There would always be a sentence. Whether it was one of those routine Fridays at the training ground or before a Champions League final, Jurgen Klopp had this knack of articulating a situation in the most colourful and evocative way.
Two minutes into this discussion, it is clear nothing has changed. We are talking with him in his role as an honorary ambassador of the LFC Foundation about Mo Salah and how Liverpool move on but, at the same time, there is a chance for him to show a different, more reflective side.
Salah’s announcement on Tuesday struck like a bolt of lightning and the shock that he is to leave Liverpool after nine years hasn’t really started to subside; he was a totem in the team Klopp built that made the extraordinary seem normal and his departure represents a moment in time.
‘That’s how it is,’ Klopp observed. ‘Don’t try to chase the shadows.’
It is a lovely way of stressing the future is more important than the past. Klopp, while always respectful of Liverpool’s illustrious achievements, was huge on wanting to create his own chapter in history but he did that so well many are finding it a challenge to move on.
When Salah sent the internet into meltdown with his two-minute video, every platform was flooded with clips of his goals, celebrations, his fingerprints on games that will be still be discussed with vigour when the players with whom he went gathering trophies are grandparents themselves.
Jurgen Klopp paid tribute to Mo Salah after he announced he will leave Liverpool this summer
Klopp is back in Liverpool ahead of the Reds’ legends game against Borussia Dortmund
So while Klopp’s advice of looking ahead is sound, he confides with a smile that he, too, has become nostalgic and returning to the place that was home for nine years, to assist Sir Kenny Dalglish in managing this afternoon’s legends game against another of his old clubs, Borussia Dortmund, has only intensified those feelings.
‘That’s the thing in these moments – time stops for a second,’ says Klopp. ‘And that means you watch the movie again. My big target was always that when I am old and grey – I’m grey, yes, but maybe not that old – I can look back and smile, and that is definitely the case.
‘The Mo movie is a beautiful movie; to make it interesting you have to have a few edges in. We had our arguments but they were always for the right reasons. It’s a beautiful movie with a happy end. It will be a great day mid-May when everyone is allowed to say goodbye. It will be pretty special.’
As was that all-conquering team. Klopp, on a visit to the LFC Foundation Community Hub, had no intention of discussing Liverpool’s current testing plight but he understood why the Egyptian’s news has put their achievements back in the spotlight.
Together, over seven years, they won every competition they entered bar the Europa League and, within that, Liverpool and Manchester City ended up having the highest quality rivalry in the Premier League era, the games between becoming England’s version of El Clasico.
‘We lost Sadio Mane,’ said Klopp. ‘We could sing a song about him. What a player he was! Bobby Firmino: Oh. My. God. On the day Gini (Wijnaldum) went (in 2021), probably none of you thought; “that’s a big miss” until he was not there anymore.
‘Then you thought: “Oh!” He was the combination of technique, power, tactical discipline and all these kind of things. Then Hendo (Jordan Henderson) left (in 2023). Some thought: “Good! It’s time!” Milly went (in 2024) and all these kind of things. That’s just how it is.
‘But other players came in: Macca, Ryan, Dom. Now it’s time, not for Liverpudlians obviously because there is still a lot to go for, but for me it’s a bit different and I can already reflect. And what a time that was. And what a player he is. My God! The goals he scored and the games we had.’
During their time together Salah and Klopp won every trophy possible bar the Europa League
Klopp was in a reflective mood and also praised other key figures from his Liverpool team, including Sadio Mane (centre) and James Milner (right)
To think this conversation wouldn’t be happening if Julian Brandt, the then Bayer Leverkusen winger, had accepted Klopp’s offer to join Liverpool in 2017. It can be said quite categorically that signing Brandt ahead of Salah would have seen Klopp and company follow a completely different road.
Fortunately, the doors slid the right way. Klopp has been messaging Salah this week – they even share the same physio, Chris Rohrbuck, who is helping the German with a niggling hip problem – and there will be point in the future when they discuss their adventure in greater detail.
‘I am really happy and proud that I was part of the whole journey,’ said Klopp. ‘We both know that we had these arguments, not big, big arguments. Like the one at West Ham (in April 2024), both us, five seconds later, would have thought: “No, we don’t do that in public, come on, rewind.”
‘Next morning it was already over but it happens in public. We never lost respect for each other and that is what I really like. He didn’t like me for a second when I took him off after 87 minutes and all these kind of things, and you think: “Why?”
‘The time with him and Sadio together, they were a challenge, of course they were. Special players are a challenge. Tell me one who is not? The real difference makers. The one who wasn’t, by the way, was Bobby Firmino. Rotating Mo was difficult. I’d be: “You cannot play three games a week.”
‘And Mo would be: “Yeh, I can.” Ok then, you can, but all the others can’t. It is all fine. You always walk on the edge in these moments. You play a player too often or not often enough, there’s extra time, long travel, and you can’t play all of that. If you could plan for it, then it would be easy.
‘Two hours sleep after a game and in two days’ time you play again. I tell you in the press conference: “Thank you very much for 12.30 on Saturday” and everybody thinks: “Oh come on! **** off!’ But it’s the biggest problem in that moment for me and I cannot stop thinking about it.
‘It’s not that I want to say it. Then I go back and say to the players: “12.30 is a great time.” But I’m not convinced and they feel it. So, in these moments, you need players who want to play all the time.’
Mo Salah, with his 255 goals and chest full of honours so glittering it could be kept in the Tower of London, was absolutely someone who wanted to play all the time. It’s why Klopp and, so many others, will want to chase his shadow.
