When Bill Shankly quit, journalists did not know why they had been invited to a press conference at Anfield. They found Shankly shooting the breeze. Someone mentioned Don Revie’s appointment as England manager. “Christ. Forty-eight and he’s gone into semi-retirement,” Shankly quipped.
There was something he did not want to get round to, and looking back at the footage from that day in 1974 you see it all in him. The bowed head, the clenched jaw, the blank face of a fighter clinging stiffly to pride as the conference began and John Smith, fingers trembling, read a statement: “It is with great regret that I, as chairman of Liverpool Football Club, have to inform you Mr Shankly wishes to retire . . .”
Jürgen Klopp did it a different way, with a civilised call to his friend Mike Gordon, to allow the president of Fenway Sports Group — the Liverpool owner — a quiet head start on planning a future without him. The public announcement was low key and did not come until two months later, via a club video in which Klopp already seemed full of peace and perspective about his decision.
“My management skills are based on energy, on emotion, on relationships and that takes all of you. And if you cannot be that any more, stop it,” he said.
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Shankly never got over throwing in the towel. Only 60, he was soon asking Smith for his job back and turning up at Melwood to join the players on training runs. Bob Paisley, once his assistant, then his successor, eventually asked that he stayed away.
It was to avoid moments like the one when Shankly strode into the training ground dressing room, where the teenage striker Trevor Birch was tying his boots. “Bob’s doing well, isn’t he boss?” Birch ventured tentatively. “Jesus Christ, son,” Shankly growled. “I could have left a monkey in charge.”
Again, Klopp is different. It was always right to compare the fire-starting public personae of the two men who lit Liverpool revolutions, 50 years apart, but Klopp and Shankly were never similar in terms of their private selves and it seems Klopp has watched with only happiness as his Bob Paisley — Arne Slot — has improved what he handed over.
They text regularly. Often it’s Klopp offering Slot encouragement, or, like when he messaged straight after Liverpool beat Paris Saint-Germain in March, a message of congratulations. In fact Klopp is still in touch with many at his old club, and in wider Merseyside, and far from being encouraged to stay away, they can’t wait to welcome him back.
He is expected to be at Anfield for Liverpool’s final game of the season, against Crystal Palace on May 25, when Slot and his players are pencilled in to be presented with the Premier League trophy. He is already booked in as guest of honour at the LFC Foundation’s gala ball on May 23, at Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, and is talking about joining the fans on the streets for any trophy parade.
He will also be honoured in London, on May 27, when the League Managers Association induct members who have coached more than 1,000 games into a hall of fame. It is hoped Klopp (1,080 games) will be there — and will we see him present Slot with the manager of the year award, just as Shankly did with Paisley in 1976?
That is said to have been an awkward occasion. Shankly made a joke — “You’d probably think I’m jealous at having to give this wonderful honour to Bob . . . well you’d be damned right!” — that didn’t seem so mirthful to those in the room. Very few times in football is the transition from a great manager smooth.
We saw Arsène Wenger staying at Arsenal too long, then staying away from Arsenal too long (it was 4½ years before Wenger attended the Emirates after stepping down in 2018) and Manchester United passing all sorts of grim milestones of post-Sir Alex Ferguson decline. They have now lost more Premier League games (116) since Ferguson retired than in all the years he was there (114).
Liverpool are seemingly bucking historic trends, though their manner of moving on is not without an uncomfortable element. Slot has made replacing Klopp look easy. The team are better, the big stars are better, the young players are better and they are romping to the title, having been given a mere 5.6 per cent chance of being champions by Opta at the start of the season.
So the discomfort comes in the form of questions that Klopp’s admirers (like me) have to grapple with. How come it has been so smooth? Was Klopp actually an underperformer? Not quite the great man we thought?
Maybe a starting point lies in words uttered in the Liverpool dressing room after the final game of last season, one which yielded a Carabao Cup but had promised rather more. You’ve had a good campaign, the players were told, but when he goes you’ll be better. “With new energy from outside, with new influences, with new proving yourselves . . . the sky’s the limit for you boys.”
The speaker was Klopp himself. Self-awareness is not a quality that blesses every old champion but Klopp always had it, and a friend believes he was considering quitting a couple of years before he did. He was feeling the first grains of energy draining from the hourglass at that point. However, a great 2021-22, his wife, Ulla’s, love of Merseyside and the way the Covid period made all of us cherish what we have swayed a contract renewal. Apparently, he soon wondered if he had made a mistake.
The 2022-23 campaign was grim: the worst finish (fifth) and points total (67) of any complete season in his reign. There was determination to rebuild. Klopp spoke about a “Liverpool 2.0”.
The 2023-24 Liverpool were refurbished with an entirely new midfield and the eighth-youngest squad in the Premier League, Liverpool having been the third oldest in 2022-23. Klopp called the 2024 Carabao Cup “the most special trophy I ever won” and throughout the competition he was kindergarten Klopp, picking audaciously young sides, and in the final beating Chelsea with babes such as Jarell Quansah, Conor Bradley, Jayden Danns, Bobby Clark and James McConnell on the pitch.
Finishing third in the Premier League, having been in the title race until late April, was progress beyond expectations, Klopp told the players: “There might be some people who say that’s not enough, but I tell you they don’t have a clue.”
His early notice about quitting (unlike Shankly, who sprung his decision on Liverpool’s board) allowed FSG to restructure the club, bringing Michael Edwards back as chief executive of football and Richard Hughes as sporting director, appointments unlikely to have been made had Klopp stayed. He was “a manager with bells on” a former colleague observes, whereas Slot arrived as Liverpool’s first head coach, with the club updating their model.
Slot was handpicked by Edwards, Hughes and the director of research, Will Spearman, because of similarities in formation, player-connection and positive outlook to Klopp, but also because of differences he may offer.
Klopp approved. His lusty singing of “Ar-ne Slot!” to the tune of the Opus soft-rock classic, Life is Life, at the end of his last game was very German and very genuine. Last month Klopp did a Q&A in Hout Bay, South Africa, where he expressed a sense of personal pride in Slot’s success.
“I’m happy [Liverpool] do exactly what they do and it’s because that was the idea,” he said. “Why should I leave and think, ‘Let’s see how it is without me!’ That’s horrible thinking. So, I want them to do well, even better than they did before.”
The Slot improvements are there to see. Team-wise, they are shown in Liverpool’s greater control of games. Slot’s mastery of substitutions and tactical tweaks (especially at half-time) have brought Liverpool an extra 25 points via second-half turnarounds.
Injury rates are down and there is balance in the play: Liverpool are now up to third in the Premier League for attacks involving build-up but still second (their 2023-24 level) for direct attacks, showing the merger between Slotball and Kloppball. And they have been better in big games. Klopp won only twice in ten visits to Old Trafford and twice in 11 visits to the Etihad, whereas Slot is two wins from two away to Manchester United and Manchester City.
Then there are the individuals. Mohamed Salah, even fitter, has benefited from Slot introducing a No10 to Liverpool’s system. Salah has been able to receive the ball in space more often and time runs better. His 310 touches in the opposition box are, to an extraordinary degree (Antoine Semenyo is next, on 174), the most in the Premier League.
An extra playmaking dimension has been added to Virgil van Dijk and the redeployment of Ryan Gravenberch at No6, where he offers something unique with his ability to receive on the half-turn and go on line-breaking ball carries, is a revelation. Dominik Szoboszlai and Ibrahima Konaté have kicked on too.
Slot has been the “new influence” Klopp envisaged but the Dutchman, in his first interview as Liverpool head coach, spoke about studying videos not only of games but training sessions and seeing a “culture” where it would be possible to “build on from what we have”. He didn’t feel he needed to add to Klopp’s squad. And just because Klopp didn’t feel he was the man to push it to the next level doesn’t mean he was never capable of such a job.
Good as Slot’s Liverpool have been, their projected points total is 91 and in three seasons Klopp’s Liverpool racked up more. The control and touches Slot has added are similar to the ones Klopp applied to turn the buccaneering Liverpool who lost the 2018 Champions League final into trophy monsters over the next two seasons.
Neil Atkinson, whose book Transformer is an exuberant and lyrical love letter to the Klopp era, has a typically perceptive take. “2017-18 was full of youthfulness and exuberance and energy and I think it’s important to remember, therefore, 2018-19, because it’s when Klopp’s team grows up in a big way,” he says. “So by the time you get to January 2019 it’s the team that’s capable of winning everything. And you go back to Dortmund and see Klopp doing the same thing.
“I think Jürgen thought he was leaving a team that was about to grow up and it’s important not to act like Klopp’s football was always the Liverpool of 2023-24, or 2017-18.
“He was capable of having gears and just ultimately did not feel he had the energy to do the next two years with this group of players. He left not because he couldn’t climb the mountain but because he said to himself, ‘I don’t know if I can climb the mountain again.’
“To look at Klopp in the light of this season — I think nothing vindicates him more.”
Does he miss Klopp? “My answer is ‘No’, because you saw it last summer, when he went on Instagram like everyone’s dad. Just seeing the difference in his face after four weeks of him summering made you go, ‘F***ing hell, what have we done to this fella? He looks a picture of health already.’ ”
Klopp’s social media continues to show a man, on a human level, at 57, finding the life he needed. There’s him in New York in the snow, there’s him in Tokyo strolling the night-time streets wide-eyed, there’s him skiing, playing padel, at a dinner, visiting Brazil. On his trip to South Africa, to support a grassroots club his agent, Marc Kosicke, is involved in, Klopp wound his way to the wine country, enjoying a braai and £50 bottle of The 1947 Chenin Blanc at Kaapzicht vineyard in Stellenbosch.
He is contented, say friends. Kosicke spoke to Sky Germany to scotch speculation linking Klopp with Real Madrid and Brazil, declaring him “very happy” in a role as head of global soccer for Red Bull. The only reason he has not yet been back to Anfield, Klopp said in the Hout Bay Q&A, is, “I didn’t want to jinx it.”
Paisley took the Shankly inheritance and dominated European and English football. It’s way too early to gauge whether Slot, over the long term, will outachieve Klopp: he says himself Liverpool are not fully an “Arne Slot team” yet.
But the transition, to date, has reflected well on not just one manager but two, and perhaps the truth is nuanced and not the binary everyone is looking for. To reach the next level Liverpool did need to replace the Klopp of 2023-24. But Klopp in totality — he was a manager any club would cling on to for ever. There will be love when he walks back in past the Shankly Gates.
