It took just 57 seconds for Jürgen Klopp’s pre-match request to be ignored. The Kop just couldn’t stop itself from serenading the outgoing Liverpool manager — and man whose work over the last eight or nine years will never be forgotten at Anfield.
It takes someone who has had a special kind of impact on a soccer club for the reaction to be quite so far-reaching. Klopp was the headline news the world over when he announced — completely out of nowhere — that he was stepping down. So much for a couple of relaxing days before a straightforward cup tie.
“It’s not always easy, but I have to put myself together,” Klopp said of his emotional state after the win over Norwich City. “I received all the messages that people send… I’m not made of wood.”
It is not just Klopp that needs to put himself together again, either. Manchester United continues to show just how hard it can be for a club to move past such a figurehead. A decade on from Alex Ferguson retiring, the Old Trafford side remains a mess.
On and off the field, Manchester United is underperforming compared to where it should be. At Liverpool, both things have worked harmoniously in part because of Klopp. FSG therefore faces a near-impossible task in trying to replace that and does so at a time when Liverpool needs to find a new sporting director as well.
But while moving beyond Klopp is not even something that most Reds fans want to begin to comprehend just yet, they did also just see exactly why Liverpool could be different to Manchester United. Things don’t have to fall apart.
In fact, Klopp will want the team to continue to improve and move forward and if it does, that will reflect even better on his time as manager. If he can leave behind a high-level functioning side that continues to compete above its weight, the systems that he established will still be there.
Those same systems — data, smart recruitment and sensible decisions — will not be going anywhere. The majority of the time, they tend to work and in fact, they will be used to identify the next manager, who very much needs to be the right pick.
It will not be this decade’s David Moyes that comes in, however. And whoever it is will not only have a club set up properly to work within but also a squad that is on the up.
Ferguson left behind a team that was beyond its peak and needed rebuilding whereas Klopp has already begun that process. When Moyes came in, that was his first job. In the case of Klopp, things are very different, as Sunday’s game with Norwich showed: five players were academy graduates, and every single one of them fits the system that Liverpool plays perfectly.
In part, that can only be done with time. Klopp has been at Liverpool for as long as some of the young players coming through in Kirkby have and so they have known exactly what he expects and have been coached as such for years. But that process should not alter dramatically in the coming years and there are others that will play a part as well.
Harvey Elliott, Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Cody Gakpo and Ibrahima Konaté are just a handful of senior first-teamers yet to hit their peak. They are already elite but their best years are still to come.
It goes without saying that the transition away from Klopp will be a difficult one and whoever comes in will need to be their own person rather than a worse version of what came before. But Liverpool looks better set up to withstand change than Manchester United did. The victory over Norwich was another reminder of just that.
