Some chants are funny because they exaggerate and the Bobby Firmino song is a lovely example. It calls him the best in the world and promises he will score every time you give him the ball, neither of which was ever quite true. That was the joke, though, and the crowd loved him all the more for it. The song has a Latin, samba-ish lilt that suits a Brazilian and it built to the ‘Sim señor, give the ball to Bobby and he will score’ line that Anfield would belt out with gusto. Firmino, of course, was not really a goal-a-game number nine, nor did he need to be.
His gift was making everyone around him better, pressing from the front and setting up Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané with the kind of selflessness that rarely gets its own song. The Kop gave him one anyway, which tells you exactly how they felt about him. He arrived from Hoffenheim in 2015 and became the quiet engine of Jürgen Klopp’s best sides, winning the Champions League and the Premier League as part of that incredible front three. When he left for Saudi Arabia in 2023, he did so as one of the most fondly remembered players of the era.
From the no-look finishes to the enormous smile, via his cheekiness that could always be depended upon when it looked like life was getting a bit too serious, it seems inevitable now that he was always going to be loved. There was an article written at the end of the Brendan Rodgers era that used him as a stick with which to defend the Northern Irishman and attack the transfer committee. Sufficed to say that it looks even more stupid in retrospect than it did at the time. Little wonder, then, that the Kop still sings his song when the time for a tribute is right.
Here are the lyrics, often accompanied by a bounce and some scarf twirling:
There’s something that the Kop wants you to know:
The best in the world is Bobby Firmino!
Our number nine,
Give him the ball and he’ll score every time.
Sim señor,
Give the ball to Bobby and he will score!
