On how the last week has impacted him…
Everything impacted me. It was fantastic. How I said, the boys showed class. It’s difficult to deal with these kind of things. I could not use the exit of the AXA Training Centre, I cannot go out there, I would still stand there and sign autographs. The people show me so much love, that’s fine. You cannot come to my house and stuff like this. It’s really difficult to take. It’s so positive and I wish it would be for somebody else and I would be his best friend. That would be great – my best friend gets all this attention. But I get all the attention, that’s really tricky to take, to be honest. I just try to get through this and there will be a moment when nobody asks me anymore, nobody looks at me anymore and I just go down for a few hours or days, I don’t know, we will see that. But for the moment I have to function and I have to keep going and do that.
But today it was wonderful. I want to thank everybody. I love how we said goodbye to the staff, how the players said goodbye to the staff. For the public, it’s Jürgen Klopp, Jürgen Klopp, Jürgen Klopp, Jürgen Klopp. But Jürgen Klopp is Pep Lijnders, Jürgen Klopp is Peter Krawietz, Jürgen Klopp is Vitor Matos, Jürgen Klopp is John Achterberg, Jack Robinson, [Claudio] Taffarel, Jürgen Klopp is Andreas Kornmayer, Andreas Schlumberger. Jürgen Klopp is so much more than Jürgen Klopp. I alone would have done absolutely nothing. It’s really nice how the people did that today because everybody felt really appreciated. I don’t have a lack of appreciation, obviously, everybody shows me in the first moments and tell me they will miss me. I’m happy that all the other guys got their attention as well.
It was an absolutely incredible and wonderful time. I love it. My family was on the pitch, which was nice, really nice. Now we will have a party and then we will come back next for another event. And I will come back occasionally just, how I said, as a supporter now, and I’m fine with that, honestly. Maybe not for the first game of the season – that’s early, wow! Maybe after the second international break or something like this. What can I say? There must be a difference if the things go bad, always worse, worse, worse or if the things go well and go. I’m really happy that we could have done it like that – that we did it that way. Third, that’s alright.