It’s hard to shake the feeling we’re watching the end of a proper cycle in football. Not just Liverpool turning a page after Jurgen, but the wider game too. When you look around, a lot of the genuinely defining managers of the modern era are either already gone or closer to the finish line than the start.
And once those touchstone figures fade out, you do start to wonder what comes next. Not in a melodramatic “football is finished” way, but in that quieter sense of the sport becoming a bit more uniform. More corporate. More managed.
The post-Klopp feeling isn’t just a Liverpool thing
Liverpool supporters are obviously feeling it sharply because Klopp leaving changes your week-to-week relationship with the club. The intensity, the personality, the sense you’re part of something bigger than results. That’s rare, and you don’t just replace it by hiring another smart coach and hoping for the best.
Zoom out and you can see why people talk about an “end of an era”. When the big personalities in the dugout go, the league can start to feel like a collection of projects rather than teams. Good projects, mind. But projects all the same.
Coaches, not managers, and what that does to clubs
One of the sharper points here is the shift from the old-school “manager” to the modern “head coach”. In plenty of places it’s now split up: recruitment teams, performance departments, sporting directors, ownership groups. The coach is left with tactics, training, selection, press conferences. That can produce slick football, but it can also narrow the role.
Truth is, some of the greats felt like they ran the whole place, for better and worse. They were plugged into everything: culture, standards, staff, the meaning of the club. If today’s top jobs are more compartmentalised, you can lose that rounded football person at the centre of it all.
Why fewer players feel like proper one-offs
On the pitch, there’s a similar complaint: loads of excellent athletes and well-drilled professionals, fewer true characters. Academy pathways are brilliant at producing players who understand structure and process. But do they produce as many “street” footballers, the ones who improvise and make the game feel alive? Sometimes it doesn’t look like it.
And with data-led recruitment and hyper-coached decision-making, you can end up sandpapering off the edges. The gut feel, the oddball talent, the player who breaks the plan but wins you the match anyway. Nobody sensible is saying bin the data, but you can miss something if numbers become the only language.
The fear, really, is that the sport keeps heading one way because the money demands it. Multi-club models, franchise-style thinking, safer appointments, safer signings. Everything optimised. And a little less soul as the cost of it.
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