Players come and players go. Seasons end and transfer windows bring new signings, another pre-season of preparations, and the games kick off all over again. There’s always someone new, and always someone not there any more who over the years had begun to seem something like permanent. It’s the nature of football; of life.
For Liverpool and the club’s fans this morning and over the past 24 hours, it feels more than that. After watching so many of the stars of the Jürgen Klopp era slip away year after
year, it’s two more gone this summer. And two of the club’s all-time greats, Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson having now played their final games as Liverpool players.
With those two leaving, there’s not much left. And with Liverpool’s struggles to transition this season to a new side, a new squad with new stars leading the way, it feels an even starker break. The old Liverpool slipped away bit by bit while we weren’t fully paying attention; while we still thought it was here.
Now it’s not. Now it’s gone. And suddenly the future seems far less certain, for Liverpool and the fans but also one must imagine for the departing players, people who now have to figure out what their lives look like after so long at the club. It’s been nine years for Salah. Nine years for Robertson. Now it’s over.
“Emotionally drained,” Robertson said of his final week as a Liverpool player. “It’s been a difficult week. Such a busy week trying to keep your emotions in check, trying to focus on the game but also to make sure you’ve done everything in terms of saying bye to the people you need to say bye to. It’s been a really long week and I need to now switch off.”
Robertson won everything he could have in his time as a Red, was key to sides that won the league and won the Champions League, was part of the greatest fullback duo in the history of the Premier League, was a firm fan favourite—was perhaps the fan favourite in a squad that had so many beloved stars over a decade of success.
Now time is moving on and Liverpool are moving on and Robertson is moving on and we have our memories, but memories aren’t what anyone wants, not really. What we all really want is another year, Robertson tireless on the left. Playing a cross-field switch to Trent Alexander-Arnold. Putting in a snide shove on Lionel Messi. Winning. Memories simply won’t do; the memories will have to.
“When we first came in, it was the dream to win the Champions League or the Premier League,” Robertson added. “It wasn’t an expectation. Now it’s an expectation and that’s down to us lads that have brought success to this club. It’s now an expectation that Liverpool are going to be at the top end of the league.
“So credit to all the lads. The reception Jordan Henderson got, that probably got me the most emotional, just an incredible servant to this club that gets a reception he deserves, obviously didn’t get it in terms of he left during the summer. Then Caoimhin [Kelleher], when he ran to the Kop at half-time. It was quite fitting both of them were here today.”
