You can’t put your arms around a memory.
Like many, for me today is no longer about work or plans. The news is too big, too gargantuan, too simply un-real to make the day seem plausible in any format.
There’s something about Liverpool; the place, the city & the people, that prizes the moment. It’s intangible, and something difficult to pin down in words, but we are forever a city obsessed with the moment – the present moment – in whatever way we find it.
It’s easy I think, to slip into the commentary of the city by mentioning its past, there are after all reminders of it everywhere. The buildings ripped straight from a Victorian novel, tourists at every corner wanting to ask you about the Beatles as if to step through some mythical portal into the past, but mostly just to digest that this is where that happened, their relationship to this thing came from here, this place.
But when you live in or are from the city, you know in every way possible, we are a people obsessed with the present. We prize authenticity and nothing is more authentic than the spontaneous, the right here and right now. The small window of a Friday where one drink becomes six, absolutely buying into Eurovision for 2 weeks. THAT bus parade. It’s something deeply rooted in us, a need for catharsis but also a need for community. A way of standing together in life, sharing ourselves with one another, tying us all into the story we share.
When something happens in Liverpool, it truly happens. And that sense of spontaneity touches all of our best work. I always think of it as a sharp intake of breath. The split second before the building “aahs” of Twist and Shout, the pause as the ball stands up before “GERRARRRRRRRD” in 2006, the moment you realise you were going home but then recognise the opening bars the DJ just played of your new favourite song. All moments that have to be lived and which drag us gloriously into the present.
Moments lived, and then, moments that become memories. Moments are important that way, we orientate our lives around them, they become memories & we tell ourselves that story, and we understand slowly how we got from there to here. I couldn’t tell you what I was doing last Tuesday, but I know exactly where, when & how I was for Madrid, Alisson scoring and Mo taking his top off at United. All glorious moments, all now glorious memories. But you can’t put your arms around a memory.
Jürgen has given us all so many moments, and so many memories. Too many to count. For a city so wedded to football, even I find it astonishing just how woven into my life he is.
Jürgen first came into my life sometime in 2011 whilst at University. Skint & devoid of any way of watching football bar sneaking into pubs or suffering through MOTD highlights, I discovered ITV4 had recently acquired the Bundesliga highlights which aired midweek. Slowly I was hooked in, but football is nothing without jeopardy, so I searched for a team to hitch my wagon to.
Munich? Too obvious. Leverkusen? Too Arsenal. Wait, what’s this team that plays mad attacking football? And they have a Kop? And they sing You’ll Never Walk Alone? Glorious for a man who dropped German at GCSE. But what about this larger-than-life character in the dugout? Nothing of the underplayed calm of Roy Evans or the staid fury of Rafa Benitez. To say it was perfect is almost too contrived.
And so my love of this mad German fella grew alongside my love of the Reds. The odd question from uncles in pubs who knew about my strange habit of watching German football, tied together by an electric attack. A late comeback against Málaga, and that unfortunate Wembley Champions League final, marred by the betrayal of Mario Götze & a looming sense that Lewandowski was headed the same way.
When I think of it now, I am still there, I can see it all. My perpetually damp one-bed flat, the small 16″ TV, watching the CL back in my parent’s home in the same room I’d later watch Germany take apart Brazil 7-1. A moment in time, trapped in a memory, but you can’t put your arms around a memory.
And yet somehow that memory became a reality, I still often pinch myself that Klopp became Liverpool’s manager, and to remind myself I am indeed living in this timeline. Periodically whenever I feel like my life is a mess I rewatch his unveiling press conference to try and help frame my thoughts. ‘Doubters to believers’, ‘we have to entertain them’, ‘it’s not so cool carrying history around with you’ – I think I could transcribe a lot of that press conference from memory.
Here was a man so gloriously of the moment, of enjoyment, of being THERE, of Liverpool in a word. Someone who almost immediately put his arms around the club, and the city. He understood that life must be about the present, the moment – it’s the only way to happiness & the only way we can influence the future.
And what a moment it has been.
My sadness today is matched only by my surprise in that it’ll be somehow 9 years since that arrival by the end of the season. 9 years of success, 9 years of scintillating football, 9 years of being gloriously present, and you can map moment to moment from the first game at Tottenham and “the pressing”, through Lallana breaking his glasses, from Mo’s tears to Mo’s joy in Madrid, from those shuffling feet to beating back a global pandemic & a team sent from Mars for that one big one we all wanted. All of it with that hearty laugh, wide grin & the idea that hard work will take you where you want to go.
Jürgen embraced this city in a way people from my generation have never lived or experienced. It’s fitting then that symbolically he’s known most for his hugs, supporting those around him in all the ways he can, helping them develop off the pitch and pulling them up on it. He’s embodied what it means to be from this city on and off the pitch, standing up for his players but also the lives of those less fortunate in society & the absolutely dire political state we’ve found ourselves in during the last 14 years of the Conservative government.
European funding absolutely changed the life of the city I grew up in, and a European showing us the way forward demonstrates there is absolutely more in common & ties us together than that which pushes us apart, despite what people currently in Westminster might have you believe.
With this too, the idea of connection between places and people. I’m extremely fortunate to have become involved in fan media at a time when Jürgen arrived. I’ve been fortunate enough to stand on stages in Berlin speaking to German fans who feel deeply about the values of where I’m from and to have made friends with people in America & Australia who have wildly different day plans simply to see the Reds play. Most recently I spoke to a member of the Japanese Supporters’ Club in a coffee shop on Bold Street. Many of them contribute to the food banks and charities run within this city, All of them are united in and by the moments they’ve shared with this club. It’s all just a moment, but it’s the moments that somehow bring us all together, here in the present, and Jurgen played his part in making all of them possible.
And somehow, in a moment it’s all over too. Well, not quite yet, but soon. It’s hard to picture, let alone imagine, what life without Jürgen looks like – for many of you reading this you won’t know anything different. All we can do is what he asks, be there, authentically, in the moment, from now until it’s over. You can’t put your arms around a memory, so make damn sure you do when the moment presents itself.
There’ll be time for reflection, sadness, tears & hopefully more celebrations, more glory & that big, warm grin. Jürgen put his arms around this city, this club, but for these last four months, we need to put our arms around him. It’s what he wants, it’s what he deserves, us, the team and him together for one last glorious moment.
@mrjblade
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