Daniel’s Debrief: Liverpool 2-0 Wolves

It was a warm evening.

I remember the day. It feels like a lifetime ago.

The sacking of Brendan Rodgers had come as a bit of a surprise. He should’ve been sacked at the end of the 14/15 season. So why commit to keeping him for 15/16 and then sack him after eight games? 

But the overwhelming feeling I had was that whoever came next just had to be right. For all of my lifetime up until that point, we’d been a level below the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and now Manchester City.

Eating at the same table as Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid was even more of a distant dream - just being allowed into the restaurant to serve them would be a start.

I remember telling my reasonably new flatmates at university how big it would be if we got Jurgen Klopp. They didn’t know who he was. They weren’t into football. But I promised them that if we appointed him, I’d buy them some champagne to share.

The truth was, it was a gamble. I don’t like champagne, I had no idea if they liked champagne or even if they liked me.

But it was impulsive and felt like the most performative thing I could do to show that yes, I was happy with something Liverpool have done.

For the first time since 08/09, the penultimate season of Rafael Benitez’s time in charge, I liked the direction we were going in.

13/14 under Rodgers was brilliant but part of why it felt so special and then so upsetting when it didn’t work out is that no-one really thought it was anything other than a one-off.

It never gets mentioned how much Klopp took a gamble on us.

It was not only a bang average Liverpool team, but it was a club that had fallen far from being competitive at the top, and also fallen in its standards and expectations.

From the day he was appointed - that pleasant Thursday evening in October - to his first game at Tottenham nine days later - to when he stepped out at Anfield that week - I felt like we were finally getting somewhere.

Initially, it was slow. We drew his first three games and when he got his first big win, away at Chelsea, we followed it up by getting beat at home by Palace eight days afterwards.

On a Wednesday in December, we thrashed Southampton 6-1 and then turned in a pathetic performance at Newcastle on the Saturday.

Fuck sake. I felt sorry for Klopp. What if this is just what we’re destined to be from now on? Maybe he can’t fix this. Maybe we’re just irreparably broken. 

Things started to get better. The League Cup final and the Europa League final. Seven months after arriving, Klopp had taken Liverpool to two finals.

But, we lost them both, despite being in the ascendancy in both. 

There was a reliance on Philippe Coutinho and new signing Sadio Mane in 16/17 but clear progress was made with a 4th-place finish. 

Getting back in the Champions League was his first target and he’d achieved it - and then remarkably was in the final of that a year later.

The unbreakable Mohamed Salah got injured. Goalkeeper Loris Karius was concussed. Gareth Bale scored possibly the greatest ever goal and so Sadio Mane’s equaliser meant nothing.

What was actually going on? I’m not a religious, spiritual or superstitious person but it started to feel like there were beings and entities higher up preventing us from winning stuff.

Then, 18/19 came. 17/18 was thrilling but a bit like 13/14, had the feel of a flash in the pan.

Liverpool produced the best season in their history and one of the best English football has ever seen. The trouble was, so did City. We got 97 points, they got 98.

Remember what I said about Bayern Munich and Barcelona? Both were beaten in beautiful fashion by Klopp’s Liverpool that season. 

We outclassed an exceptional Bayern team over two legs, Mane and Virgil Van Dijk scoring in Germany. Robert Lewandowski was the best striker in the world at this point, and over a 20-month-period, he played in fifteen Champions League matches, and scored in all fifteen of them - apart from the two against Liverpool.

It’s stuff like this that exemplifies how extraordinary Klopp’s Liverpool have been.

Extraordinary is the only word for the semi-final that season, overturning a three-goal deficit against a fearsome Barcelona team that contained Lionel Messi and the returning Suarez and Coutinho.

The holy grail. The Champions League. When we won it in 2005, I was nine. I was eleven when we got to the final in 2007 but from being thirteen onwards, I’d seen us qualify for the competition just once before Klopp, let alone win the fucking thing.

Suddenly, we’d been to two finals in a row and had now won the biggest trophy in football.

The only way that could be bettered would be the Premier League in 19/20. 99 points from the most irrepressible team this country has ever seen made sure of a first league title in 30 years.

That was enough there and then for Klopp’s reign to be a success. I never thought we could win the league. After the hurt of 08/09 and 13/14, and then 18/19, I thought this club just wasn’t meant to win the league.

The desperation for one league title meant that when the day finally came, everything that followed was a bonus. The box was ticked. The curse was lifted. The wait was over.

Despite coming close, the Champions League and the Premier League wins were not repeated but it’s not just winning trophies that have defined the Klopp era.

Salvaging 3rd place after a crushing injury crisis in 20/21, bouncing back to form and winning the League Cup and the FA Cup in 21/22, again cracking 90+ points and missing out on the league by a point, getting to a third Champions League final.

We talk so much about players’ careers and fluctuations in their abilities as they develop, mature, peak and then decline. But we can often neglect to apply the same linear logic to managers.

Klopp’s peak as a manager was from 2017-22, and especially the years between 2018-20.

I’m so, so grateful we had this man at his absolute peak.

The last two seasons have been slightly tougher as Klopp’s peak has passed, but there’s still been highs - Newcastle and United last season; then this season we’ve had Newcastle away, Fulham and winning the League Cup in the most extraordinary fashion, as well as mounting an unlikely title charge and establishing ourselves back in the top 4.

The mark of a truly great manager is his ability to improve players through coaching. Pretty much everyone has responded to him, but there’s a few in particular that Klopp has transformed the careers of.

Adam Lallana was a middling player at Liverpool who was struggling, by his own admission, to handle the weight of expectations. Klopp turned him into an essential and consistent player who felt comfortable in his own skin.

Wataru Endo, a journeyman whose career was gradually coming to a respectable but unspectacular end in mid-table German football. Klopp has got so much out of him that never felt remotely possible.

Salah, let’s be clear, was a complete failure at Chelsea and after a stint in Italy, represented a bit of a gamble for Liverpool. Klopp has overseen the development and ascension of the best right-winger in Premier League history and possibly the best player in this club’s history.

Andy Robertson was a young left-back at a relegated Hull City side. Klopp ignored the clamour to spend huge and instead picked up a bargain. He saw something in Robertson and has helped him grow into a club legend.

Gini Wijnaldum was a hot-and-cold attacking midfielder for a pathetic Newcastle team that had just been relegated. Klopp recognised there was more to him, and he formed to be probably the most important midfielder this club has had since Steven Gerrard.

Coutinho was inconsistent; capable of brilliance but couldn’t put a run of games together. Klopp turned him from a good player into a top player, and by the time he left, a £13m player had been sold for £142m.

Mane was an exciting and dynamic player at Southampton but people doubted whether he had the end product and the goal return to thrive at a club aiming for the top. He scored 120 times for Klopp’s Liverpool.

How we miss Mane’s clinical edge on a day like today where we notch up 5.5xG but score just twice. In terms of the football, it felt more about the farewells to Joel Matip and Thiago, who have had very different experiences and journeys at Liverpool, but have both been huge figures in Klopp’s era.

It’s fitting that today’s scorers are examples of Klopp’s coaching - Alexis Mac Allister has gone from good to top-class in his first season at Liverpool and Jarell Quansah has stepped out of the academy and into the big time seamlessly and now keeps a World Cup finalist out of the team.

Players improved and so did fans’ expectations. This was a club that since the late 1980s, had a presupposition of failure. 

It’s important to note that apart from 08/09 and 13/14, we’d never had the consistency or the reliability to go the distance.

We were reliant on individuals - Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez, Jamie Carragher, Pepe Reina.

All of those were good enough to have played in Klopp’s era but what Klopp built was not about star individuals, but about strength in unity.

About making a team where every single player mattered, about making a team where every single player believed in themselves and the project, about making a team where every single player was reliable and knew what they were doing.

Klopp’s biggest achievement at Liverpool is his dragging of the club out of no-man’s land and back into the big time.

And that’s not just because he won the two big trophies (and six others to go with them). 

He raised the standards and recalibrated what was expected.

He rebooted a club that had grown to just accept where it was - the wilderness.

He brought us back to where we were before the 1990s - where we always should’ve been.

Reliable. Mechanical. Winners.

For all of my lifetime, you could never trust Liverpool away from home. We were always prone to ‘throwing one in’ and slipping on every banana skin in sight away from home. Every away win felt like a triumph because they were hoped for, rather than expected. Klopp’s Liverpool have been reliable on the road. He’s addressed an issue that plagued the club for more than twenty years.

He raised the standards.

Every transfer pre-Klopp was a faff and a struggle. Under him, so much of the business has been kept private and in-house, and not only that, but he’s been able to attract ready-made world-class talent to the club when needed - Alisson and Virgil Van Dijk were among the best when signed and Thiago was one of the most decorated footballers on the planet, and had just won the treble with Bayern Munich.

He raised the standards.

Before Klopp, Liverpool’s best ever points total in a season was 86 in 08/09 under Benitez. We’re talking about a club with a 132-year-history here.

Klopp has broken 90 points three times - 97 in 18/19, 99 in 19/20 and 92 in 21/22. He did something three times that this club previously had never done, in more than a century.

We’ve averaged 85 points each season in the eight seasons of the Klopp era. We averaged 63 points in the eight seasons prior to his arrival.

He raised the standards.

We went to three Champions League finals in four years under Klopp - 2018, 2019, 2022. 

To quantify that into some wider context, the club of Manchester United have been to five in 146 years. Atletico Madrid have been to three in 121 years.

He raised the standards.

Yes, he could’ve won more and yes, it’s bittersweet that he leaves with one Premier League and one Champions League but it’s eight trophies altogether, and he and his team performed at the level required to win the two big ones consistently for a four-year period between 2018 and 2022.

Twice, he misses out on the Premier League by a point. In 18/19, we are a 1.1cm roll of the ball away from drawing at Manchester City, winning the league with 100 points AND going unbeaten for the whole season.

If Rodri had not produced one of the all-time great blocks to deny Fabinho a certain winner against City in 2021, then Klopp wins the 21/22 Premier League as well.

If Thibaut Courtois doesn’t have the absolute game of his career in the 2022 final, and if Salah doesn't suffer a freak injury and Karius doesn't get concussed, then Klopp has got two more Champions Leagues to his name as well.

In 491 games, you only need to change the tiniest of details in four of them to turn one Premier League and one Champions League into three of each and an era that would’ve been known as the best in the history of the sport.

Take one penalty at Wembley in 2016 and have Dejan Lovren’s goal at Basel correctly allowed three months later, and he’s got three League Cups rather than two, and a Europa League to boot.

We are the tightest of razor-thin margins away from seeing off a manager today who has three Premier Leagues, three Champions Leagues, one FA Cup, three League Cups, a Europa League, a Club World Cup, a Super Cup and a Community Shield.

As it is, it’s eight trophies. One Premier League. One Champions League. One FA Cup. Two League Cups. One Club World Cup. One Super Cup. One Community Shield.

The lists may look different but ask yourself if Klopp would’ve really been more revered with the first list than the second?

I don’t think he would. I think he’s worshipped and deified just as much as someone with the first list would be - because we recognise that his trophy count is just one part of what has made his era.

Let’s not forget that he’s been constantly going up against Pep Guardiola, the best manager of all time, with a club with unlimited funds and resources, and while you can say he’s only won one league title, you can also say that he’s the only man to have actually taken one off Guardiola’s City. 

Without Klopp, City would have won seven in a row. And Liverpool’s standards under Klopp have driven City on too.

Of course, the football isn’t the whole story. Klopp has connected with the fans and unified them in a way that we haven’t been since the 1980s.

His effect will far transcend today and will be remembered and felt for generations to come.

I’d spent the first twenty years of my life hearing about Bill Shankly and how he took this club, how he built up a feeling with the fans and how he made us what we were for so long.

I always felt jealous. I hadn’t lived that era - Shankly died fourteen years before I was even born - but I had nothing to compare it to.

Klopp is our Shankly. He’s the modern-day Shankly.

And those who have got up close and personal with him have got their own stories - the players, the staff, the media, the fans.

It’s hard to think of one individual having such an impact on a group of people that goes way beyond just their professional duties.

He is adored because of who he is as well as what he has done. There is nothing chauvinistic about him despite his brilliance - even today, he makes his exit speech more about the fans and Arne Slot than himself.

He’s had three jobs in his career, and has left all three of them on his own terms, and left all three of them as a legend. That probably tells you all you need to know about the man.

There is a sense that it may never be the same again - Liverpool Football Club will continue to exist and it will win again (Klopp has left the foundations to do so) and it may even eclipse his achievements. But I don’t know how it’s ever going to feel like this again.

Let’s be clear, Klopp is loved because of what he did with the team, but that is only a part of why.

He’s a figure that has inspired, connected and changed lives. On 2nd November 2022, he was awarded the freedom of the city of Liverpool.

Now, only two non-Brits have had this honour bestowed upon them. One of them is Jurgen Klopp, the other is Nelson Mandela.

That’s how special this guy is.

He’s brought happiness, hope and belief to a place that has felt let down by its lot and has been betrayed by those that they should be able to trust for too long.

Klopp has represented a figure of authority that has commanded - but earned - respect and given it back.

He’s shown me, and many Liverpool fans and residents, more care, compassion and authenticity than most role models in my life.

I think back to Wembley, to Barcelona, to the league, to Madrid, the first day, to that bottle of champagne in October 2015.

I got to see it all. All 491 matches. My elders had the Shankly era.

I got the Klopp era.

And I’m so glad.

Daniel