It’s not personal, Biz
Me, for example, I’ve never been nice enough to “want the English team to win” - ****ing nuts in my view!
Multiple factors lead to a club being liked by other fanbases - or loathed. Keegan’s era was accompanied by an “everyone’s second team” tag because there was a sense of childish fun and humility about the club and players and fans, a sleeping giant finally getting some sunshine, there was no arrogance , there was wonderful entertainment and there was honesty in the management speak. That probably went belly up with the “I’d love it” speech…. because with that speech, Kevin was saying that other clubs owed the footballing world a taking-down of Man U - which signaled a sense of entitlement by us.
There’ll be a few of us have been exposed to fans of Liverpool that just oozed that sense of being the football equivalent of the Queen and should be loved by the whole nation…. there’s a high propensity in online forums/media comment sections where “YNWA” is a standard sign off and it is - for me - a ****ing dreary song with no uplifting element in it whatsoever; it just gets on my tits when I hear it, so the tune comes to mind when I see ‘YNWA’ typed out. And I colour in the personality of the writer accordingly. The media have been banging on about quadruples for the last months and that came across as them signalling an inevitable ‘right’ that just needed fulfilling. These are all little things that are **** all to do with the majority of genuine Liverpool supporters…. but we fans of other clubs are tribal and are looking for differences between us and them - a bit of Social Identity Theory there!
Klopp’s a snidey **** though, regularly slipping in some disrespect to the opposition management if not getting a win - I don’t like that lack of class.
End of the day though, it’s just a game and what you see as “hate” is just words on pages, it doesn’t translate into physical attacks of Liverpool fans by other fanbases - the ‘hatred’ isn’t real hatred.
There’s also a natural relief that Liverpool didn’t win the quadruple - that would have just earned them more money and enabled bigger and better transfers than your success already allows, which would just make you harder to get any points from - this is true for all successful clubs and will have an impact on their relationships with other fanbases…. you can take it as a compliment, Man Utd fans seemed to when they had their golden era under Ferguson. Liverpool are having that success, but the perceived sense of entitlement (the occasional fan, Klopp’s personality, the media element, players saying they “see things others don’t” (TAA) etc build all that noise) is something that has just taken root now - you’ll only be nationally loved when there’s a change of wind and “some humility and grace” can be smelt, or when you are unsuccessful and it can just be laughed at a bit.
I think you are sound, and probably quite representative of a lot of LFC fans - but you’re best off learning to live with the hate and brush it off for a while. Nobody is hurt by it, and our lack of love for LFC won’t affect your accumulation of trophies one iota.
And we’re going to be you soon anyway.
