Jürgen Klopp spoke out on Thursday against controversial songs sung by Liverpool supporters on Saturday in the away game against Norwich City (0-3 win). The club sang about ‘Chelsea rent boys’, with which Liverpool supporters referred to Billy Gilmour, a Norwich City midfielder who is on loan from Chelsea. Critics call the song, which has been sung for years by supporters of Premier League clubs towards mercenaries from the Blues, homophobic. Klopp calls on Liverpool supporters to stop singing the song.
‘Rent boys’ is a term used to refer to male sex workers, especially of young age, who have sex with other men. Because the term ‘rent’ also means ‘rent’, Chelsea mercenaries are sometimes called that by supporters of other clubs. Klopp responds to the chants in conversation with Paul Amann, founder of an LGBTI + supporter group from Liverpool, on Thursday. “I have never understood why you sing a song in the football stadium to set yourself against something. I have never had anything with it and I have nothing to do with this,” the coach makes clear.
“At Liverpool we have perhaps the most beautiful songs in the world,” said Klopp, calling on fans to stop singing the song. “It is unnecessary. It makes people feel uncomfortable within their own supporter circles. For our supporters and for me that means: let’s sing something else. That shouldn’t be difficult. Enough people will now think: ah, come on, we only do it to challenge them. But that’s the problem: often we don’t understand the damage itself. It also impacts our own supporters. So we can now decide it’s not our song anymore I don’t know if people listen to me, but it would be nice.”
“I don’t want to hear the song anymore for so many different reasons,” Klopp continues. “We live in a time where we learn a lot of things. I’m 54 now. When I was 20, we said all kinds of things that we didn’t even think about. But thank God 34 years later we learned that it’s not right to say , even if you have no wrong intentions in your own eyes. I can also say that we as coaches and players are not helped by such songs. It is a waste of time. We do not listen to it. If Bobby Firmino or Mo Salah is sung to, whether it sounds You’ll Never Walk Alone, you get goosebumps, that gives you a boost. The other songs are a waste of your time. If you believe what you sing, you’re an idiot. If you don’t think about what you’re singing, it’s a waste of time, forget it, choose another song.”