Liverpool FC Manager Jürgen Klopp Left the Club at the Top of His Game

One of football’s most successful and popular managers stepped down well before most fans wanted him to step away. Letting the team know in November 2023, the public on Jan. 26, 2024, and managing his last game on May 19, 2024, the Liverpool Football Club has bid adieu to one of the best in the sport.

Jürgen Klopp has managed his final game, his 491st, for the Liverpool Football Club in the Premier League. Liverpool won 2-0 at home against the Wolverhampton Wanderers, securing a third-place finish for the season. At only 56-years-old, decades younger than when some managers step away from the beautiful game, Klopp will be missed.

Generally, 56 years old isn't old for a football club manager. Klopp acknowledged this when he announced his somewhat shocking retirement from the Premier League. In a video on the Liverpool FC YouTube channel, the manager spoke directly to the fans about why he was leaving. Klopp got to the meat of the issue right away.

Klopp said, "I will leave the club at the end of the season. I can understand that that’s a shock for a lot of people in this moment, when you hear it for the first time, but obviously I can explain it — or at least try to explain it. I love absolutely everything about this club, I love everything about the city, I love everything about our supporters...But that I still take this decision shows you that I am convinced it's the one I have to take. It is that I am, how can I say it, running out of energy."

That’s it. There’s no medical issue or mental health fatigue, he just knows when to say when. "I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again. After all the years we had together and after all the time we spent together and after all the things we went through together, the respect grew for you, the love grew for you and the least I owe you is the truth — and that is the truth."

The nearly 25-minute video does acknowledge the never-ending cycle of working on football. It isn't just the stuff during the season that was wearing on Klopp. It was the knowledge that the cycle doesn’t end. He also talks about how he wanted to leave the team in a good position for the future. Based on his final campaign, he did just that.

In a touching ceremony following the game, the club and supporters honored their manager with a nearly hour-long ceremony. Klopp spoke towards the end, noting, "I’m so happy about you all, about the atmosphere, about the game, about being part of this family, about us, how we celebrated this day. It’s just incredible. Thank you so much."

Echoing what he said in his January announcement, Klopp said, "It doesn’t feel like an end, it just feels like the start because I saw today a football team playing full of talent, full of youth, full of creativity, full of desire, full of greed. That’s one part of development, that’s what you need obviously, since a few weeks, I get absolutely too much attention, it’s really uncomfortable but in this time I realized a lot of things. People told me that I turned them from doubters into believers."

In his final post-match press conference, Klopp reiterated that he’s retired-retired from managing, saying, "I don't know exactly why nobody believes I probably will not be a manager again but I understand because obviously it seems to be a drug, it looks like that because everybody comes back and everyone works until they are 70-something. I always had the idea that I will not do that that long."