The first half was, I am going to say, deliberative, in the style of a testy academic debate. The first entrant, Prof. Rafael Benítez—scowling, keen, bristlingly goateed, blotchy of face, militant, wearing a history of kidney stones and media mind-games, as though he were nursing an infected psyche and a minor case of mumps—sent out his red ideas and watched them like an angry egg. The second entrant, Prof. Luiz Felipe Scolari—a debonair hulk, looming in wind pants, ready to smash his fist through the first two-by-four that didn’t find him charming—sent out his blue ideas and looked on like a swaggering potato.
The flow of argument was biased toward the red. Quick series of proofs kept branching in that direction. Frequently, with a thump of the podium, the red professor would send a screamer from Alonso or Mascherano straight at his opponent’s goal, forcing a defensive rhetorical retrenchment in the form of the flying Petr Čech. And even then the rebuttal was frequently bungled, leaving the goal open to a series of missed retorts.
The blue professor’s thinking seemed to have retreated and congealed before the irritable aggression of the red professor. Frequently, only the intemperate and clumsily articulated nature of the red ideas themselves—Dirk Kuyt’s lack of composure, Mascherano’s ad hominem rudeness—kept Prof. Benítez from scoring a decisive point. On the stroke of halftime, the nimble theorem Steven Gerrard spun through Prof. Scolari’s logic and brilliantly laid the ball off for Rieira. But Rieira was unequipped to advance the cause of knowledge and, utterly discredited, merely tapped it back in search of a more current school of thought.
The second half was more of the same, except that Lampard got sent off (undeservedly), Bosingwa didn’t get sent off (undeservedly), and Fernando Torres scored two goals at the end (one a twisty horizontal header, the other a Yossi Benayoun-crafted plink into an empty net). You can’t say it was exactly lux et veritas, since Chelsea never should have been reduced to ten men. (It was like, no, sorry, Plato does still have a place in this discussion.) At the same time, Liverpool were in control of the game from the opening whistle. And the gossips at the faculty club are going to be wondering about Scolari’s late decision to replace Kalou with Stoch.
My man of the match was Alex.
Read More: Chelsea, Liverpool, The Occasional Match Summary
by Brian Phillips · February 1, 2009
Much more satisfying than Intro to World Philosophy.
This Liverpool team is fun. They are conscious of their shortcomings, but they work diligently to overcome them. This match was like a prayer, they kept asking for the breakthrough goal. I’m glad their prayer was answered, they deserved it.
I didn’t live through the dominant Liverpool years, so this bunch of scrappy do-gooders is charming to me in a way England isn’t feeling. To me, Kuyt, Benayoun, and Torres are the new Liverpool: hard working, always knocking on the door of the sublime, but unsure that anyone will answer. They lack the self-confidence of a United, but they accept their role of underdog and they’ll play it hard and to the hilt. I hope they overcome the history of old Liverpool and are appreciated for what they are. And I hope they catch United.
I like that way of looking at the team. I find it a little hard to maintain in the face of the fan expectations, which make it counterintuitive to look at any Liverpool team as an underdog, even one that legitimately is one. And the endless boardroom wars color my impression of the team, too.
But you’re right, if you shut out everything but what’s happening on the pitch, they can be a fun team. And they never stop trying, which makes them likable and also fairly dramatic.
Er, Liverpool’d string of draws all resulted from their taking it a bit easy after going 1 up. So with all due respect, they have stopped trying.
I don’t think it’s because they’ve started taking it easy so much as because they aren’t very good when they try to play a slow defensive game. And Rafa always tries to put them in that mode whenever they get a lead. But yeah, there have definitely been some missed marking assignments. I don’t really know how to characterize this team, to be honest.
I’ll admit that, as a bit of an Everton fan, I didn’t watch this match in an entirely unbiased way (though, in my defense, being the sort of American soccer fan who watches only from afar, I don’t have as strong an antipathy towards Liverpool as I gather a proper Everton fan would), but surely the highlight, which you have neglected to mention, was the pleasure of watching Gerrard receive a richly-deserved yellow card for diving.
I certainly have the general Anglo-American distaste for diving and the attendant pleading with the ref, but I find it particularly irritating coming (so consistently) from someone who, as you said a while back, “holds some kind of psychic centrality in English football”. As I said (over the internet) to a friend (a few minutes before Gerrard received his card — did I mention that it was richly-deserved?):
“you know what i really cant stand, is the way gerrard looks at the ref after he gets knocked down… as if to say “ref! I am the living embodiment of english football! i am dedication, bravery, courage, and fortitude incarnate! if i was stopped, clearly it was an egregious foul… you must card that man!”
Also, Chelsea were awful.
Yeah, if you wanted to, you could even trace the extent to which Gerrard has crushed Lampard in their inexplicable cultural either/or by contrasting Gerrard’s reaction to that deserved yellow card and Lampard’s reaction to his completely unfair red card. Gerrard was like two seconds from going to get Excalibur out of his locker and Lampard just trudged off, the resigned look on his face saying, “This sucks, but…I’m just Frank Lampard.”
Kuyt: A Steve McClaren type of player, full of endeavor signifying nothing.
As a great man once said: “You’ll win naught with Kuyt.”
That does not rhyme, thus lessening its potential Humor Ratio …