By David Rice

As the final whistle blew in Kiev last May and Liverpool’s hopes for lifting a Champions League trophy were put to bed, I walked around a pub in Tampa reassuring some of my closest friends that we had no reason to feel sad. That we should feel nothing but pride, that this was only the beginning and you’ve got to be thankful for the ride we went on to get there.

It’s all been said by more articulate and beautiful minds than mine since then, including our manager, a man with no shortage of passion and appreciation for the moments that lead to greatness, perhaps as much as the crowning achievement itself.

In the days and weeks that led up to the final, I had been building a playlist on Spotify. Reading Paul Cope’s pieces for The Anfield Wrap had me stuck on Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” and the plethora of chants that debuted last season gave me a new appreciation for songs I’d not paid much attention to previously. Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill providing the backdrop for this chant is a prime example.

James’ “Sit Down,” The Beautiful South’s “Rotterdam” and the list goes on, songs that will hopefully continue being belted out by Boss Night’s Jamie Webster at pubs and fan parks from Walton Breck Road to the streets of Madrid come May.

The soundtrack to last season was a rare experience. If you spoke to me around the pub at any given point last season, you probably heard me say “you can tell we’re on a run without watching a match just by how many new songs are popping up.”

And it had been a while since we had so much new material to sing on a matchday. It had been a while since this fanbase had more than songs to sing about dreams, but alas here we were, with a squad capable of making our wildest come true.

And I kept hearing these words in my head from an entry on my playlist:

“I’m not gonna talk about doubts and confusion on a night where I can see with my eyes shut…”

Stumbling across this as I combed through songs by The Proclaimers trying to think of a proper tribute to our Scottish left back, who in a matter of 6 months had endeared himself to the fanbase in a way only a Scotsman can, the lyrics to “The Joyful Kilmarnock Blues” rang truer than ever.

Sure, it’s a song about traveling to see Hibernian play. But in the buildup to the match, I kept hearing those words and I took it as a way of believing we would win that match despite the tremendous task the Reds were facing. They were a sign that I would enjoy the most significant moment in the dozen years I’ve supported this great club.

But it didn’t happen and instead what I found was what those lyrics had really done, was implant in me a sense of faith in the things to come.

A loss to Real Madrid in a one-off match was not going to create room for doubts and confusion, not when I could see Liverpool’s future so clearly, eyes shut or not.

Some may say I’m getting ahead of myself. These same people chide Scousers for their optimism, for their belief that the stars will once again align for them and deliver glory around the fields of Anfield Road.

There’s another important lyric in that song.

“The question doesn’t matter, the answer’s always aye, the best view of all is where the land meets the sky.”

To be a Liverpool supporter is truly to embrace optimism and belief as a way of being. It’s to carry a pride in the club no matter what questions are asked of it and to know that when that golden sky is back on the horizon, it’s time to raise up and write a few more songs into our history.

And believe me, I understand how this can be tough at times. The last ten years has seen no shortage of cynical moments from me, deriding the work the club had done as not good enough, even once claiming we were no longer a big club. Boy, have I been proven wrong and delightedly so. It’s a level of misunderstanding, of wrongness, of getting caught up in the moment that I can embrace and learn from. To be a better supporter, and in truth, a better person, capable of seeing the bigger picture and not becoming mired in the muck of a struggle.

There has been a shift, not only in the quality of the team, but in the mentality and culture of the club since Klopp arrived. You can see it when you go to Anfield. Walkouts and fan bickering have been replaced by belief, camaraderie and Allez Allez Allez. By Klopp himself sitting down with fan media and players reciprocating the gratitude the supporters express during one magical 90 minutes after another.

For us here in Tampa, 4,275 miles as the crow flies away from our football Mecca, sometimes you forget. There are days you feel like you’re on the journey with a dozen mates in dark pubs and no one else, watching a team from another world you’re hardly connected to. I can’t imagine experiencing it alone on the couch.

You forget how global LFC’s reach really is, until you’re reminded with the magic of a season like our last. You see new faces and make new friends from places you’ve never heard of, with life experiences completely different from your own.

And you see faces you haven’t seen in ages. Older and fatter, you once again go through the journey with people you thought you’d lost along the way and you feel with all your being just how much football really is about community, about us. You remember how special it is to go through months and years together, how something so far away can create something so special for you right here in your backyard.

The culture shift at Liverpool under Klopp is apparent in everything around the club, not just on the pitch. This past summer tour showed a level of engagement from players and staff to know the fans more than ever. As if the celebrations after the victory over Roma in the semifinal weren’t enough, you’ve seen it continue to evolve in the actions of the manager and players since. We, the supporters of Liverpool Football Club, are as much a part of the fabric of this thing as anyone who wears that kit and walks out onto that pitch, no matter how many miles from Anfield we may be.

The players celebrated with the fans after winning in Rome, paying tribute to Sean Cox. It was a moment that highlights the culture Klopp has created at the club.

So as we venture out into a fresh campaign, a new adventure, armed to the teeth with a squad that looks as lethal and as capable as any Liverpool team I have ever seen, I ask you to join us. To grow our own branch of this collective spirit once more. To become part of the fabric of a community within the broader Tampa and LFC communities.

To truly enjoy that journey, you’ll want to see it in its entirety, and we want you to see it with us. Some of the best memories you’ll have with these friends are of being up at 7:30 a.m. to watch Liverpool travel to Burnley.

I know, we all have lives. We all have families and life dramas and full-time jobs to maintain. In the end, I’m not asking you to never miss a match. Few of us can achieve that over the course of the lengthy campaign.

It doesn’t matter which of our venues you prefer and no one will be keeping tally of how often you come. But I do ask you to leave the couch behind as much as possible, to walk away from social media as your primary way of interacting with other Liverpool supporters and to join us.

When you love this game as much as we do, there really is something worthwhile in just being around your fellow Reds. In arguing about center back pairings and squad rotations over an Irish coffee on a cold February morning, in washing away a disappointing result with a pint with your pals and in sweat inducing, throat busting celebrations of Mo Salah’s next massive goal.

It’s not just the first match, the biggest match or the last match that you want to be there for. I’ve been lucky, I’ll admit. I’ve been able to commit a portion of my life to this endeavor that is LFC Tampa and to support this club I now feel is a part of me in a way I couldn’t have imagined at the outset all those years ago. I’ve created bonds and made friendships that I believe will last a lifetime, and I’ve met more good people from more diverse backgrounds than I have through any other experience in my life.

Football really is about coming together, about uniting communities and forging bonds through what is essentially entertainment, the pure joy and heartbreak of it.

There has never been a better time to get lost in Liverpool, to become engrained in its communities than right now. The journey, the appreciation for all of it, is all part of the culture Klopp has been working to create. In a way, he’s been molding us in his image, teaching us to appreciate the successes of the past without dwelling in the failures, to savor the moment we’re in without weighing down our vision of the future with excessive expectation.

For the first time in nearly a decade, I enter a season genuinely optimistic about Liverpool’s hope for a title challenge, for lifting a major honor over their heads. But no matter what happens, I’m honestly just looking forward to enjoying it with you all. I just hope I see you more often than not between now and May.