Article
Creed
Football
Leading
Sport
6 min read

Even the best have their limits: Jürgen Klopp’s lessons for life

A famed football manager’s resignation tells us a lot about human nature. Jonny Rowlands explores both his and our limits
A football manager stands on the touchline and stares hard, dressed in a black coat and hat.
Klopp faces the future.
Liverpool FC.

10.36am, Friday 26 January 2024. A video is posted by Liverpool Football Club. It’s an interview with Jürgen Klopp himself. They only do this if it’s something big. Maybe he’s going to extend his contract at the club? Maybe they’ve found a replacement hamstring for Mo Salah?! 

“I will leave the club at the end of the season.” It is an absolute gut punch, and the sentence hits me like a truck. A feeling of shock washes over me. I’m reminded of a video of a young lad in Liverpool in 1974 being told Bill Shankly has resigned. He is in complete denial and just flat-out unable to accept the truth of the matter. Fifty years later, at 10.36am on Friday 26th January 2024, I am that young lad. This can’t be real. He’s not really going. This is one of those AI-deepfake things. Jürgen’s not leaving. Is he? I knew this was coming, but I didn’t think it would be so soon. I’m not ready.  

My mind is chaos, and I am a mess of contradictions. My wife is out and the only other person in the house I can talk to is a cat who does not understand the gravity of the situation. All too quickly it becomes painfully clear that this is real. He is leaving. And soon

The seeming mundanity of Klopp’s decision to leave, and his reason for doing so, speaks to his own philosophical nature.

When I return to reality, more questions emerge. Why is he leaving? Is he okay? Has he been offered a better job? Has he been sacked?! “I’m running out of energy,” he says. Jürgen Klopp, manager of Liverpool Football Club, has the best job in the world, is outstandingly good at it and, at only 56, feels as though he doesn’t have the energy for it anymore. What a thought. Surely there has to be more to his leaving than this? It can’t be that simple. 

But no; it really is that simple. It’s something unheard of in modern football. Jürgen hasn’t been sacked for poor results; Liverpool are flying at the moment and, at the time of writing, could still win every competition they’re in. He hasn’t been offered another job somewhere else; he says he won’t manage anywhere else for at least a year. He just hasn’t got the energy to do this anymore. Despite what everyone at Liverpool wants – himself included – he feels it’s the right time to acknowledge that he has simply reached his limit. He can do no more. 

Jürgen shares many similarities with the pantheon of great Liverpool managers, of which he is now a part; the likes of Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Kenny Daglish, still sung about on the kop to this day. One characteristic, however, strikes me above all others.  All of Liverpool’s greatest managers have been deeply philosophical, both about football and about life itself. Klopp is no exception. The seeming mundanity of Klopp’s decision to leave, and his reason for doing so, speaks to his own philosophical nature. It also speaks to something seldom noted about human nature more generally: our finitude.  

There is goodness in finitude. Our creaturely limitations remind us that we are not God; our finitude reminds us that we come from infinitude. 

By finitude, I mean our inherent limitations are created beings. Put bluntly, one day, we will die. We are finite, not infinite. This finitude is an inalienable part of being human: to be human is to be limited rather than limitless. We encounter our finitude at all moments of our lives. In our need to sleep, rest, eat, drink, and so much more besides. Any moment at which we are not wholly self-sufficient (if we are ever wholly self-sufficient), when we rely on something beyond ourselves, we are faced with our own finitude. 

This finitude can certainly lead to difficult moments (like, for example, having to watch one of your footballing heroes suddenly announce he’s leaving your club). But despite this, there is goodness in finitude. Our creaturely limitations remind us that we are not God; our finitude reminds us that we come from infinitude. It reminds us that we need those around us and, in turn, that they need us. These are good things to be reminded of, that we always live in a complex web of dependence on one another, as we navigate our finitude together.  

Jürgen’s resignation is such a shock because it speaks directly to this often-unnamed aspect of our nature; this inter-dependence we all rely upon due to the limitations built into our human nature. He has simply recognised his finitude. It comes as such a shock, in part, because it is rare to see someone acknowledge their humanity and their limitations so plainly. Jürgen is running out of energy. Aren’t we all? 

It is also striking, as the UK endures the slow run up to what is likely to be an unedifying general election, that when faced with his own finitude, Jürgen has sought not to consolidate his own power and position, but freely to give it up. He could have had the run of the place for as long as he wanted. If he had asked for a life-time contract, few would have wanted to say no. This is part of what makes him such a compelling leader; his willingness to vacate positions of leadership when the time is right. Because it is this very vulnerability that makes him so authentically human. 

In the end, then, it is an act of love from Jürgen. Clearly the decision has weighed on him somewhat; he is clear that he doesn’t really want to go, but that he feels it’s the right thing to do. Faced with his own finitude, with the limitations of his own creatureliness as a human being, the most loving thing he can do for the club is to walk away, to admit his human fragility. There is something reminiscent here of the apostle Paul, who claimed he would boast in his weaknesses, because that was how Christ dwelled in him. “Whenever I am weak, then I am strong”. Jürgen, too, a devout Christian himself, has displayed immense strength in his weakness. I do not speak lightly when I say it is a deeply Christ-like decision on his part. 

To acknowledge our dependence on others, to acknowledge our inability always to be dependable; these things are acts of love born from recognition of our finitude. To love one another is not to pretend we can fix each other’s problems, nor is it to avoid being a burden on other people. In depending on others and being depended upon, we become more and more like that which God has called us to be: finite, limited creatures in need of those around us. Our limitations are an opportunity to display love, not a hindrance to it. 

In all this, Jürgen acknowledges his own finitude in a way that is rare to see and, clearly, difficult even for himself fully to come to terms with. Like Jürgen, we are all running out of energy. This need not be a cause for sadness; it merely points us towards the one from whom that energy comes and reminds us of our dependency on Him, and on those around us. Our finitude is a gift, releasing us from the burden of being all things to all people. I still wish Jürgen was staying, though. 

Article
Creed
Romance
Wildness
4 min read

St Valentine and the great mystery of romance

Saints were martyrs for more than love.
A cupid statue fires an arrow of love.
Volodymyr Tokar on Unsplash.

Valentine’s Day is the great Western celebration of ‘romance’. On the day restaurants are filled with couples – new and nervously trying to be constantly adoring in their gaze, or longstanding, staring out of the window, comfortable in the silence which can only truly be inhabited by those who really know each other. On this day garage flowers become a precious commodity. It is undoubtedly kitsch and forced and performative…but most great and important festivals are. 

But who’s day is this?  

Valentine, or Valentinus, was a third century martyr. Some legends claim that his faith was put to the test by a local judge, who brought his blind daughter before Valentine, and demanded he heal her. He did. The judge and his entire household renounced pagan idols and were baptised. This scandalous incident, and further bothersome evangelism, led to the Emperor Claudius commanding that Valentine be executed. Another legend claims him as a Roman priest who defied imperial orders and secretly married Roman soldiers in the Christian rite, allowing the soldiers to escape further conscription. I assume it is this latter legend which led to Valentine being adopted as the patron saint of heart-shaped chocolates – that and the mediaeval folklore that the birds would couple in mid-February. Whatever the case, I’m not interested in the legends of Valentine, entertaining as they are. It doesn’t matter to me if he married couples in secret, or healed the blind, or was an early avian dating app. He is a martyr.  

Martyrdom is not a concept we are much familiar with in this country anymore. Yes, it is still a word in common parlance. We call people a ‘real martyr’ when they punish themselves doing work no is expecting or wanting them to do. We call someone a ‘martyr for the cause’ when they glue themselves to a set of railings, or get arrested vandalising a painting with soup. This isn’t martyrdom. True martyrdom is an act of romantic desire. True martyrdom is an act of love! 

One of the earliest accounts of Christian martyrdom come from St Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch. At some point in the middle of the second century he was condemned to death and was transported to Rome under guard. As he travelled, he wrote letters to different Christian communities, including one to the Church in Rome. The account of martyrdom in this letter is both astoundingly beautiful, and the key to understanding martyrdom. He is writing, in part, to beg the Christians of Rome not to try and save him from his fate, either by violence of bribery.  

He wishes his martyrdom and explains why. He writes that in this suffering he is “…beginning to be a disciple.” He compares his unfortunate situation to ‘birth pains’ now coming upon him and then makes a remarkable claim: he is not about to die, but is about to truly live!  

“Grant this to me brothers: do not keep me from living; do not wish me to die…Allow me to receive the pure light; when I have arrived there, I will be a human.” 

It has been suggested by some who can only see the dreadful, painful, grabby nature of martyrdom – and it is a blessing we live in an age and a land where we do not kill each other on account of our faith – that Ignatius was either a showman or a madman. I disagree. Ignatius does not want to be martyred because he wants to make a name for himself, but because he understands that in martyrdom he is becoming a type of the one true martyr: Jesus Christ. Perhaps he was mad…madly in love with Christ! He desired to be united with Christ, he desired to be as close to Jesus Christ as possible: “I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ…and for drink I desire his blood, which is imperishable love.” He desired Jesus above all other goods, even his own life. 

In our little way, when we embark upon the great mystery of ‘romance’ we are seeking to be martyrs ourselves – martyrs for the one we love. 

Martyrdom, seen in this manner, is a truly ‘romantic’ act – an act of the one who is so desirous of, so truly, madly, deeply in love with Jesus, that they will give everything for Jesus’ sake. Martyrs show us the real pattern of love: the sacrifice, of ourselves for the sake of another. This is the lesson Jesus taught his disciples: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” In the life and death of the martyr we see this real love made manifest, and it is not unrequited but is entirely reciprocated. Jesus desires us and dies for us, and the martyr desires Jesus and dies for him. As Ignatius writes to the Romans: “Desire it, that you may also be desired.” 

This is the lesson that every couple, as they grow in their life and their love together, slowly learn. If we seek romance and love, we seek not to change, or control, or extract pleasure from the other person as an object; we seek to give ourselves to them freely and completely, in the joy of service and sacrifice. In our little way, when we embark upon the great mystery of ‘romance’ we are seeking to be martyrs ourselves – martyrs for the one we love.  

St Valentine was a man of genuine love, for he was a martyr. There is no greater reason to be a patron of passion, of matters of the heart, of romantic love. 

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