Hello Liverpool, Goodbye Jürgen: A first visit and farewell to a legend

I walk the corridors of M&S Bank Arena on a windier night singing I’m so glad Jurgen is red, and lock eyes with each stranger in a brief moment of electricity as we belt out the same words, to the same song, about the same man.

It is a fever dream of unity between strangers brought together by a common, shared emotion. Is it loss? Or love? A beautiful sadness for what was, but now will not be?

I became a Liverpool fan in 2006 at the age of 15 in India, a country where cricket reigns supreme and football is overshadowed. I never liked cricket; I preferred the flow and romance, the poetry and democracy of the street sport that is football. Most English football fans in India are boys and probably support Manchester United, a remnant of their huge fan base building blitzes in Asia and the world at the height of their success in the 90s and 2000s. It was annoying.

Fortunately, I saw a fired-up Stevie Gerrard running up and down the pitch during his Champions League heroics, and I was hooked. First to the player, and then to the news of his club and city. I shared a room with my mother growing up. He graciously let my obsession flourish, allowing me to stay up on school nights watching games at low volume.

The first time I actually saw Liverpool play was a friendly in the US against Manchester City in 2018 when I was enrolled in a Masters in New York. Sadio Mane scored a penalty. I had just bought this £75m gazelle of a centre-back. It was fantastic.

The following year, I snuck around the team hotel in New York during their next friendly visit with a dozen other fans, even managing to see Jurgen Klopp in the flesh as he signed autographs. Earlier that season I stood for about seven hours at Carragher’s in Times Square as we beat Spurs in Europe. I danced in the streets of New York with other fans, blocking traffic.

In 2020, at the height of COVID, I just returned to India after five years abroad, cried and screamed alone in my room at 3am as Jordan Henderson lifted our first Premier League trophy in my life . There are no friends to celebrate with in our pandemic isolation, only my sleepy mother who was shaken and told the good news.

As a non-resident, international fan, I pitched in like we all do – staying up at odd hours for European games, learning the urban legends of a faraway city on another continent, but with which we develop this strange, almost parasocial. link. I resented Maggie for her “successful decline” even though I never experienced it. I learned about Liverpool’s trading history and Scouse ‘Europeanness’ and identity. And here I am, a Bengali from an East Indian city.

I finally set foot in Liverpool this week, 18 years after I first became a supporter, and it happened to coincide with the night of Jurgen Klopp’s farewell party.

The first glimpse of the River Mersey on the train from London was like an out-of-body experience. I knew this was a brand new, unfamiliar city, and yet it felt like a homecoming of sorts. This bipolar switching between I’ve been here before, in my head and in my dreams and my view of the city as a new tourist and foreigner lasted throughout my two-day trip.

The sight of the Liver Building was familiar from hours of filming the parade, but the streets we walked on felt foreign. Because, well, they were. Looking at Trent’s mural felt like a moment I’d already experienced through a screen, but I snapped out of it the moment I looked around at the doors and chimneys of houses occupied by strangers who know this more and more intimate city and you don’t know me.

Don’t they know me? Do I really look like a foreigner? How can I still be an outsider when I’ve spent nearly two decades loving, observing and feeling a place I’ve never set foot in? I wept for this place; I defended him in arguments. I have made it a big part of my personality, not just Avantika, but ‘Avantika the Liverpool fan’ to all who know me well. I got club merchandise for birthdays and anniversaries. And yet, in this place, I am a stranger.

I’ve been in and out of this wild ride all day.

Whatever my process of welcoming and perceiving Liverpool was, it was always intense. I ran to her with all the more fervor from a tumultuous year on the personal front, losing someone who had closely shared my Liverpool experience over the last few years. I rushed to see and touch the city, feeling like I was reclaiming a part of me that had been mine alone for far longer than it had been a shared experience with this other person. That’s one thing you can’t take away from me because it’s always been mine. And it will be forever only Mine.

Photo by John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

As the fog and fever of the visit clears, this is something that is becoming clearer to me.

Losing Klopp was hard – probably not as hard on me as it is on the players, but devastating nonetheless. His great personality and successes were addictive. Despite the fact that I am a world-class cynic, I will bow down to that man and swallow every motivational speech he ever gave, no matter how corny.

But seeing the looming frame of Anfield, the hand-drawn murals, the devoted neighborhood pubs, you’re reminded of the timelessness of the institution and the fact that, as long-time fans, we’re wedded to it. Idols come and go, stars peak and fade, but Liverpool Football Club is eternal.

The ups and downs (too many downs), the decline and rebuilding, the fresh hope in every season and the dedication to carry forward the legacy slowly built over a hundred years. There is something about this setting that is very important to an anxious personality like myself — I like the stability, the long-term nature of this relationship with our club.

The Liverpool Offside platform gave me a much needed outlet for all these feelings I have about the club. My dear friends here have given me advice on what to see, eat and do, and it’s a community I love. I will find a kinship with the fans wherever I go, as I did in the Liverpool fan bars in New York, Minneapolis, Glasgow and Delhi. I hope this will grow over the years.

I’ll be back in Liverpool to feel that electricity again, to eat Scouse pies at the Homebaked Bakery, to drink pints and sing songs. Yes, Klopp is gone, but Liverpool Football Club lives on, and next time maybe a part of it will recognize me.