Three key takeaways from Jürgen Klopp's parting Liverpool speech as he makes final demand

So that's it for Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool. Boom.

It's been an incredible run of almost nine years. Klopp faced the unenviable task of trying to find the right words as he said goodbye to Anfield for the last time, at least as Liverpool coach — but as he always does, he captured and indeed shaped the mood perfectly.

While nobody expected the stadium to be somber, we were all braced for tears. Yet while plenty were shed in the stands, and indeed on the pitch (the emotions got to Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold, to name a couple), Klopp remained dry-eyed, as he engineered a kind of party feel.

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Even on the day earmarked for looking backwards, Klopp chose to throw forward to the future, full of optimism in his new role as a Liverpool fan. Here's what we learned from his speech.

Jürgen Klopp's last demand to Liverpool fans

We all know by now that Klopp broke into an Arne Slot chant as part of his farewell speech. But it was what he said next that held even more significance.

“When the next season starts you are not waiting to see what’s going on, no, you go full throttle into it," he demanded of the Liverpool faithful. "You welcome the new manager like you welcome me. You go all in from the first day."

Klopp knows better than anyone how much his 'doubters to believers' rallying cry laid the foundations for everything that would follow. He made sure to credit the fans for that — "I just said we have to, you did it" — but in his last instruction to Anfield, he insisted that the belief cannot leave with him.

Klopp is proud of the club he leaves behind

Klopp joked earlier in the season that his players had got too good, too quickly, which is what meant he felt happy leaving the club behind. Many a true word, as they say...

After last season, it's clear Klopp wanted to right some wrongs. He leaves having restored Liverpool to the Champions League, and this season has seen an even bigger emphasis than usual on giving youth a chance.

“Honestly, for whatever reason, it doesn’t feel like an end," Klopp said in his speech. "It just feels like the start, because I saw today a football team playing full of talent, full of youth, full of creativity, full of desire, full of grit.

"So we have this wonderful stadium, we have this wonderful training center, we have you, the super power of world football. Wow."

It's true that a lot of the infrastructure for success is already in place — Klopp built a lot of it himself, with some help from FSG. Hopefully, the club he leaves behind is easier to manage than the one he took over, even though Slot is left with some big shoes to fill.

This was the right time to go

Again, the lack of tears was no failure on Klopp's part, and no indication that he somehow cared any less than anyone else inside Anfield. But his whole speech had the air of a man convinced he was making the right decision,

He admitted that tears will come later, because he is sad to be leaving so many great people behind. But having listened back to his words, it's impossible to deny that Klopp has a genuine conviction that this is only the beginning for the club.

Klopp almost seemed taken aback by his own emotions. He, too, was expecting to cry, but it ended up feeling like a celebration — of all that had come before, but also of all that is still to come.

Time will tell exactly what that entails, but the man who had Anfield hanging on his every word did not strike a conflicted figure. "Change is good", he reminded us — and while that's hard to believe right now, Klopp has rarely been wrong.