Burnley 1, ManU(re) 0

This is one of those if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest-and-no-one-hears-it-does-it-make-a-sound kind of questions.  What makes you happier: a win by your team, or an unexpected loss by your most-hated rival?  In other words, let’s say the football genie pops out of the lamp, and gives you a choice between a nice win for your team or an unexpected humiliation of your rival, BUT then tells you that you can’t have both.  Which do you pick?  Fortunately I don’t have to answer this question today.  Liverpool 4: Stoke 0; Burnley 1: ManU 0.  This is one of those occassions when you simply want to repeat the day a few times in a row for the sheer pleasure of it.

So, since we’re in that overreactionary time of the season, I think I’ll ask: where does this leave ManU?  Does this mean that dementia’s tentacles have finally begun tightening their grip on Lord Ferg?  Does this mean that ManU are not the same team without Ronaldo?  My personal theory is that the squad is missing the cohesiveness brought on by Ronaldo’s man-love parties he no doubt threw for his teammates last season, where they would all sit around, waxing each other’s eyebrows and giving each other faux-hawks, while reminding Rooney that he really shouldn’t be eating all those carbs.

Do-Overs

So Opening Day at White Hart Lane didn’t go exactly as planned.  And it’s tme for the predictable overreactions, forgetting of course that there are 37 matches left on the slate.

There were a number of turds laid on the pitch, like the turd our back four laid.  To be fair, though, Carra played most of the match with a closed head injury, and Skrtl took more abuse than the T-1000 in Terminator 2. And there was the turd laid by the referee during the final 15 minutes, missing a mugging of Voronin in the box.  Nonetheless what stood out to me was the rather large Xabi Alonso-shaped hole in the center of the midfield.  Aquilani cannot get fit fast enough.

But all of that is in the past.  Tonight the title chase begins in earnest at Anfield against the pesky irritant of last season, Stoke.  The boys have “walked through [the] storm” and await tonight’s “golden sky.”  Come on Reds!

Christians 2, Lions 0

I know this isn’t Liverpool related, but what am I going to write about at this time of year, the Glen Johnson signing?  So, indulge me.  We here at the Kentucky end of the Kop are in a celebratory mood.

USA 2: Spain 0.

This is the ‘62 Mets over the ‘27 Yanks, the barbarians over the Romans, the nail over the hammer, the Christians over the lions.

Never before has a national anthem so embodied a team.  The Star Spangled Banner is about a bunch of rag-tag Americans getting the crap kicked out of them by the British, but somehow “the flag’s still there.”  Sound familiar, Spain?

You know what this reminded me of?  The Stoke City draws last year.  Torres taking target practice for hour and a half, but not finding the net.  Let’s all be glad that Nino and Xabi got this out of their systems now.  The football gods owe Torres some goals.  Let’s hope they come at Old Trafford on October 24.

And I’m glad I can get back to rooting on Spain again.  Or as some would call it, the Liverpool summer training program.  I felt a little conflicted, to say the least, about cheering on Torres’ misses.

But there was much high-fiving and hooting at the pub on Wednesday.  Me and the three other people who care about football over here.  And we’ll be at it again on Sunday, trying to duplicate our seating and drinking patterns.  Because we all know that the only way we pull this off is to appease whatever mystical and mysterious forces were at work in the football universe yesterday.  And I’m not talking about Jozy Altidore’s right foot.

Come on you Stars and Stripes!

Hillsborough

*This post is a little late, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to the faithful reader of this blog.

20 years ago last Wednesday, 94 Liverpool supporters lost their lives, crushed to death after police guided crowds into an already over-populated central pen at the Leppings Lane end, then opened a gate to ease turnstile congestion.  Another fan would die four days later, a 96th two years on.  Most of the family members will never know exactly what happened to their loved ones.

So, how does a member of the Kentucky end of the Kop deal with Hillsborough?  First off, I think an American sports fan has a hard time understanding how this sort of think could happen at a football match.  For whatever reason, most American sports parks and stadia have never had terraced seating.  Every fan has a seat, and we jealously guard our seats.  So the idea of being herded into a pen surrounded on all sides by fencing is a little foreign.  More importantly, though, I think Hillsborough is something the American Liverpool supporter would rather ignore.

Most of us chose Liverpool voluntarily, almost casually.  You see, Liverpool Football Club is not my birthright like the Cincinnati Reds are.  Hillsborough is not our cross to bear.  And this is the single biggest reason most of us feel a little sheepish about Hillsborough.  With this kind of emotional baggage, it’s tough to admit that we casually picked Liverpool as our team.  We just aren’t equipped to understand Hillsborough.  We don’t understand how it happened, we didn’t know those who gave their lives, most of us have never even met somone from Liverpool, and truth be told we probably wouldn’t even understand a Scouse accent.  So this is not a day for us.  I’d love to be able to say that we too will fight for justice, that we will honor their memories.  But frankly, April 15 is a day for us to sit out.  It’s a day for those who lost one of their own, or feel like they did.  For us it’s the one day of the year we in the Kentucky end of the Kop feel furthest from the Anfield Kop.  Call us on the 16th, and we’ll be back.  We’re busy filing our taxes on the 15th anyway.

When a team comes to embody a people

The rest of Liverpool FC Nation will have to excuse us for awhile.  The Kentucky end of the Kop is a little distracted this week.  We just said goodbye to a basketball coach.

The University of Kentucky dismissed Billy Clyde Gillispie because he did not understand what it meant to be the coach of Kentucky, and he did not fully understand what Kentucky basketball means to the people of Kentucky, its alumni, its supporters.  He thought it was about wins and losses.  He apparently still thinks he was fired for not winning enough.  No, it wasn’t about wins and losses.  He was fired because he did not embody the majesty and tradition of Kentucky basketball.  He did not tour the state each year reminding us of our past success.  He did not tell us how important we are, as fans, to the success of the program.  His relationship with his players was so strained that his players forgot how special it was just to be pulling on a jersey with Kentucky across the chest.  They practiced and played like the players of any other team because he reduced Kentucky basketball to the level of any other team — a team concerned only with wins and losses.

This, of course, got me to thinking about Liverpool football.  Like Kentucky, Liverpool is more than just a football team.  Today’s team, today’s manager is merely its current expression.  Its history, its tradition, its past successes — all of this is a shared experience that is passed from generation to generation by its fans.  Players come and go, coaches come and go, school presidents and team owners come and go.  The shared experience, the pride of its supporters is what endures.  Billy Gillispie did not understand this.  Rafa Benitez does.  Billy Gillispie fired after just two seasons.  Rafa Benitez signed to a 5-year contract extension.

Coming to Terms

When I was 14 years old, the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series.  This marks the last time one of my teams won a championship of any kind, except for, of course, Liverpool’s epic Champions League victory in 2005. But even then I was too much of a Liverpool neophyte.  I hadn’t yet developed an irrational obsession with the club’s fortunes.

You see, I do not follow teams that win championships.  I do not follow teams that even seriously contend for championships.  I can’t relate to those kinds of teams.  I’m not wired that way.  It’s not my personality.  I never went for the consensus prettiest girl in school, or the most prestigious job.  I always looked for the girl or job with more subtle charms.

Now, growing up in Cincinnati, this wasn’t a problem.  Cincinnati, at least in my lifetime, doesn’t produce championship-caliber teams.  Being a Cincinnati Bengal fan, for instance, requires a degree of self-flaggelation that few fans in the world can relate to.

So the last week of Liverpool football has been a slightly disorienting experience.  A stomping of Real followed by a stomping of Man U has me a little concerned.  I mean what would I do if we actually won the league? How would I respond?

Let’s be honest, this isn’t likely to happen.  But it does feel like the club has turned some sort of psychological corner with league doubles over both Man U and Chelsea.  Can we go into next season assuming a top-four finish and deep runs in the Champions League and FA Cup would be a nice season?  I don’t think so.  I think next year we have to realistically assume we’re going to mount a very serious title challenge.  And, frankly, I find this a little uncomfortable.  I guess it’s because I just don’t picture myself as the sort of guy who follows the Yankees or Manchester United.

But we’re not Manchester United, are we?  And what I’ve realized is that it’s not so much the fact that these teams win everything, it’s how they win.  We don’t just go around buying up players to fill every hole.  There’s still something slightly plucky about how we win, and there’s still something unexpectedly pleasureable about wins like yesterday’s and last Tuesday’s.  And … sometimes change can be a good thing.

Fernando Torres Facts

Well, with Liverpool out of the Cup, not much news around the Kop these days.  Time then for the first installment of what I like to call Fernando Torres facts.  Some are borrowed from or inspired by Chuck Norris facts, some are original.

Fernando Torres once kicked a football so hard, his foot broke the sound barrier.

God did not create the Earth.  The Earth is a well placed Fernando Torres header off a God corner kick.

Apple pays Fernando Torres $.99 every time he listens to a song.

People talk about Liverpool’s ability to come from behind late in matches.  This is actually just Fernando Torres toying with the opposition for 88 minutes.

The MLS is currently in talks to add Fernando Torres as its newest expansion team.

David Beckham wishes he looked like Fernando Torres.

Barack Obama wishes he was as cool as Fernando Torres.

Fernando Torres scored the PK off Sylvester Stallone at the end of Victory.

Spain is thinking of changing its name to Fernando Torres.

Cristiano Ronaldo tried to sign up for the Fernando Torres football clinic.  While plans have not yet been finalized, Fernando Torres is thinking of calling his clinic World Cup 2010 South Africa.

Yoda said there is no try, only Fernando Torres.

Changing the luck – Liverpool v. Portsmouth 2/7

0-0 draw at Stoke.

Two draws, one loss to Everton in the space of 3 weeks.

Captain Steven Gerrard out at least 3 weeks with a hamstring tear.

These are the recent misfortunes of the Liverpool Football Club.

During this stretch I have gone from Torres home shirt to blank away shirt, home-and-away red-grey scarf to 5-time-Champions-of-Europe scarf, watching at the Pub to watching at Molly Brookes to watching at home, watching real time to watching on tape delay, drinking Carlsberg to drinking Tetleys.  The results are the same.  I must change the luck, because as we all know the minute little actions I take 3000 or so miles away in Kentucky have a dramatic effect on the team’s fortunes.

Psychologists have a term for this: magical thinking.

So then.  Today it’s Torres home shirt, Champions-of-Europe scarf, Tetleys, The Pub, real time, BUT I will throw in several playings of YNWA on my way over.  If the first half goes poorly, I’ll throw in a Newcastle Brown Ale  in the second half on the theory that it’s some sort of voodoo-it’s-such-bad-luck-it’s-good.

Calling all Ky Reds

So here’s the deal. I got tired of watching Liverpool matches in solitude, hunched over my laptop. Through this blog and a variety of other ways I’ve managed to connect to a handful of Central Kentucky Liverpool supporters. A bunch of us gathered for the first time today at The Pub to watch the scintillating nil-nil draw with Stoke. We have this idea of creating an informal supporter’s club here in Lexington, with the idea of perhaps official affiliation at some point. Hopefully this blog will become a community forum for Lexington/Central Kentucky-based Reds. So if you’re out there, post a comment and send me your e-mail. You are not alone. YNWA.

Who Cares? We’re in.

What the anti-Liverpool pundits will say about last night’s win:

1. Liverpool didn’t deserve to go through.
2. Standard Liege refused to score despite a dozen good chances.
3. Gerrard spent all night thumping balls over his teammates’ heads.
4. Liverpool staged a characteristically boring and predictable attack.
5. Etc., etc., etc.

Here’s my response:

1. I don’t give a crap.
2. Because I’m now guaranteed to see at least six more games on U.S. television, which …
3. will give me at least six more opportunities to drink beer at a pub in the middle of the day.