Greetings, gentle readers.
And so the English football season has ground to a halt amidst criticism that football in Europe is becoming less competitive. The teams that won their top national leagues in England, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany last season did it again this year, and with games to spare in the season on each occasion. I scoff at such criticism for a number of reasons.
In the Champions’ League, history was made. For the first time, a team from London made it to the Final in Paris. In that Final, Jens Lehmann made history by becoming not just the first goalkeeper to be red-carded and sent off, but also the first player. In fifty years of the competition, no one had ever been sent off. Apparently, the big German national number one took that as a bit of a personal challenge, and rashly slid into Samuel Eto’o. The referee could have played advantage, since Barçalona consequently went on to score on the play, but instead chose to brandish the card of shame. No matter, really, as the Catalans went on to register their second ever European Cup.
Back in Blighty, Liverpool won the FA Cup in another historic match. Plucky, spirited West Ham managed to push Liverpool right to the edge, and were only denied the cup by Steven Gerrard’s heroics, and keeper Pepe Reina’s bizarre penchant for saving penalties.
Liverpool made it to the Final by coming from behind to defeat Luton Town, then unconvincingly knocking aside Portsmouth in the fourth round. Then they ran into their old rivals from the other end of the East Lancs road.
Liverpool had never beaten Manchester United in the FA Cup for 85 years, and after losing to the Red Devils in the League less than a month earlier, the fans at Anfield were thrilling to the possibility of doing one over on Sir Alex Ferguson’s men in the prestigious tournament.
In the end, 85 years of frustration crumbled as Peter Crouch stooped down from the clouds and nodded in the game’s only goal, and Manchester United were forced to bow out. They went on to win the League Cup, assuring themselves of at least some silverware. Liverpool on the other hand thrust themselves into the Quarter-Finals.
Awaiting them were Birmingham City. The relegation-threatened Midlands club were beginning to convulse with panic and dismay at the thought of being sent down from the top flight, and the usual rumours about managers and directors getting the sack were starting to proliferate. Their manager, Steve Bruce, was painted as being a man who needed some cup success in order to keep his job. And so the stage was set for a showdown at St. Andrew’s.
Liverpool ran riot. Birmingham had simply no answer to Liverpool’s silky pass-and-move attack, and the attempts by their back four defenders to hold a high line were punished mercilessly. The game ended as a 7-0 thrashing, with Liverpool now cruising through to the Semi-Finals.
Waiting for them in some form of eerie conspiracy of the football gods was Chelski. The mega-rich London club had already played Liverpool nine times in the last two seasons, winning five, and drawing three. Strangely enough, the only game Chelski lost to the Scouse was the most crucial match — in the European Cup Semi-Final last season that later led to Red joy in Istanbul.
I’ve already written previously of Rafael Benitez’ little daughter asking her father why his team is “always playing that team in blue.” She could have reiterated the query after seeing the teams take the pitch at Old Trafford in front of a packed house.
Chelski’s arrogant and assertive manager, José Mourinho, in a preening statement of dismissal and underestimation, fielded a mysterious line-up that included back-up goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini, and a distinct lack of width through the midfield, with wing-wizards Arjen Robben, Damien Duff and Joe Cole all riding the bench.
He is forced to re-evaluate his plans after Liverpool run rampant and leap out to a 2-0 lead in the first hour of the game. After making wholesale changes, (namely subbing Robben, Duff, and Cole onto the pitch) Chelski rouse themselves enough for Didier Drogba to muscle a ball past Pepe Reina, but not enough to win the match. The game ends 2-1, and Mourinho bursts out in an explosive tirade to the giggles of the attending journalists. Bafflingly denying that his tactics were in any way to blame for the defeat, he proceeded to heap culpability on his players, the officials, and basically everyone besides himself and possibly the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Leaving the Portuguese manager behind in a cloud of his own fumes, Liverpool were off to yet another Cup Final, this time against West Ham. Another London team, and one that featured 40 year-old Teddy Sheringham in the line-up.
As the Red Machine and their passionate faithful marched to the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, my flatmate Jeff and I trooped off to our mate Jim’s father’s place, where the big widescreen television and the pay-per-view satellite deal awaited. And a number of cats, who I’m sure were astonished to see a pack of noisy red-clad individuals invade their domain. That astonishment probably turned to feline pity as they watched our collective jaws drop into our laps after the kick-off.
Despite extraordinary Liverpool possession and pressure, West Ham score a goal against the run of play when “that man” Jamie Carragher turned the ball into his own net past a despairing Pepe Reina. And then they scored a second through the guile of striker Dean Ashton who slipped into the box and tuck a sloppy rebound past Reina. We were stunned. Luckily, our despair didn’t last long as Djibril Cissé managed to claw Liverpool back into the game on a gorgeous Steven Gerrard diagonal ball and make the score 2-1 before the half ended.
So half-time duly arrived, but the tension and drama didn’t. Teeth were clenched, and perspiration beaded on brows as we concentrated and tried to will the team to come back and win. The half-time show had some entertaining highlights from the previous rounds of the competition, featuring some inspiring Liverpool goals. But we were still a goal down. The stadium in Cardiff was rocking out, though. West Ham fans were in full voice, and thanks to some stupid bastards that robbed a Royal Mail van, outnumbered the Kopites on the day. The loudest fans in the country were not to be outdone by a bunch of claret and blue cockneys, and soon the anthem of Anfield was booming into the Welsh afternoon sunshine.
As play resumed, the cheeky cockney fans began chanting “Steven RETARD” at inspirational Liverpool skipper Stevie Gerrard. Now perhaps they’d been collectively living on the moon. In a cave. Under a rock. But what they obviously hadn’t done was see the miracles that Stevie had made manifest against Olympiakos last season. Or in Istanbul in last year’s European Cup Final. Or against Total Network Solutions. Or against Luton Town.
And on 54 minutes, with the team starting to wilt after dominating the game for long stretches, but being unable to make West Ham pay, and with players starting to limp around with cramp, Stevie once again announced to the world that he is one of the best players ever to pull on a Liverpool jersey. With the jeers of the rhyming cockneys stinging his ears red, Stevie trailed the play into the box and unleashed an unstoppable piledriver of a shot past 6’7” Shaka Hislop. He wheeled away and ran past the screaming adulation of the Red faithful toward the West Ham fans, tongue extended and right arm flapping spastically against his chest. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. And all thanks to a few poorly timed crowd chants. Which were silenced rather definitively.
At a time in the game when Liverpool should have placed themselves firmly in the driving seat, West Ham began to gain the upper hand. With Liverpool players exhausted and suffering from the accumulated aches and cramps of a 62 game season, the less-spent legs of West Ham began to make some forward progress through midfield. On one of these forays, Paul Konchesky hoofs a high, lobbing cross into the box from the left wing. It curls, it drifts, and eventually drops. Right into the far corner of Pepe Reina’s net. 3-2 for West Ham, and soon there are only 20 minutes remaining in full-time.
All eyes are now firmly fixed on Fritz Kropfreiter’s lovely television as teeth are clenched, nails are bitten, and nervous tics around various orbital sockets begin to manifest.
The next twenty minutes were agony. Literally. Liverpool players were falling to the ground in fits of cramp, and Djibril Cissé pulled his hamstring, but couldn’t come off the pitch, since all the substitutions had already been used to replace the injured Harry Kewell and Xabi Alonso, and the exhausted Peter Crouch with Jan Kromkamp, Didi Hamann, and Fernando Morientes. Even West Ham, who played almost 20 games less on the season, were becoming undone by the relentless pace of the game, with leading team scorer Marlon Harewood suffering a similar leg cramp to Cissé’s and began limping about in torment as the two teams exchanged sweeping thrusts, turns and ripostes.
As the game entered the final minutes, like two punch-drunk boxers desperately flinging their limbs, Liverpool and West Ham fans roared, making the cavernous Millennium Stadium tremble. Hammers fans were in full voice in anticipation of claiming one of the most storied and prestigious trophies in the game and doing so in only their first year after promotion. Liverpool fans were thunderous in their support because… well, Liverpool fans are always thunderous in their support. Their cheers act as the team’s twelfth man on the pitch, urging and exhorting one last great effort from the lads. Pain is temporary, but triumph rings through the halls of eternity. Songs were sung. Prayers were uttered to the heavens, but at the turn of 90 minutes, the scoreline still read West Ham 3 – 2 Liverpool FC.
But then, as has happened so often before, against Olympiakos, AC Milan, and Luton Town, the tired and aching limbs of the skipper were enough to allow him to take the hopes and dreams of millions of Liverpool supporters upon his broad shoulders, and bear all that weight.
With Djib unable to run, let alone kick a ball, and with the stamina of his wingers flagging, Stevie G. once more proved his quality by storming onto a ball 35 yards away from goal and absolutely unleashing a stinging, venomous strike that flashed past everyone in the box and past the outstretched fingers of a lunging Shaka Hislop into the bottom left corner of the net. A brilliant strike surely destined for the highlight reels viewed and reviewed by future generations.
For now, though, Stevie’s miracle strike did not mean a win. It meant that the game would continue even LONGER. An almost tragic disaster for those players already collapsing as the anaerobic respiration in their muscle tissues started to build up more and more calcium, and they couldn’t flex, move, or exert in the way that they wanted.
The break before extra time was like watching an episode of M*A*S*H*. The sidelines were an enormous triage unit, as trainers and physios ran about frantically trying to massage life back into muscles that wouldn’t function, and flexibility back into tendons that would no longer stretch.
It was a limping, gasping Liverpool team that returned to take the pitch, but urged ever onward by the sonic power of the harmonic support from the stands, they pushed themselves onward. West Ham too looked drained and bereft of ideas.
And so it proved. 30 minutes of probing, but ultimately defensive football was providing a stalemate that led all knowledgeable viewers and spectators to believe that the match was heading to penalty kicks. But wait…
At the very death of extra time, a ball is sent arrowing into the Liverpool 18-yard box, and seemed to be ready to just do what Paul Konchesky’s earlier ball had done, and cleverly sneak in at the far post past Pepe Reina. Not this time. The Spaniard with the now legendary reflexes managed to leap on his off-foot, and just barely get his fingertips to the ball at full stretch, and consequently make the ball rebound off the side post.
Cue Drama: The keeper has thrown himself full-length to his left, and everyone else’s eyes and feet have been following the ball. The ball rebounds off the inside of the post and flies across the goal to an open Marlon Harewood, who now has an open net at which to shoot. This, one suspects, should be game over.
But it isn’t. Harewood was so wracked with cramp and strain that he could do no more than vaguely direct the ball toward the space between the left post and the corner flag before wincing in agony and limping away.
We went off to penalties knowing a couple of things. Pepe Reina devours penalties in exactly the same way that bunnies don’t eat Trixtm breakfast cereal. That is to say, he is renowned in Spain for being a ridiculously talented keeper at stopping penalties. And unlike AC Milan’s Brazilian keeper Dida, who has a penchant for illegally cheating forward from his line before the ball is struck for a penalty, Reina is renowned for beating penalty-shooters through some sort of anticipatory sixth-sense.
The other thing we know is that Liverpool did something very similar last season. A game that ended with three goals to each competing team, Liverpool having come from behind, going scoreless through extra time, consequently won with penalties.
So how did the game end?
At this point, it’s predictable.
West Ham’s top scorer can’t move his legs. Liverpool’s keeper saves penalties for fun. Simple.
Ordinarily in a sports report such as this, one expects that the hard-working and industrious minnows would get some praise as the valiant underdogs. This is my perfunctory effort.
The Hammers’ fans were in full voice, and deserve recognition for their efforts and their passion. The young members of this newly-promoted side played with verve and creativity, and the West Ham veterans were as canny and astute as could be expected. But when the final whistle went for penalties, their game was over. Shaka Hislop had no chance against Stevie’s men, and their squad had no chance against Pepe’s greatest strength.
West Ham elect to go first. Bobby Zamora strikes one to his left with some power, but Pepe Reina is equal to the task, and leaps artfully across to save it. 0-0.
Didi Hamann, who generally takes the same sort of shot, only more powerfully, opts on his opportunity to blast it to his right instead. Hislop guessed wrong and found himself stranded. 1-0 for Liverpool.
The oldest player in the game, tetragenarian Teddy Sheringham, stepped up to the spot next for West Ham. The old battler, who had won the FA Cup with Manchester United seven years previously, arrows a skilful shot into the bottom right corner, just beyond Reina’s reach. 1-1.
In a surprise move, the next shooter for Liverpool is centre-back Sami Hÿypia. Unfortunately for both him and the team, he is so knackered and seized with cramp that his shot is a tame, crawling effort that Shaka Hislop is able to comfortably reach down and parry. 1-1.
Next up for West Ham is the scorer of their third goal, Paul Konchesky. The left winger tries to be tricky and smash a shot into the centre of the net, anticipating that the keeper will leap out of the way. Reina does in fact guess to his left, but is able to stab a trailing leg backwards to stop the shot. 1-1.
And then the game as a contest was ended. If it wasn’t already considered concluded before, the powerful figure of Stevie Gerrard striding toward the penalty spot with a predatorial gleam in his eyes cemented it. Where Sami’s shot was weak and slow, Stevie’s laser-guided missile of a shot nearly burst the netting. Hislop despairingly left stranded as Liverpool took the lead for the first time in the game. 2-1 Liverpool.
Anton Ferdinand was the next shooter for West Ham, and Rio’s younger brother tried to sell a fake direction, but Reina wasn’t buying any of it. Ferdinand showed right, and then shot left. Reina acrobatically reached it and pushed it aside. 2-1 Liverpool.
Next up was Liverpool’s John-Arne Riise. The game was now on the line, as one more Liverpool goal would eliminate the Hammers and make LFC the Football Association Challenge Cup Winners for only the seventh time in their history. The piledriver left foot of Jar-Jar made no mistake and cracked an absolute thunderbolt past the flailing Hislop. 3-1 Liverpool, and game over.
Back on Edmonton’s verdant West End, the celebrations were almost loud as the ones in Cardiff, where the rising of a Red Dawn in the West had illuminated the Millennium Stadium once more. Now that the New Wembley is approaching completion, it means that Liverpool have won the FA Cup in the first Final to be held in Cardiff in 2001, and now they’ve won the last Final to be contested there. Anfield South, indeed. And some scant regard for the opposition at the other end of the East Lancs Road, who only managed the League Cup this season. And three days later, Arsenal continued the time-honoured tradition of a London-based club never winning Europe’s biggest prize when Barçalona thumped them out of the European Champions’ Cup at the Stade de France in Paris. Liverpool finished the season with 82 points, the highest tally they’ve ever registered in the Premiership. Unfortunately, not good enough to overhaul Manchester United for second place, and automatic qualification for the European Champions’ League next year, but a definite improvement in terms of standings and prestige.
Now that the football season is over for another year, I can turn my attention back to women. Starting next entry.
Until then, good night England and the colonies.
Cheers,
-mARKUS
