Phil Thompson was in a shop sorting out an issue with a mobile phone bill when he received a text message from a radio station asking could he come on air immediately and discuss the news.
It was about Jürgen Klopp.
Thompson instinctively felt something “substantial” had happened and turned to one of the assistants, a Liverpool fan, to see if he knew. None the wiser, the man looked to his younger colleague, another Liverpool supporter, and enquired the same of him. Realisation would soon dawn.
“We searched on the phone and the three of us together went, ‘Oh no!’ ” Thompson, the former Liverpool captain, says. “I was in the shop again a few days later and they said they were sure the young lad had gone into the back to have a little bit of a weep. That was the effect it had on people.
“He was devastated, like I had been in ‘74.”
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Half a century earlier Thompson was the Liverpool fan left reeling by Bill Shankly’s sudden resignation. He was also the 20-year-old who had just won the FA Cup under the Scot, having been moved from central midfield to centre back alongside Emlyn Hughes earlier in the season in a tactical tweak that ushered in the “Liverpool Way” of playing out of defence.
Thompson turned 70 last month and when the club he still adores with unrelenting passion posted a Happy Birthday message, Jamie Carragher was among those who commented, posting simply: “Legend!”
It is easy to overlook that and take Thompson’s contribution to Liverpool in a variety of roles for granted. Certainly, there are few better placed to discuss how the fall-out from Klopp’s decision to depart at the end of this season might affect the club, the comparisons his successor will endure just as Bob Paisley did with Shankly, and why victory in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final against Chelsea can act as a catalyst for a glorious end to the German’s reign.
It was apt that Thompson not only asked to meet on “my patch” Kirkby, where he grew up and took the European Cup to The Falcon pub in 1981 to celebrate the win over Real Madrid, but also that he was on crutches — given the fitness concerns plaguing the modern-day Liverpool squad — having had a hip replacement two weeks ago (he has also had his knees done in the past).
Klopp’s looming exit has sent Thompson’s thoughts spinning back five decades ago to when Shankly quit, and the insecurities that provoked.
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“I was a fan and I worried for our club — what the hell are we going to do?” he says. “From him being there in 1959, I was five and my walls were covered in Liverpool stuff.
“Shanks was my life — the 60s team was my life — and then came the selfish bit as a player. What if the new fella didn’t fancy me? You always had one hairy-arsed centre back in those days, but what we had created was completely different. I had just won the FA Cup, everything was great. I had just made a niche for myself and you do start to worry.
“There is that sense of wondering now; what is going to happen? Because we have had the most wonderful time with Jürgen. He has brought the glory days back. He has brought that connectivity to the football club again.
“If people haven’t seen it, they should look at a video Jürgen did with a young Irish fan Dáire [Gorman]. That is my football club in a nutshell. That was so emotional when I saw it and, as much as football, it is what he stands for and what he demonstrates that sets him apart.
“We are going to miss him because there has been a unique bond between the manager and the football club which then creates a winning mentality.
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“Whether it is Xabi Alonso or whoever takes over, there will inevitably be comparisons: would Jürgen have done that? There will be doubters again.”
Thompson recalls it was the same for Paisley when he followed in Shankly’s footsteps. In the first team versus reserves game that was always a feature of pre-season, Paisley duly picked Thompson alongside Hughes again, but there would be no trophies in that first, post-Shankly campaign.
What followed from 1975-76 onwards was a blizzard of success, with Thompson central to it all, as he achieved all of his childhood ambitions — league titles, European Cups, League Cups and skipper to boot.
“I feel bewildered at times,” he says. “Liverpool are good to me and if I am in the directors’ box, I look down and think, ‘Did I do all that?’
“I was born in Kensington a mile from Anfield but we moved to Kirkby when I was four or five and it was a hard place growing up. I was a skinny lad, massive Liverpool fan growing up with the Saint [Ian St John], Yeatsy [Ron Yeats], Sir Roger [Roger Hunt], he was my hero, so you can imagine going in as an apprentice for two years, coming out at 17 and making my debut at 18 at Old Trafford. F***ing mental. George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law played.
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“I came back to my mum and dad’s after the game, sharing a bedroom with my brother. We had all the photos of the boys on the wall and we had a wooden bedstead. I remember we had written the names ‘Ian St John’ and ‘Roger Hunt’ on it in black marker pen because we loved them so much.
“To play and win all the trophies and then become captain, I was ticking boxes all the time. I felt it was my destiny to become captain.
“Bob told me an hour before one game and I was desperate to get out on the pitch. None of my family knew because they were getting to the match. It was six minutes to three and I was like, ‘Come on, we have to get out’. All the lads were like, ‘Thommo, calm down’.
“I went down the tunnel, ran up the wooden stairs and out onto the pitch, looking to wave at my brother on The Kop. As I got near, everyone in the crowd was laughing.
“I turned round and Ray Clemence, Kenny Dalglish, Terry McDermott and the others were still at the mouth of the tunnel. They had let me run out on my own!”
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Amid the realisation of what seemed a million dreams, two low points remain. He had been 17th man at the 1984 European Cup final and says Joe Fagan did not allow him on the team bus after the triumph against Roma.
Then there was his sacking as reserve team coach by Graeme Souness in 1992-93. Thompson said he was told he was shouting too much at the youngsters and, having idolised former coach Ronnie Moran, would take no messing, but he never bought the explanation.
“Ronnie was the club’s greatest ever coach,” Thompson says. “Shanks and Bob were great managers, but Ronnie pushed us and I was like that. It was different back then.
“But I was supposed to have said to Brian Kidd after a game against Manchester United that Graeme had changed things too quickly.
“I don’t know if I did or didn’t, but he told Fergie who told Archie Knox and he told Walter Smith and then it got back to Graeme. If I did, why didn’t Graeme just sit me down? Liverpool was my life.
“I felt coming back as assistant manager with Gérard Houllier [in 1998] was the board of directors saying, ‘Graeme, you got this wrong’.
“We won things and, in Shanks’ words, put smiles on people’s faces. When Gerard was ill [Thompson took interim charge of the team after Houllier suffered a heart attack in October 2001] that kid who came in as an apprentice at 15 did what Shanks had done and picked the Liverpool team. It is weird looking back.”
Before and after that six-year spell between 1998 and 2004 alongside Houllier when standards were reapplied, change embraced and silverware returned to the cabinet, Thompson became a familiar face as a Sky Sports’ pundit on Soccer Saturday, until he, along with other longstanding panelists, were axed by Sky in 2020.
Next month he has reorganised a reunion with some of those former colleagues, including Charlie Nicholas, Paul Merson and Tony Cottee, and he still misses the camaraderie of the Saturday afternoon staple.
“People can say ‘why does it bother you’ but it was part of my life for 22 years,” Thompson says. “It is not the same. I watch the programme and feel that it has lost its soul. The first time around I was with Rodney Marsh, Frank McLintock and George Best. An unbelievable way of life.
“Then after I returned, I think people could relate to us. We talked seriously about football and ended up having a laugh.
“I remember being on the panel discussing the celebrations Jürgen organised in front of The Kop after Liverpool drew 2-2 with West Brom in his first season. The lads were taking the piss out of me, ‘How low have they sunk?’
“I was like, ‘No, no you have got it wrong. He has done that for a reason. To create a bond, to turn doubters into believers’.
“People watching the show — dads, mums, whoever — would think, ‘I wouldn’t half like to go for a pint with them’. For them to oust three of a five-man team at the same time, I found it strange. I was the eldest, but to allow Charlie and Matt [Le Tissier] to go at the same time for different reasons — why would you do that? The show has never been the same.”
And so to Sunday. Having been the first Liverpool captain to lift the League Cup in 1981’s replay success over West Ham United at Villa Park, Thompson also knows how the competition can be a catalyst.
The win alongside Houllier over Birmingham City in 2001 — there would be another against Manchester United in 2003 — provided a springboard for Steven Gerrard, Carragher et al to win a cup Treble that season. Thompson is hoping for something similar to give Klopp a perfect send-off.
“Gerard always said you have to remember your legacy,” he says. “He said ours will be discipline, a state-of-the-art training complex . . . and we won trophies, which is the most important thing.
“We saw a couple of years ago when Liverpool were going for four trophies, how hard that is. We won two and if we can win two again then that would be a great way for Jürgen to sign off with more good times.”
Carabao Cup final
Chelsea v Liverpool
Sunday, 3pm
TV: Sky Sports Main Event