I suppose this all comes down to what standards and expectations you place on footballers. If you believe they are exceptional human beings with tremendous levels of morality and standards then you will be heartbroken when stuff like this happens. If on the other hand you believe they are basically normal people who earn a massive amount of money and will go wherever that massive amount of money can be gained as quickly as possible, you wont be surprised at all.
I think we place some weird expectations on Liverpool players, and assume that because they've been touched by the magic of our club and become integral parts of it that this then means they've bought into the culture and history of the city and the club. Most players who come here do so for money or to play at the highest level. They've all made decisions based on some form of greed to become Liverpool players in the first place, but some choose to think they've picked us because they've made some political or moral choice.
Its never been that way. We famously had a dressing room full of Tories in the 80s at the very time that party was trying to ruin the city. Emlyn Hughes and others played their formative years under Shankly in the late 60s and early 70s but didn't think anything wrong with going for a photo op with Thatcher only a few years later.
Hughes is a club legend, one of the greatest captains we've ever had, he should be revered for what he did on the field, but for me it stops there. I'm the same with people like Firmino. He was a great Liverpool player, nothing else. His private life, his beliefs and his motivations are a complete mystery to me, and I'd have no desire to find out about them if they weren't. He's a footballer, a lad who is good at a sport. Why that makes some think he's a moral saint who will only ever make true and moralistic choices baffles me, because sticking a Liverpool shirt on doesn't make you a good person, although we'd hope our manager picks mainly good people to represent us.
I have higher standards over Klopp, because I think the manager is a different category and any Liverpool manager worth his salt does get a sense for what the club is about. He also speaks more openly about his beliefs and his outlook, and I think this is why we love him because we know he gets us. I've never had the sense that most players get us, and I've never really cared. They are cogs in a team, and if the team is led by a manager who gets us, I'm happy with that. But I don't think it is a players job to get us, it's their job to fight for the team and try and win us football games.
There are exceptions of course. Henderson as captain has spoken in ways that allow me to respect him as a fella as well as a player, but again like the manager, being captain does come with greater responsibilities and means you end up talking more about non footballing matters at times. But most players never tell us who they vote for, what they think about political and social issues or why they even ended up at Liverpool in the first place. And I'm not bothered if they do because half the time I'd be disappointed in the answer, much like I would be if I picked out 10 people in most towns and asked them those questions.
Firmino is.free to do what he wants, and I'm free to think he's an idiot for doing it. But I never really looked at him as anything other than a lad playing football, and I find it strange that some people worship players as if they are just like us, when they're clearly not. I'll still love what he did as a Liverpool player, he gave me amazing memories, but that's it for me, he's a lad who played for my club, nothing more.
Now Gerrard and Fowler, lads from Liverpool, different story altogether.
