Last weekend saw Liverpool beat Manchester City to win the Community Shield. However, the game will likely be remembered for a different reason for one Reds supporter.
Liverpool claimed a 3-1 victory thanks to goals from Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mohamed Salah and Darwin Nunez. But off the pitch, lifelong Liverpool fan Kenny Walker became an overnight celebrity after videos emerged of him meeting Jurgen Klopp.
Kenny went to the King Power Stadium to watch Liverpool beat Man City. He also wanted to take home a unique memento.
READ MORE: What happened after Man City win exposes truth about Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool
The 35-year-old had already expressed his commitment to Liverpool, and to Klopp, by getting a tattoo of the German on his leg. It was this piece of artwork that stunned the Reds boss after the win over Pep Guardiola's side.
“I got the tattoo when we won the Premier League [in 2020],” Kenny told the ECHO . “We had a few good years winning the Champions League, and I just decided that I wanted to remember it.
“When you’re getting other people tattooed on you, it’s a big decision. I just thought that Klopp had given us something that we haven’t had, we’d been waiting for 30 years for it, so that was the idea behind it.”
Saturday’s match came and Kenny knew that he wanted to get more than just entertainment on the football pitch. The Liverpool fan from the Wirral was eager to get an autograph from Klopp on his tattoo.
The various videos and photos that have emerged on social media show the encounter between Kenny and the 55-year-old. But how did it all come to happen?
“I’ve been saying since the day I got the tattoo, I said to my tattooist that one day I’m going to get Klopp to sign it,” recalled Kenny. “I said to him [tattoo artist] that as soon as Klopp does I’ll come to you and we’ll tattoo it. It was said in a bit of jest, but hoping that one day I actually would.
“I took a Sharpie with me and even booked my seat at the stadium so that I was near the dugout. I was about 15 to 20 yards away.
“The Liverpool players did all of their celebrations and they started to come over. I spoke to one of the Liverpool stewards and I was polite and asked that I wanted to try and get Klopp to sign my leg. The steward’s reaction was, ‘whatever you ask me, the answer is always no’, so I just said that was okay.
“I was trying to get the attention of the players and shouting to anyone, really. To Jurgen, to the players, but they don’t really look at you.
“It was Curtis Jones who looked at me, and as soon as I made eye contact I thought that I’m going to try and get him. So I shouted ‘Curtis’ and he looked over and as he did I showed him [the tattoo] and asked him to get Jurgen to sign my leg.
“He just laughed at me and went straight over to Klopp and told him, so he came over. Klopp came over and he looked [at the tattoo] and just said ‘wow’. I don’t know if he thought I was mad, or he was a bit freaked out, but he signed it at the end of the day.
“He gave me a handshake and just said ‘wow’ - I think he stood back and was blown away by it. The tattoo is quite realistic so I think he was blown away by it more than anything.
“I wish that if I had the moment again I’d have spoken to him. What I was trying to do was to get Virgil (van Dijk) and Trent (Alexander-Arnold) to come over as well to sign the other parts [of the tattoo]. We had a bit of chat, but I think he was just made up or he saw why I’d got the tattoo.”
With fresh ink of a different nature now on his leg, Kenny immediately set out to get it tattooed. After a phone call with his tattooist, Rob Danson, who is based in Wilmslow, he soon left the King Power to get the new piece of artwork.
“As soon as Jurgen signed it, I had my mate with me and I said to him, ‘you’re going to have to take me to Wilmslow’,” said Kenny.
“My tattoo artist, he said to me that he’ll open up his shop. As soon as I was out of the stadium he phoned me and said, ‘come over and get it done’.
“So we got there at about 11.30pm and he tattooed it for me there and then. He did it exactly how Klopp wrote it, so it was pretty cool.”
Klopp signing Kenny’s tattoo attracted plenty of media attention. As it turned out, it was even more than Kenny expected, as he found out the next day when he visited Anfield.
“The next day I went to the friendly at Anfield against Strasbourg, and I couldn’t move,” Kenny said. “Literally everyone was stopping me and asking for pictures.
“I got to the ground and there were more pictures, more people. I didn’t have an idea how viral it would go.
“When I got home on the Saturday night, my phone was going off non-stop. ESPN put it on their site, Emirates FA Cup made a TikTok about it - I had literally everyone major site and paper writing about it.
“It had gone much more viral than I thought it would - my phone has not stopped.”
Kenny doesn’t just have tattoos in honour of Klopp, but also of members of the Liverpool squad. Van Dijk, Alexander-Arnold and Jordan Henderson all have their faces inked on Kenny, and now the die-hard supporter has a new mission.
“What I now want to desperately try and do is try and get Trent, Virgil and maybe Henderson to sign the other parts of my tattoo,” said Kenny. “That’s what I’m trying to do next.”
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