A broken Jurgen Klopp departs Anfield: He took hold of their heart and soul

After Liverpool beat Newcastle United in the 1974 FA Cup final at Wembley, manager Bill Shankly left his players to celebrate and headed back to the dressing rooms.

He was, he later explained, just ‘tired from all the years’. Shankly, 60, drank a cup of tea and considered his life and what it might feel like without football. Within weeks, he was gone.

In football, not everybody gets to go longer wishes to go on. For Jurgen Klopp, the signals first flashed across his mind not in the emptiness of a deserted dressing room or amid the emotional chaos of a 4-4 FA Cup draw at Everton, as it did for Dalglish on a February night more than three decades ago.

Rather it was during a meeting last summer to discuss the season ahead and, indeed, what lay beyond.

There, in that airy, sunny meeting room, Klopp began to realise the long transformation of a football club had finally taken a bite out of a well of energy that he previously felt had no bottom.

So now Liverpool have lost Klopp, too. Once again — even after almost nine years — it feels premature. Liverpool will this summer say farewell to a man who took hold of their heart and soul, moulded it into a shape of which he approved and handed it back.

Klopp gave Liverpool supporters back their self-respect, their pride and, with it, their power. After all those years of Manchester United success, Arsenal sophistication and Chelsea largesse, Klopp was the coach who Liverpool needed back in 2015.

Bullish, confident, unique and clever. Liverpudlians fell for him immediately and by the time he was lifting trophies and taking them to Champions League finals, they would have held on to Klopp’s coat-tails even if had he decided to wade into the Mersey. They would have backed him to walk right