Bill Shankly has resigned from Liverpool Football Club. He is having trouble convincing the young scousers he meets that the news is true: “He’s not sick, he gets very tired, the pressures are great, he wants a rest … it came on the wires at 12 o’clock … I swear it’s true.” “Yiz having me on, aren’t yer?” says one lad, face racked with disbelief. “What did he mean to you?” Wilson asks another. “Everything,” comes a definitive, crestfallen reply. Fifty years on, though its means of communication were rather less analogue, the news alerting smartphones worldwide, history is repeating itself. Again. And it’s true: Jürgen Klopp is leaving Liverpool Football Club.
What does this mean for Liverpool Football Club? Back in 1974, in shuffled Bob Paisley in his carpet slippers and the Reds became far more of a bastion of invincibility than they had ever been under Shanks. The fear for followers of the Redmen is that another history repeats itself. On 22 February 1991, another Friday, Kenny Dalglish left Liverpool Football Club. “People might find my decision difficult to understand but it’s one I’ve made,” said King Kenny that day. “It would have been a mistake to mislead people into believing that there was nothing wrong in myself.” Liverpool Football Club was never quite the same again. Until, that is, Klopp came along.
His own abdication, staged on club media, carried echoes of both those departures. “It is that I am, how can I say it, running out of energy,” sighed Klopp. “I have no problem now, obviously, I knew it already for longer that I will have to announce it at one point, but I am absolutely fine now. I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again.” Like Shankly, like Dalglish, perhaps the signals were there all along. Nobody could doubt the sheer bloody pressure of managing Liverpool Football Club. It has broken three great men, many other lesser men besides.
The guffawing, japing Jürg of old has been an absentee this season. He was last season, too, the expression beneath the baseball cap one betraying anxiety, the exuberance greyed out. Eventually, it’s all too much. The rows with refs, the difficulty with Egypt over Mo Salah: all part of the rich tapestry of managing a global superclub, though one with less resources than the global superclub down the M62 with the manager who is just as driven as Klopp himself, even more willing to surrender himself to “again and again and again and again”. Could Klopp’s Liverpool have won more than one Premier League and one Big Cup plus assorted other pots? The answer, of course, is Pep Guardiola. At least Klopp – unlike Shanks, unlike Kenny – has left room for one last shootout.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“First of all it was a surprise. I have huge respect for Jürgen, huge admiration before coming to Liverpool and during his years there it has become even bigger for what he has achieved and how he achieved it. At the moment I am really happy here, enjoying my work here. Each day and each game is a challenge. We are enjoying an intense but beautiful journey. I am not in a moment to think about the next thing. I’m just thinking about what is now. I’m in a great place and I’m enjoying it” – Leverkusen manager Xabi Alonso sets Liverpool fans poring over his every word after giving his take on the bombshell news.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Gabor Kiraly’s infamous grey tracksuit bottoms (yesterday’s Memory Lane, full email edition) invariably prompted a rousing chorus of ‘tracksuit from Matalan, he’s got a tracksuit from Matalan’. All rather unfair I thought – us Reading fans regarded Matalan as an aspirational fashion brand beyond our reach” – Alan Giles.
Re: west v south-west London (yesterday’s Football Daily letters). Ross Dunning has fallen into the trap of assuming postcodes provide geographical accuracy. In modern parlance the western area of London (according to the always 100% accurate Wikipedia) stretches from the City of Westminster to Greater London boundary – north of the Thames. South-west London is now accepted as south of the river. However, I will concede that the very first postal district map in eighteen fifty blah blah considered Fulham and Chelsea as south-west. Hello? Anyone still awake?” – Damian Buckley (and others).
The administrative convenience of the Post Office should not be used to determine a club’s location. If it was then much of mid-Wales would be classed as England as they have a SY (Shrewsbury) postcode” – Deryck Hall.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Alan Giles, who lands a copy of A Culture of Kits, published by Pitch Publishing and out to buy in early February. Visit their football book store here to pre-order a copy.
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