\n<\/p>\n
J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2019s week has been one long goodbye. On Tuesday, Klopp, Liverpool\u2019s soon-to-be former manager, was at Anfield, the stadium that has sung his name and thrilled at his team for the last nine years, bidding farewell to hundreds of members of the club\u2019s staff. On Thursday, he and his players shared one last barbecue at Liverpool\u2019s training facility on the fringe of the city.<\/p>\n
In between, there have been countless jerseys to sign \u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t know how many, but everyone has one now,\u201d he said \u2014 and endless hands to shake. There is still the looming specter of Sunday, when he will take charge of Liverpool one final time. He is scheduled to address the crowd at Anfield afterward. \u201cThe most intense week of my life,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most emotional moments have come in private. Klopp has been inundated with emails and messages and letters from fans in such volume that he has not been able to read them all, let alone reply. Each contains the \u201cstories of what it has meant to them,\u201d he said. They have moved him so much that, when asked by the club\u2019s in-house television channel to read a handful, he demurred. \u201cI would have burst into tears,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Klopp does not pretend to understand, not fully, why there is such a depth of feeling toward him from Liverpool\u2019s fans \u2014 the club\u2019s \u201cpeople,\u201d as he calls them. His instinct is to play it down. \u201cI know that if you are Liverpool manager, people like you,\u201d he said. \u201cUntil you disappoint them. And we never really disappointed them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That is an understatement. In Klopp\u2019s near decade at Anfield, he lifted (almost) every major trophy available. On his watch, Liverpool was crowned champion of Europe, and then the world. A year later, in 2020, he steered the club to the Premier League title. It was the club\u2019s first English championship in 30 extremely long years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
There have been other honors, too, in the form of three domestic cups, and a slew of near-misses as Liverpool \u2014 once a faded giant \u2014 has been restored to the very front rank of European soccer\u2019s great powers.<\/p>\n
Even that, though, does not wholly explain quite how hard Liverpool, both as a fan base and as a place, has fallen for Klopp. There are bars and hotels named after him. And his face \u2014 the bright white grin, the beard now more salt than pepper \u2014 beams out from half a dozen murals around the city.<\/p>\n
The first of them, in the Baltic Triangle, went up in 2018, painted by the French street artist Akse on the wall of a motorcycle garage. It was a surprisingly easy negotiation, given that John Jameson, the building\u2019s owner, is a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Everton, Liverpool\u2019s fierce city rival.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cHe thought it would be good for business,\u201d said his son, also John Jameson. The thinking, the son said, was that even Liverpool publicity \u201cwas good publicity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other murals soon followed, some commissioned by the club itself, some by fan groups and some \u2014 more recently \u2014 as rather more blatant advertisements.<\/p>\n
Liverpool can feel, at times, like a city of soccer-themed murals. Several more are dedicated to current or former players. \u201cIt\u2019s starting to feel a bit like an insult if you don\u2019t have one,\u201d said Shaun O\u2019Donnell, a co-founder of BOSS Nights, a live music brand geared toward Liverpool fans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
No subject is more popular, though, than Klopp. BOSS lent its name to another early mural of him, right around the corner from Anfield, as a play on the word\u2019s dual meaning in Liverpool: both \u201cperson in charge\u201d and \u201cgreat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
O\u2019Donnell was conscious that he did not want to be seen to be \u201cjumping on a bandwagon\u201d by doing another mural. For Klopp, though, he was prepared to make an exception. \u201cWe owe him everything,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything we\u2019ve been able to do, it\u2019s all down to J\u00fcrgen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Initially, BOSS Nights were distinctly small-scale events: a few dozen friends, familiar from long road trips following Liverpool, gathering in bars around the Baltic Quarter to listen to live music. Klopp\u2019s arrival, the jolt of electricity he sent running through the club, turned it into something else.<\/p>\n