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On July 22, 2020, Liverpool Football Club players, staff and supporters were able to experience a 30-year moment.
Lifting the Premier League trophy high, despite standing in front of an empty 53,000-seat Anfield stadium, Liverpool’s victory was made even sweeter given the trials and tribulations this close-knit team had overcome.
The club had claimed the elusive title amid a global pandemic, one that saw soccer matches around the world suspended for months and doubts were raised as to whether the team would ever see victory taken from their hands again.
Liverpool were indisputably in the shape of his life; Coach Jurgen Klopp stood arms akimbo on the touchline as a team capable of longevity claimed the title with seven games in hand.
And, in a season that will forever be immortalized as one of the most dramatic in sports history, director James Erskine was there to capture every moment.
The vision behind the new sports documentary The End Of The Storm, Erskine gets intimate access to some of the club’s best international players, along with candid interviews with manager Klopp and club legend Sir Kenny Dalglish.
Yet filmmaker Billie and One Night In Berlin is quick to claim that the documentary’s appeal isn’t limited to Liverpool’s fiercely loyal fanbase.
“It’s great if you’re a Liverpool fan, but I think it illustrates, through Liverpool, the broader value of sport and the excitement and meaning that sport can bring, especially when other things don’t make us happy,” says Erskine. .
“It’s this incredible story at heart, but it’s really about the value of the emotions we can feel when watching a sport and watching it with our families.
“Fathers and sons or fathers and daughters [are] just as important as the actual specificity of the club. “
It’s a view reinforced by the fact that, despite having roots in the north, Erskine himself has no connection to the Liverpool team.
“I support Man City,” he declares.
“I grew up in Manchester, but sometimes if you are doing it from the outside, you are able to convey the reality of something with more truth than if you are burdened by the weight of your own fandom.”
The premise of the documentary came after the success of the Amazon Prime Erskine series This Is Football; a series of six feature films that delve into the emotional power of sport.
“We followed three Liverpool fans in Kigali, Rwanda, and used them to explore how soccer, and specifically their association with a soccer club, had enabled them to rebuild their lives and families after the genocide,” he says.
“That had won many awards and had a great emotional impact and had been seen by the hierarchy of the club, even Jurgen himself had seen it and been moved by it.
“So they invited us to come in and see if there was another movie we wanted to do about Liverpool.”
It was always established that exploring the unique dynamic between management and players would be an intrinsic part of the club’s history.
Famous for his outspoken attitude, the 53-year-old manager Klopp has managed to create an atmosphere both inside and outside the dressing room that fosters loyalty and respect in equal measure.
“I think Jurgen would always say it’s down to the players, but I think Klopp obviously takes a lot of the credit,” Erskine says quite naturally.
“For five years, he has built a team around the way he wants to play, he is tactically very clear. And I think he is also capable of supporting his players psychologically, possibly like no other coach. I think he is capable of getting into their heads. “
With Liverpool approaching their first Premier League title in 30 years, their world-renowned fanbase entered a feverish state of excitement.
And then came the blockade.
‘These Are The Days’ is a Liverpool ECHO book that tells incredible stories from the fans, in their own words.
It contains tales of devotion, desolation, unbridled euphoria, and even slaughtered goats.
From Norris Green to Nigeria and from Maghull to Melbourne, this is a journey through obsession that only a football fan (or psychologist) could begin to understand.
You can purchase this book from the Reach Sport Shop, who have also released the official ‘Notes on a Season’ by Jurgen Klopp and Jordan Henderson and ‘Now You’re Gunna Believe Us …’ by Andy Robertson, and really know the characters behind. of the Reds’ ‘Twelfth Man’.
However, Erskine makes it clear that Klopp’s success as a manager has not materialized out of nowhere.
“Klopp was not very successful as a player; he was successful and became a professional player and that’s every kid’s dream, but as he told me, ‘I win a lot, but I had to learn to win by losing a lot.’
“Interestingly in the movie, we used Jordan Henderson a lot and explored Jordan Henderson as a character who has had very bad times despite his great natural talent.
“I think when you understand the movie the way that Jurgen has managed to get the most out of Jordan as a player, but also as a person, by the player’s own admission, I think you start to understand the impact.
“The dynamics of Klopp’s influence on the club and how he built a much stronger fan base since he was there was the starting point, and then the pandemic started and that made the story resonate much more deeply.”
The impact of the global pandemic was never a factor that Erskine or his team could have predicted.
Combined with Liverpool’s track record of missing Premier League glory by the narrowest margin, Covid-19 seemed to be the proverbial key in the plays the club had been anticipating.
“There was always a [feeling] of ‘we’re nervous even to say we’re going to make a movie about ourselves; if we say that, maybe that’s what ruins it, ‘Erskine continues.
“That was a real anxiety within the club. And then of course the truth is that it seems impossible that they can’t be awarded the Premiership title, and then the pandemic happens.”
The end of the storm is available to purchase digitally, DVD and Blu-ray now, while the film’s soundtrack is downloadable today and a limited-edition vinyl of Lana Del Rey’s version of You Will Never Walk Alone will be released next Friday.
The side effects of Covid in both the Premier League and on film were substantial, with huge potential ramifications should top-tier players become infected with the virus.
“You have to remember that these are superstar athletes on whom the luck of many depends,” added Erskine.
“They are in their bubbles for the Premier League and if one of those players took Covid, especially at the end of last season, that would have been financially disastrous for the club.”
“It is what universalizes history,” he continues.
“The pandemic is the great leveler, so instead of being the divide between fans and superstar athletes, everyone is experiencing the same thing.
“If you can’t go to work, if your family members are sick or dying, those things are universal, and that’s one of the interesting things the movie can convey.
“Ultimately, once you take the shit off, those players are really just fans who are super talented.”
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