Anfield will say goodbye to two Liverpool legends when Jürgen Klopp departs

Jürgen Klopp, rightly, will get the lion's share of the accolades from Anfield when he says goodbye on Sunday afternoon. But he's not the only one leaving the club, and Liverpool should not fail to acknowledge someone else who has earned legendary status.

There are some who argue that the term gets thrown around too easily. But if anybody's definition denies Joël Matip a place in the pantheon of greats, then I don't want to hear it.

In many ways, Matip's legacy at Liverpool is tied to Klopp's. One of the signings from that first summer in 2016, he was an early marker of how the manager wanted to play, a signpost of everything to come — the Premier League, the Champions League, the lot.

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Over all the years since, Klopp has never struck a better deal. Signed on a free transfer from Schalke, Matip would later be joined by far more expensive recruits, but remained more or less first-choice partner to $95m (£75m/€88m) man Virgil van Dijk right up until the last injury ended his Liverpool career prematurely back in December.

Ibrahima Konaté would eventually have overtaken him in the pecking order, but despite being one of the most talented young defenders around, he has not found it easy to decisively unseat Matip. Though there have been some high-profile exceptions, notably the Champions League final in 2022, the Cameroonian has generally got the nod when fit.

Of course, we cannot talk about Matip without mentioning his fitness record. Over eight years at the club, he has only just creeped beyond the 200-game milestone, with injuries cruelly limiting his participation.

That has seen people write him off over and over again. Surely the man signed in the same summer as Ragnar Klavan (for whom Liverpool actually paid a fee) no longer has a useful role to play in a side at the very top of the game? But time and time again, Matip has proved those people wrong.

Had Liverpool decided to extend his contract, as Klopp had expressed hope for, I would have backed him to bounce back yet again. At times it feels as though he's beloved almost as a kind of in-joke, but there can't be many players who have shown such quality and such mental toughness during this era of success at the club.

That said, there's nothing wrong for also loving him as a figure of fun. Yes, there are the facial expressions and the deadpan deliveries, immortalized in a certain online account which we need not name. But there's also the way Matip plays the game: immensely disciplined in terms of sticking to the demands of the system, but at the same time managing to be something of a free spirit.

We're all going to sorely miss those leggy, gangling runs. For me, they were the one part of this elite Liverpool side where I could see a (very vague) shadow of myself, awkward on the ball but just occasionally managing to pick a way through a defense all the way from the back, defying logic in the process. It has to be said that his success rate was rather higher than mine has ever been.

And they weren't just fun, they were wickedly effective. How do you defend the opposing center-back striding out and rapidly advancing on your box? One of the defining struggles of Klopp's era has been how to break down stubborn opponents, and Matip was sometimes the answer all on his own.

In the end, this was probably the right time for a parting of the ways. Matip will bookend the Klopp era, a living, breathing reminder of the long, bounding strides Liverpool made in that time. And while he may not be the defining player of these last few years, he has certainly done enough to earn a legend's send-off of his own.