So … yeah … I’ve been a tad incommunicado here on this blog where I said I’d be chronicling my nascent Liverpool fandom. I’ll share with you some of the reasons why because I like to hold myself accountable:
I spent December wrapping up the fall semester and grading dozens of submissions from students in my undergraduate journalism class and two master’s of fine arts classes. When I completed that task, I revised three syllabi and three sets of online course modules for the spring 2024 semesters for three courses.
Additionally, there was the whole Christmas holiday prep — buying presents for the family and spending hours wrapping, planning the menus for two holiday dinners, cooking/baking, cleaning the house, and squeezing in a mid-December trip to visit my daughter Abbey and her boyfriend Anthony in their Bronx apartment.
In addition to helping my senior citizen father with his weekly medicine, paying his bills, and taking him to his medical appointments, I had meetings for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (where I’m a member of the local chapter’s Board of Trustees, as well as an MS Activist, which means I lobby state and federal officials for bills which help those with chronic illnesses). I also did some more research for my work-in-progress about a Massachusetts Millennial minister, and, this is my low-key announcement, started working with a publisher to prep my second novel for a February 2025 publication date.
So … yeah … maybe taking on this British football project was a tad too ambitious. I realized early in December that I just would not have the opportunity to pull together blog posts for each game I watched. And I did watch all but one Liverpool game since I last blogged about the Reds. (I missed the Dec. 6, 2023 game against Sheffield United — which Liverpool won 1-nil — because there were too many people logged onto our streaming account. We’ve remedied the situation by purchasing our Liverpool-fan son Jonah an online streaming subscription for Christmas.) I watched eight games during December and one on New Year’s Day in my Boston area home, in our family’s Cape Cod place, en route to and in church, at Sean’s Bar & Kitchen in New York City, and at an in-law’s house during a holiday event. I took notes while watching most of these contests, but lost the ones I jotted on a Sean’s Bar & Kitchen napkin.
The Reds have compiled an impressive record during the past 10 games, winning seven, tying two, and losing one, the Europa group league game vs USG, which my Chelsea-fan son told me didn’t matter because Liverpool was advancing out of group play anyway, so I’d say they had a good December, in spite of my blogging lapse.
While I’ll post some highlights from my notes below, one question has been haunting me over the over-packed month of December: How can fans possibly keep up with all these games? Do they watch all of these games or some of them?
I, for example, don’t watch every Boston Red Sox game, given that they have 162 of them a season, and I still call myself a fan. I think I’ve been unduly influenced by my Chelsea-fan son who’s of the mind that only real fans watch every football game. (Yes, he’s employed.) I now realize that it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to blog about every game, and that’s okay. I’ll still watch as many as I can, taking notes when I can, and posting as I can.
As a British football newbie, I still find all these concurrent tournaments — EFL, Europa, never mind players leaving to play for their national teams’ continental football tournaments (like Mo Salah leaving Liverpool to participate in the Africa Cup of Nations for much of January) — befuddling. I’m unaccustomed to trying to balance all of the competitions in my mind. I think following just the Premier League would be simpler, but my Chelsea-mad son has strongly implied that would be very “plastic” of me. And, God knows, I don’t wanna be plastic.
I want you all to know that I was so very dedicated to this project that I watched Liverpool take on Brentford on Nov. 12 at the end of a trip to the humid, overheated hellscape that is Florida (the weather didn’t get along well with my severe multiple sclerosis-heat sensitivity) as I sat in the car my husband Scott and I rented, while I sat in the airport, while I dragged my super-fatigued ass through said airport, and then as I sat my ass on an early-ish Delta flight back to Boston. The only parts of the game I missed were when I went through airport security and during the time it took to get settled in my seat and find the game on the plane’s channel guide.
In spite of my MS fatigue and mobility issues — as well as the fact that I hadn’t yet had any coffee — I was quite impressed with myself for making it a point to not only watch the game, but to also take some pretty thorough notes. The first thing that struck me as I tuned into the contest on my phone was that the energy thousands of miles and an ocean away on the Anfield pitch was the polar opposite of what I was feeling. Once we got to the airport, Scott dropped me off so he could return the rental car. I dragged our luggage inside and plopped myself onto seats in front of the Delta counters.
Early on in the game, the teeny tiny little figures of Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah on my phone’s screen teamed up to make a series of plays that looked impressive, but didn’t yield any goals. Diogo Jota was as chippy with Brentford players as I felt toward the Sunshine State, eager to get out of an area where the weather literally affected my damaged brain and made me feel ill nearly the entire time I was there. Darwin Nunez, channeling the energy of two dozen espressos, managed to emerge from traffic in front of the Brentford Bees’ goal in the 22nd minute and land it in the back of the net. Alas. He was offside. Six minutes later, Nunez executed this amazing backwards-over-his–head kick (see below) that also sunk. But. Again. He was declared off side. When, a minute later, two Brentford players got tagged with yellow cards and Liverpool blew a free kick, an announcer said, “Nothing breaking for a Liverpool player yet.”
By the 37th minute, Scott walked through the airport doors, I handed him an earbud, and we joined the security line just in time to watch Joel Matip receive a warning from an official for colliding into a Brentford player and then get a yellow card for complaining. (It occurred to me that I was jealous of the officials’ power to walk around issuing cards to people who make with stupid complaints. That was be amazing.) Meanwhile, the Anfield chanted, “Bullshit,” while Scott and I argued about whether Matip deserved the card. If my Chelsea-mad son had been there, I’m certain he would’ve been very black-and-white about it, officiously telling me that Matip complained, complaining’s against the rules, therefore he deserved the yellow card. However he was back at home taking care of our two dogs which, he realized, isn’t so easy.
Just before Scott and I dumped our belongings onto the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) conveyor belts – I experienced a pang of worry about the safety of my laptop (the one on which I’m typing this very post) in the hands of Floridian TSA agents because, I suddenly remembered it bore a rainbow sticker saying, “Say gay, do crime” on it to protest Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. (One TSA agent, to my shock, told me she liked the sticker.) – Mo Salah scored his 199th English football goal via a beautiful backward pass from Nunez. At the half it was 1-nil.
By the time Scott and I were able to return to the game, it was the 54th minute and officials were using VAR (video assistant referee … it’s a British phrase) to determine if Wataru Endo should get a red card for a slide-tackle where his studs wound up on top of a Brentford player’s foot/leg. However I didn’t totally hear most of the announcers’ commentary because I was wearing one ear bud (Scott had the other one) and there was incessant Charlie Brown’s-teacher-blathering from the gate attendants on the public address system. They’d overbooked our flight and were begging people to take the $500 gift card for another flight. How rude of them to talk over the Prem announcers!
Salah sunk his 200th British football goal in the 62nd minute but there was a question about whether Konstantinos Tsimikas was out-of-bounds when he passed the ball to Salah. (Reader: he was not.)
Both Scott and I shouted, “Wow” when Brentford’s goalie, David Raya, made an extraordinary save, looking like Superman as he went airborne. Minutes later, we again became noisy when Jota scored a bomb of a goal into the top, upper-right side of the goal, demonstrating “controlled strength,” an announcer said. No one in our seating area seemed to notice, particularly while this tiny, gray-black shaggy dog in a red harness was frolicking around the seating area. (I know I wasn’t the only one hoping the hound would be a silent traveler. On our way down to Florida, someone brought a dog who was clearly unhappy and barked for an extended period.)
Scott and I missed 14 minutes of the game due to the boarding process and, when we found the correct station on the seat-back TV (see above), the score was still 3-nil Liverpool, as it would remain for the rest of the match, including its six minutes of extra time. As the whistle blew, I heard Anfield filling with The Standells’ Boston-centric “Dirty Water,” the 1966 song usually played at Fenway Park after the Boston Red Sox win a game. Have they played this song all season and I never noticed? Did they start to play this after the Fenway Sports Group purchased Liverpool? (I shall explore these questions in a future post.)
International break, then a Nov. 25, 2023 draw with Man City
So, hear me out. I’m preemptively making excuses for my Nov. 25 mistake. While I was so proud of my valiant effort to make sure I saw as much of the Liverpool-Brentford game as I could even though I was traveling, I kind of fell on my face when it came to the 7:30 a.m. Liverpool game against Manchester City. I only saw half the game because I overslept. *Ducks to avoid the tomatoes being thrown at my head.*
I woke up at 8:20 and it was already halftime and Man City was up 1-nil. Ugh. Blame it on the two days of cooking before Thanksgiving dinner at my house and dessert at my brother’s. Blame it on spending nearly three hours on the following day watching and singing along with Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie with my daughter Abbey. I was beaten like the dozens of eggs we used during that week. (Bad mom joke, I know.) I arrived in the family room looking like a zombie, or, as my youngest son would say, like I need another hour of sleep. Jonah, who was staying over for a few days for the holiday, was already in the family room, while Scott was listening to the game in the adjacent kitchen as he prepared more stuffing because our family was having our second Thanksgiving dinner with his side of the family later that afternoon. Abbey, who came down with a head cold and missed Thanksgiving Part II, was watching the game in her bed.
Maybe it was my fuzzy-headedness, but as I watched the very physical play of Man City, I was captivated by the dude who looked like a Bond movie villain with slicked-back blond hair and grimace — Erling Haaland — who kept getting into tussles with Liverpool players, including one with Trent Alexander-Arnold that led to a free kick, which failed. Man City players were swarming Liverpool like annoying, powder blue gnats. And THEY aren’t the ones who have an insect nickname. (Their tenacity reminded me of the Roy Kent chant on Ted Lasso: “He’s here! He’s there! He’s every fucking where! Roy Kent!”)
The first thing I said out loud about the game came in the 67th minute when I asked if I’d remembered correctly that Liverpool usually fares poorly at early-morning matches. The Chelsea-mad son, who’d recently joined us in the family room, confirmed my memory saying that, yes, in the earlier matches, “They normally suck.”
One minute later … controversy. Man City scored a goal, but only after a player grabbed and held onto the shoulder of Liverpool goaltender Alisson Becker. Our family room descended into debate as some said the goal was legit and others disagreeing. The announcers were clearly in the “it’s a goal” camp. But they lost that argument.
Liverpool tied it up in the 80th with an Alexander-Arnold line-drive into the net after which he stood still and laid a single index finger across his lips to shush the Man City fans (see above), causing Jonah to leap off the couch, pump his balled right fist, and then high-five Scott and me. This set off a round of barking from our 12-pound caffeine-on-legs Jack Russell terrier who is offended by cheering or shouting of any kind. (Dude’s a super-sensitive soul, even though he murders fuzzy creatures like chipmunks and bunnies for sport.)
Liverpool Coach Jurgen Klopp’s substitutions at the 85th minute – bringing in Endo and Harvey Elliott and sending Nunez and Alexis MacAllister to the bench – yielded this gem from my Chelsea-fan son: “Endo and Elliott? How to lose the game 101? What are you smoking, Klopp? That’s not going to end well.”
Scott shook his head. “Endo scares me.”
“Yeah,” Chelsea boy said, “that’s what I said.”
Three yellow cards – two for Liverpool, one for Man City – followed a couple more concerning plays involving Becker, including on where a Man City player shoved him into the net after he grabbed the ball out of the air. As Becker fell to the ground in the 97th (!) minute, clutching the back of his right thigh, our living room fell silent at the prospect of an injured Becker.
“Oh, you’re getting relegated,” declared the Chelsea fan.
However, Becker eventually got back in goal, just as Haaland and his blond hair headed the ball (above) that, luckily, didn’t make its way into the net, leaving the score 1-1.
“All right!” shouted Jonah when the whistle blew. “I’m actually happy with a draw!”
Okay, so the Reds have fallen into a teeny, tiny slump as of late. In Premier League play, they fell to Tottenham 2-1 in a hotly-contested match filled with more cards than a stationery store and, a week later, they tied Brighton 2-2 in a game in which they had the lead until late in the contest. In Europa League group stage play, they beat Union Saint-Gilloise 2-nil.
Tottenham: I watched that dreadful, aggressively-officiated Sept. 30 Tottenham game between two unbeaten Prem teams (there were a dozen cards issued during this match!) from my living room, where I shouted repeatedly when Curtis Jones received a yellow card 26 minutes in, but, after the officials reviewed it via VAR (video assistant referee), the braintrust decided Jones actually earned himself a red card and a time out … which will last for three games. (An appeal of that ruling failed.) This also meant that Liverpool had to play Tottenham with one fewer player on the pitch.
After Liverpool goalie Alisson Becker made two tremendous saves in a row, fans’ spirits were on the upswing. They were thoroughly lifted in the 34th minute when Luis Diaz scored a quick shot. Jubilation. Celebration … wait … what? The on-field ref said Diaz was offside so the goal was “disallowed?” Reader: Diaz was most definitely on side and the goal should have counted.
In what ESPN called “the biggest error the Premier League has seen” when it comes to officiating, the refereeing team miscommunicated and the on-field official misconstrued what the VAR folks were saying and gave the ball to Tottenham for a free kick. VAR realized that the goal was actually legit, but the on-location official misunderstood. “Seven seconds later,” ESPN reported, “the VAR team realized their error. Panic set in, but they decided they couldn’t go against protocol, so they let play continue.” Seriously? They knew Diaz’s goal was legit, but decided to let “protocol” — which is supposed to assure fairness and accuracy — triumph in the face of a nakedly obvious error?
My mood darkened even further when Liverpool was forced to play with only nine players (instead of the usual 11) because those sterling officials hit Diogo Jota with a second yellow card in the 69th minute, after awarding him a yellow card in the 68th minute. According to Prem rules, when you receive two yellow cards, like Jota did, that equals a red card and you get sent off the field.
To make matters exponentially worse, in the 96th minute, Liverpool’s Joel Matip scored an own goal (meaning he accidentally hit the ball into his team’s net) giving Tottenham the 2-1 win, an atrocious cherry on top of that wretched Tottenham sundae.
While I ranted on social media along with Liverpool fans about the disallowed Diaz goal which would’ve made the difference between a loss or a tie, Liverpool’s club issued a statement saying that the erroneous Diaz offside call “undermined sporting integrity,” while Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp said the game – which would’ve been 2-2 if Diaz’s goal counted – should be replayed, sparking mockery from Liverpool haters everywhere. (The VAR refs who handled this call weren’t allowed to officiate games the following day, so the refs knew they screwed up.)
Honestly, I’m still kinda salty about the whole affair, even a week later. While I spent more time than I would have liked debating my Chelsea-fan son (who agreed the offside call was wrong) by saying that, in the face of such a costly error (think of the monetary and business implications), the Prem should remedy the mistake, he kept telling me it was a pipe dream. But they know it was a mistake, I kept saying. They had it within their power to fix it. They could, like the Olympics does when it’s revealed that someone was doping or a judge was bribed, modify the results to reflect the new information. Apparently, according to my son, I’m a naive idiot for thinking this way.
Europa League Group Play: The next time a Liverpool game was on TV was the Oct. 5 Europa League group stage match against USG (the Belgian Royale Union Saint-Gilloise team). This wasn’t a good day for me. By game time, I felt drunk and high. And not in a good way. I’d received a combo flu and COVID vaccines the previous day and the cumulative effects, coupled with the insomia I experienced, hit me with unexpected force yielding chills contrasted with bursts of heat, muscle achiness, severe foggy-headedness, weakness, and lightheadedness. I spent the morning of Oct. 5 feeling not-at-all-right while I laid in bed listening to CNN anchors and reporters discuss the chaos inside the US House of Representatives after the Republican party booted its own speaker. I was proud of myself that, despite feeling ill, I remembered there was a Liverpool game on TV that afternoon. But, because I was feeling so lousy and didn’t want to fetch my laptop or the Roku device, I opted to watch the game on a channel that broadcast in Spanish (a language I do not speak) because that was the only station on which I could watch the game from my bed.
In spite of the haziness of my brain, I was still able to take handwritten notes on what I witnessed. My notes say I was impressed by Jota’s 92nd-minute goal after he outran his opponents and blasted a shot into the bottom corner of the net with his left foot, afterwards, celebrating by pantomiming pulling back on a bow and releasing an arrow into the crowd. Why? I have no idea. Did I, in my post-vaccine fog, imagine all of that? No, an online search revealed, I did not. My notes were indeed correct, at least about the Jota bow-and-arrow thing. Liverpool won, 2-nil. And, unlike with the card-mad Tottenham game, officials tagged players with a grand total of … zero cards.
Brighton & Hove: By the time the Oct. 8 game at Brighton & Hove started on a Sunday morning, I was already dressed, ready for church, and had informed those who use our family streaming account that I planned to watch the game on my phone. Luckily, during there were no issues with streaming access. Unluckily, Brighton drew first blood in the 20th minute with a triumphant goal, however, by the time I was ready to leave the house, good old Mo Salah evened it up. Salah then added a second goal to the scoreboard via a penalty kick just before halftime. Two-one, Liverpool.
The second half began five minutes before I pulled into a parking spot next to the church in downtown Westborough, Mass. With the game streaming on my phone, I turned the volume off as I stepped into the 19th century building and chatted with one of the greeters for several minutes. I resisted the urge to turn my phone over — I’d pressed the screen into my thigh — so I could check if the score had changed. When I finished the conversation, I felt proud of myself for being completely present during that exchange and then felt relief that the score was unchanged.
Once I settled into one of the pews in the back of the sanctuary, I found it difficult to prop the phone up so I could clearly see the tiny screen. I didn’t want everyone to notice that I was watching British football during church; I was trying to be subtle, respectful. I opted to rest the phone atop my right leg which was crossed over my left, as I tried to angle my face toward the pulpit and only use my eyes to look at the phone. However when the minister began to read the statement the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association released about the murderous attacks in Israel that took place the day before, I put the phone on the pew cushion beside me and gave the minister my full attention. It just felt wrong not to do so.
After that, I left the device upon the crushed, red velvet pew cushion in order to rise and “sing” — I can’t really carry a tune all that well — a hymn. (I have yet to figure out a way to record streaming Liverpool games so I don’t have to multi-task.) Once the hymn concluded, I was relieved to see that the score hadn’t changed … until the 78th minute when Brighton tied it up. Unable to shout to express my disappointment, I silently clenched and unclenched my free hand and screamed internally. Game officials handed out two yellow cards by the end of the game – one to Joe Gomez (only six minutes after he entered the game), one to a Brighton player – and the match was over by the time the collection plate was passed. A 2-2 tie.
After I got home, my Chelsea-fan son gleefully informed me that people online were mocking Klopp by sarcastically asking if he would demand to replay the Brighton game as well as the contested Tottenham game. Ha, ha.
It was eight weeks into this season, and Liverpool still ranked significantly above Chelsea in the Prem standings. I let him yammer on while I kept that little dagger of truth to myself.
I’ve got questions. Lots of ‘em. Stupid questions, pointed questions, legit questions. Let’s start with the ones that’ve been really nagging me.
International breaks
Why are there so many breaks in the Premier League’s season? I’d never even heard of such a thing until the end of the last Liverpool game against Aston Villa, when announcers mentioned that the next game would occur AFTER the international break.
The international … what?
I did a round of internet sleuthing and learned that the English Premier League has loads of players who participate in the Euro Cup for their home countries’ teams, as well as for the Asia Cup and the Africa Cup of Nations, according to Metro UK. So the Prem accommodates them — most of them anyway — with breaks. Several of them, as outlined by the Metro:
So this led to my having to read up about the 2024 Euro Cup, for which national teams must endure months of qualifying rounds, similar to the World Cup. There are qualifying matches in September, October, and November before the semi-finals in March 2024 and finals in June and July.
I struggled to find a comparable situation in American professional sports. There are pauses, for example, for the World Cup in American pro soccer, but that’s only every four years, and, I believe their schedule isn’t affected by the World Cup, at least it wasn’t last year. With Major League Baseball, there’s a midseason break for the All-Star game and associated festivities; the World Baseball Classic takes place during MLB’s spring training so there’s no need for a league-wide break. One American professional sports league, the National Hockey League, refused to take a break from play before the 2022 winter Olympic games. The NBA similarly opted to keep the regular schedule going during the rescheduled 2021 summer Olympics, so the concept of multiple “international breaks” proved befuddling to this American fan.
What do the breaks mean for the Liverpool team, my chosen PL club? According to the team website, these players are participating in qualifiers for international teams:
Alexis MacAllister — Argentina
Alisson Becker — Bolivia
Luis Diaz — Colombia
Kostas Tsimikas — Greece
Dominik Szoboszlai — Hungary
Caoimhin Kelleher — Ireland
Cody Gakpo and VVD — Netherlands
Diogo Jota — Portugal
Andy Robertson — Scotland
Darwin Nunez — Uruguay
“Trent Alexander-Arnold has withdrawn from England’s squad … due to injury,” according to Liverpool. Mo Salah is slated to play with Egypt in the Africa Cup qualifiers, the Reds’ site said, adding that Wataru Endo will join the Japanese team to play friendlies. But because the bulk of the Africa Cup runs from January through February — during which the Prem will only take a pause from Jan. 14-30 — that means if a player’s national team does well, that player could miss one or two Prem games, according to TalkSport.com. For Salah, the website reported he could miss Liverpool’s matches against Chelsea and Arsenal if Egypt’s national team is still alive in the Africa Cup’s later rounds.
Plural or singular?
Seeing that I’m a word nerd, it’s been bugging me to hear people refer to football teams’ host cities in the plural format. For example, when I discuss the Boston Red Sox, I say, “Boston is miserable this year.” I use a singular verb, “is.” Boston is one city. There is one baseball team represented by the name “Boston” in that sentence. However, when people discuss the Liverpool Football Club, I’ve noticed they say things like, “Liverpool are doing well so far.” The word “are” is generally used when describing the actions of more than one entity. The Liverpool Football Club is a singular organization.
Listening to people say, “Liverpool are winning,” is cramping my brain. It was during one such brain cramp when I wound up in a big argument with Chelsea-fan Casey about this very subject. He pointed out that I refer to the “Red Sox” in the plural form. (“The Red Sox are losing.”) I replied by saying using the word “are” makes sense when most American sports’ teams nicknames are plural, as in, more than one sock, more than one Yankee, more than one Patriot, etc. But when you’re talking about Liverpool or Chelsea, you’re only talking about one team. We went round and round for a while until my head ached and I wound up fleeing the room. When I took to the internet again, I discovered a site that proved football-mad Casey correct:
“In the Premier League, all football teams are singular in form (Arsenal, Manchester Utd, Chelsea),” said the website Premier Skills, “but, in British English, we use a plural form when we are referring to the football team and their actions. For example: ‘Arsenal are on the attack. Chelsea have won again.’”
Okay, Casey, you were right. Again. At least when it comes to how the English refer to their football clubs.
Names on jerseys (okay, they’re called ‘kits’ in the UK, and football cleats are called ‘boots’ but the spikes at the bottom are called ‘studs’ in England, I think … )
I was super confused a few weeks ago after Darwin Nunez came off the bench and scored Liverpool’s only two goals to defeat Newcastle. Why? Because his jersey has the name “Darwin” on the back. So when commentators started going on about “Nunez,” I was thinking, Who’s Nunez? Darwin is the one who scored. (I was similarly thrown when everyone was referring to the goalkeeper, Alisson Becker, as “Alisson,” but at least the back of his jersey says, “A. Becker.”)
Later, I learned that I was thinking like an American sports fan. In the US, players’ surnames are on the backs of their jerseys, not their first names or their nicknames. Red Sox legend David “Big Papi” Ortiz had “Ortiz” on the back of his jersey, not “Big Papi” or “David.”
Research informed me that if the Premier League gives its okay, players can put their first names or nicknames on their shirts. So when you mix in first names, nicknames, and surnames, that can lead to a lot of confusion to those new to the sport.
According to theDaily Mirror, the Prem’s rules about names on jerseys was “relaxed” in 2000. “Shirts should feature the player’s last name or such other name as approved in writing by the Premier League Board,” the Mirror reported. “These can be nicknames adopted from abroad which are more likely to be accepted if featured in other leagues.”
Well, okay then. Another bizarre rule for this Yank to wrap her head around, along with messed-up verb tenses and more breaks than an American member of Congress. Onto Saturday’s match.
I’m a tad behind on blogging about my adventures following the Prem this season because I was on vacation on Cape Cod and was trying to NOT work during that time, which meant no writing. But I did watch Liverpool rack up two more wins … and now they’re on a break? Already? Only four weeks in? I’ll tackle my being mystified by that fact in a separate post. Meanwhile, below are recaps of weeks three and four in my British football odyssey.
Week Three: Short One Player, Liverpool Comes from Behind to Beat Newcastle, 2-1
My Liverpool-fan son Jonah joined his Chelsea-fan brother Casey, the “neutral” Scott, and Liverpool-fan me minutes before the Reds took on the Magpies at St. James’ Park. (Okay, I know that the name “Red Sox,” especially with its odd spelling, is a stupid team name, but, come on … magpies?)
Anyway … Jonah, who was celebrating his 25th birthday, spent most of this game slamming his fist into the couch and shouting, “No!!” which caused our 12-pound, caffeine-on-legs dog Tedy to bark wildly, widely sharing his nasty breath around the room with each, “woof.” (We can never tell if he barks when we cheer or jeer because he wants to join in or because the sounds upset him.)
The flurry of yellow/red cards didn’t make for an enjoyable first half in my house. As the sea of black-and-white clad Newcastle fans provided nearly constant noise for the first nine minutes of the match, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool’s right-back, received a yellow card early in the game for tossing the ball out-of-bounds after he believed he was fouled on the back but the shove wasn’t called. (See above.) Seriously? Given the immense physicality (and subsequent bad acting) in typical EPL (English Premier League) games, tossing a ball away, instead of to an official, leads to a yellow card? Yes, according to this season’s new Prem rules, established to curb bad behavior. Officials, according to TalkSport.com, can distribute yellow cards for “time-wasting from the clear and obvious (kicking the ball away), to the more subtle (delaying goal-kicks).” This meant the Alexander-Arnold couldn’t play as aggressively for the remainder of the game lest he receive a second yellow card and serve a one-game suspension.
“Trent’s finished, mate,” Casey said to Jonah, as the two expected Alexander-Arnold to be subbed out. Only he wasn’t subbed out.
By 24:44, the guy who Jonah and Casey thought should’ve been subbed out misplayed a pass and Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon scored. Jonah and “neutral” Scott groaned their displeasure. Three minutes later, Liverpool’s defender Virgil Van Dijk (VVD) received a controversial red card — meaning he leaves the game, the team continues with one fewer player, and he’d be suspended for the next game — which prompted the loudest angry shouting in my house that morning. Tension in our family room was thick and was curdling the coffee in my stomach.
While some Liverpool fans think VVD got his foot on the ball while tackling a Newcastle player, the referee “deemed Van Dijk’s foul on [Alexander Isak] to be a denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity (DOGSO), leading to the red card,” according to Liverpool.com. A what now? A Dogso? Do dogsos get along with magpies? (I know. Stupid mom humor. I’ll stop now.) The commentators were agog saying this red card “brandished in his face [was] for the first in seven years.”
While Liverpool goaltender Alisson Becker made a dramatic save – even Casey blurted, “Hooollly cow” in serious admiration – the talk in our house at halftime was about whether the rumors about Mo Salah going to the Saudi Pro League for a massive, otherworldly payday were legit. This topic further darkened Jonah’s mood.
The Reds’ luck changed in the second half and people in my living room became markedly less grumpy. After coming off the bench in the 77th minute, Darwin Nunez (above) outmaneuvered a Newcastle player and scored, yielding the day’s first loud exclamations of the happy variety (accompanied by Tedy’s yappy barking sending its indiscriminate message).
The happiness was short lived as, four minutes later, Nunez received a yellow card because, like Alexander-Arnold, he disposed of the ball (kicked it away) like an angry child instead of just giving it to the ref. Has the dude not been paying attention? They’re down a player already? I thought but didn’t say out loud. However, said dude redeemed himself minutes later with his second goal, lighting up the resident birthday boy’s face watching the game with me. As the whistle blew and Liverpool emerged victorious, the commentators employed lame, Dad-joke puns like, “A Darwin evolution is underway.”
As I prepared to watch the first Liverpool game of the new Premier League season this past Sunday, I hoped to do so while donning the brand new Liverpool jersey I ordered in honor of the start of my British football experience. Instead, when I plopped myself down next to my spouse I was wearing my black “Democracy Dies in Darkness” tee because the football shirt didn’t arrive on time. I tried not to read anything into this, into the fact that the shirt didn’t arrive before the game. It’s not an omen or anything, I told myself.
Other than being inappropriately attired when I watched the Liverpool-Chelsea game on Sunday, what was the big news? The match ended in a 1-1 tie between Chelsea (my 22-year-old son Casey’s favorite) and Liverpool (my nearly-25-year-old twins Abbey and Jonah’s favorite), during which two goals were “disallowed” by officials because players were declared offside after VAR (video assistant referee). Luckily, football’s confusing offside rule had already been thoroughly explained to me by Casey who used popcorn kernels inside a semi-darkened movie theater a few weeks ago before the movie Oppenheimer began to illustrate what offside is. Without this explanation, along with important clarifying details from his girlfriend Jess, I would’ve likely been mystified by watching a Liverpool, then a Chelsea goal nullified on Sunday.
It’s been strange for me, this whole learning process, the fact that everyone in my house knows more about football than me. It’s been quite humbling to have my twentysomething kids — okay, mostly football superfan Casey, who’s been the family contrarian ever since he started speaking (for a short time, the kid rooted for the Yankees simply because the rest of the family rooted for the Red Sox) — teach me not only about the rules of the game, but about the Premier League and the history of some of its best clubs. While Casey hasn’t seemed exactly thrilled that I’ve decided to co-op his football passion and blog about it, he has humored me and been a pretty good teacher, as long as I don’t ask questions while a game is in progress.
During the same weekend when Casey and Jess explained offside to me (I really want to add an “s” to the end of that word, but I’ve been told that’s not how it’s done in the Premier League), they also gave me a general British football 101 primer. Using my cartoon dog notepad, the two sketched out information about the 20-team Premier League which they said represents the best of English football. Its rules and traditions, at first blush, seem odd to me, someone whose preferred sport has been major league baseball ever since I was a little kid. For example, the Premier League doesn’t have playoffs. No playoffs! Its champion is determined by who has the most points.
“Three points are awarded for a win,” the Premier League website says, “one point for a draw and none for a defeat, with the team with the most points at the end of the season winning the Premier League title.” If there are ties, there are myriad ways to further break down the stats to determine a playoff-less winner, like comparing number of goals scored in the season or who scored the most goals when clubs played one another, according to the Sporting News. Thanks to my Ted Lasso viewership, I came to this football project with a very basic understanding of the utterly bizarre concept of “relegation” — where the last three teams in a British league are demoted each year and, conversely, the three with the most points in lower leagues are “promoted” to the next-highest league.
During my first week of watching Premier League games as a Liverpool fan, I learned the difference between shots versus shots on goal quite by accident after I made a throwaway comment to Casey while we were watching the Arsenal and Nottingham Forest match.
“They’ve had a lot of shots on goal,” I said of one team, I don’t remember which.
“No there haven’t,” replied six-foot-four Casey, his eyes darting back and forth between the screen and his phone, on which he was monitoring Premier League info.
“What do you mean? I just saw them kick the ball at the goal.” I felt like I was being gaslit. Isn’t that what they called it in hockey when teams shoot the puck at the goal? It’s different in football?
“That wasn’t a shot on goal. What is your definition of a shot on goal?”
I didn’t answer him in the moment because I despise being quizzed by the kid who once told me I was an animal abuser for not allowing our dog to eat his dinner at the kitchen table along with the rest of the family. But Casey’s subsequent explanation echoed what I later found online. “A shot on target is either any shot that goes into the goal, a shot that is saved by the goalkeeper or one where the last man blocks the ball,” said the Football Handbook. “In the last two scenarios, the ball must have a clear chance of going into the net.”
I made a mental note not to call a kick in the direction of the net that, say, hits the post, a “shot on target,” just like I made a mental note to refrain from commenting on a goal on the off chance it’s ruled offside. It’s hard enough to be the dumbest person in the room when it came to football, I don’t want to put myself out there to be potentiallly mocked for my ignorance, particularly if Casey, who consumes Premier League information like oxygen, is feeling chippy and wants to give his old mom a hard time.
On the day of the Liverpool-Chelsea match, there’d been ample pregame chatter about the tug-of-war between the two clubs over signing star footballers Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia, so I read up on it, scanned sports sites and checked social media so I could participate in any potential discussion. (Spoiler alert: Caicedo and Lavia both went to Chelsea, much to the embarrassment of Liverpool fans.) However, I didn’t find much opportunity to contribute an informed comment during the game. In fact, I found exactly zero opportunities to do so. Instead, opted to keep mostly quiet – sooo unusual for me – and simply took everything in. The fact that the game ended in a tie and neither of my sons who were watching the game with my husband and me were disappointed seemed like a win, at least for peace in my living room.
As I look ahead to week two of my adventure with British football, I’m still waiting for the Liverpool jersey to arrive, am monitoring all the rumors about Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker toying with jumping to the Saudi Pro League, and am trying to get a handle on the fluctuating roster.
Meredith OBrien 
