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!”
How on earth is a Premier League fan supposed to live life — work, cleanse one’s body, feed it on occasion, and, oh, I dunno, sleep a wee bit — when there are all of these games? My God! I simply cannot keep up.
I missed my very first Liverpool Premier League game — the Liverpool-Luton Town draw on Nov. 5, featuring Luis Diaz’s header goal and the flashing of his heartbreaking white tee, “Libertad Para Papa” beneath his jersey for his kidnapped father – because I had the nerve to be traveling at the time. I can hear my Chelsea-mad son’s voice ringing now in my head as I type these words: Plastic fan. Not a true football supporter. (But keep in mind, he only has to take care of himself, which largely consists of going to work, the gym, and Chick-fil-A or Chipotle. I’m sure he would never schedule travel when Chelsea was playing.)
So if you’d like to stop reading and dismiss this entire British football fan odyssey as “performative,” be my guest. I maintain, however, that it’s okay to miss a game now and still call oneself a football fan. Maybe that makes me a phony. Whatever. I’ll own it.
But back to my point: Why do there have to be Premier League games (one game a weekend) AND international play for the Europa League AND have an English Football League (EFL) competition for the Carabao Cup … CONCURRENTLY?
This last competition, the Carabao Cup, befuddles me because the Premier League is already an English football league where 20 teams compete against one another twice each season. Why the hell do they have to compete with MORE British teams? I’m well aware – thanks Welcome to Wrexham, my Chelsea-fan son and his girlfriend Jess – that there’s an abundance of English leagues (see graphic) and that every year, a few teams move up a league (promotion) or down a league (relegation). But that amount of interplay between leagues is apparently insufficient. WE. NEED. MORE. (Reader: No we don’t.)
Enter the 63-year-old English Football League competition for the Carabao Cup – which doesn’t sound at all British but it’s named after its energy drink producer-sponsor: The Premier League teams compete against their own league’s clubs as well as teams from lower leagues in a seven-round knockout contest. According to the EFL website: “Premier League clubs enter the competition in Round Two with clubs that have qualified for the Champions League or Europa League joining in Round Three. The competition culminates in a final at Wembley Stadium, with the winner qualifying for the subsequent season’s Europa League.” (Okay, my head is spinning.)
And these Carabao Cup games occur at weird times. I was not expecting, for example, that on a random Wednesday (Nov. 1), a Liverpool game would be taking place, in the middle of the workday. A routine morning check of my social media feeds — which include ample Liverpool and Premier League accounts — informed me that there was a 3:45 p.m. game vs Bournemouth that day. (*Bournemouth is a team Liverpool beat 3-1 in August in the Prem and are slated to play again on Jan. 21.*) I was in the middle of preparing for a writing course I teach on Wednesday nights and had to scramble to see if I could get access to our ESPN+ account or whether there was a limit as to how many people could access it at any given time. The fact that I was able to log in means either that there’s no limit or that the other four members of my family were doing other things … like bad football fans. (I didn’t text my football-mad son to ask him because I didn’t want him to know I was unaware of this scheduled match.)
The Carabao Cup game featured torrential downpours. Everyone on the pitch, including the Reds in their lime green and white kits, looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. Liverpool took the early lead with a Harvey Elliott shot on goal that was deflected by the Bournemouth goalie only to be drilled to the back of the net on the rebound by Cody Gatkpo. Early in the second half, Bournemouth evened it up with a goal from Justin Kluivert for whom announcers said this was his first in English football.
While working to create lively and engaging slides for my writing students on one half of the screen, the rainy EFL game played on, ending in a 2-1 win after a Darwin Nunez goal (that dude is on fire these days).
I totally missed Liverpool’s Sunday, Nov. 5 Premier League 1-1 game against Luton Town four days later. (Liverpool had been expected to best “lowly Luton Town,” as Reuters referred to them. Yikes.) I haven’t told my Chelsea-fan son that I missed this game either lest he chastise me for choosing travel over football.
To eliminate future scheduling surprises, I’ve now entered the entire, godforsaken Liverpool schedule into my calendar and empowered my phone to annoy the piss out of me with reminders when kick-off is slated to begin.
Why is the word “derby” pronounced “darby” by Premier League fans and British sports announcers? Why don’t they call it a local rivalry instead of using the word Americans associate with horse racing?
When my Chelsea-fan son kept referring to the Oct. 21 Liverpool match against Everton as a Merseyside “Darby,” I initially thought I misheard him. It was easy enough to think I’d misheard him on the morning of the game seeing as though when I woke for the 7:30 start, I had one of my horrific migraines and felt as though my brain functioning was impeded by thick sludge. (Medicine and coffee helped clear it up by halftime.)
I later learned that there are so many English football teams which play in such close proximity that when they face one another it’s referred to as a derby. (I’ve yet to learn what’s up with the weird pronunciation.) I didn’t realize that Liverpool FC (which stands for Football Club) is not the only Premier League team in Liverpool, England. Less a mile from Anfield, where the Reds play, is Goodison Park, home to the Everton FC. This seems crazy to have two teams with stadiums so close to one another playing in the same league. In New York City — whose population dwarfs Liverpool’s — there are two baseball teams but one plays in the American League (Yankees) and one in the National League (Mets). When they face one another, it’s nicknamed the Subway Series and takes place at one of their stadiums which are roughly seven miles apart. In Chicago, the stadiums of their American League team (White Sox) and their National League team (Cubs) are about eight miles apart.
This Merseyside (the county in which Liverpool is located) rivalry dates back to 1894, according to the Bleacher Report. There was “a falling out between Everton and the owner of Anfield, Mr. John Houlding, in 1892,” the Bleacher Report said. “Having been the original tenants of Anfield, the Blues were forced to move across Stanley Park and found Goodison Park, which remains their home ground today.”
In England, I was shocked to discover that there are seven Premier League teams in London alone. That’s a lot of teams from which to choose. Factor in the practice of relegating teams to lower professional football leagues and promoting teams from lower leagues to higher leagues, and the potential for adjacent neighborhood teams to regularly play one another is high. That’s something around which I’m still trying to wrap my American brain.
My Chelsea-fan son tells me that, in addition to my lack of understanding of the importance of derbies, I likewise don’t really understand the depths of the passion British football team fans have for their clubs. This fervor, he says, pales in comparison to heated American sports rivalries, including the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry which hit its recent apex in the mid-2000s. (This past season the teams were duking it out for last place in the American League East. We’re far removed from the days of on-field fisticuffs of the Jason Varitek-Alex Rodriguez variety. See above pic.)
My son may be entirely right. In U.S. sports, we don’t tend to erect physical barriers between fan sections nor do we mandate that if you’re sitting in the “home team” seats you are prohibited from wearing an opposing team’s gear and colors. (A recent Red Sox-Los Angeles Dodgers game I attended at Fenway Park in late August saw multitudes of Dodgers-gear-wearing fans intermingled with Sox fans as the supremely vocal Dodgers crushed the hometown team.) The realization that the rules are different with professional soccer first hit me years ago when I bought tickets for my Premier League-loving family to see Liverpool play Sevilla in Fenway Park. While online, I had to designate for which team’s section I was seeking tickets. Once I selected Liverpool, there was a disclaimer that ticketholders in that section couldn’t wear Sevilla gear. Part of the reason, I’ve learned (courtesy of my son and the Welcome to Wrexham documentary), is due to the intensity of English football “hooliganism” and the deadly violence that can ensue at international football games is the reason for these protective measures. (I’ll tackle this in a subsequent post.)
However, on the rainy October morning of the Liverpool-Everton match, as I sat on the sofa wearing my candy-apple red Liverpool jersey and blue pajama bottoms bearing multi-colored cartoon sheep and moons, I wasn’t thinking about the intensity of a derby or football hooligans. I could only sip multiple cups of coffee, pop migraine medicine, enjoy the fact that two of my three adult kids were home for a visit, and pray for my head and eyes to stop throbbing.
All I have in my notebook from the scoreless first half of the much-touted derby when my migraine was at its worst, are snatches of conversation like this:
“I like Trent [Alexander-Arnold] with longer hair.”
“Why don’t you send him a letter?”
There were lamentations about Mo Salah’s performance such as, “Salah’s been a dead-end today.”
The banter was as lackluster as the first half which concluded with even the announcers nakedly trying to manifest something interesting to occur.
By the beginning of the second half, my head cleared and the pain was almost gone. I was much more engaged in the game, which really didn’t pick up tempo until the previously proclaimed “dead-end” Salah secured both of Liverpool’s goals. Before those goals (in 75th and 97th minutes), an announcer labeled the match an “unmemorable derby,” adding that it was “crying out for someone to make their mark.”
There was some yellow card action when Liverpool’s Ibrahima Konate practically tackled an Everton player in the 50th minute. Sixteen minutes later, Konate (below) was lucky he wasn’t tagged with a second yellow for running into another Everton player, which would have resulted in a red card and left Liverpool with one fewer player for the remainder of the game. (Everton fans and its coach vigorously protested the call. Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp pulled Konate immediately after Everton’s failed free kick to avoid just such a scenario.)
My Chelsea-mad son (who currently lives with us) didn’t join the rest of the family until the 69th minute, after Darwin Nunez took the field. “I only came downstairs because [Jurgen] Klopp stopped his anti-Darwin hate campaign,” he said while sporting a cobalt blue Chelsea jersey amid the sea of Liverpool gear on everyone else.
Two plays went to VAR (video assistant referee), but, unlike with the Tottenham game, these calls went in Liverpool’s favor, with one leading to a penalty kick which Salah shot into the net to break the nil-nil tie. This seemed to energize the Reds because they got off several more shots on goal — including one by Harvey Elliott that an announcer said “was hit with venom” — as the weather in Liverpool shifted from sunny to a torrential downpour.
After a Darwin breakaway down the pitch, followed by a crisp pass to Salah who sunk it into the goal, time was called and Liverpool won 2-nil.
My headache was gone. I had my three adult children in the same room. Our two dogs were deliriously happy to snuggle up alongside them as the rain fell outside our window, saturating the bright New England foliage. What a great way to start the day … migraine notwithstanding.
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks in my world. There’ve been three Liverpool games since the last time I blogged. And they’ve won them all. Beating the Wolves in a come-from-behind win, 3-1. Beating LASK in Europa Cup group match, 3-1. Beating West Ham, in a come-from-behind win, 3-1. Hmm, sensing a trend?
Keeping up with all of this football has been fairly challenging when one is trying to do something called life. I’m teaching, three, college-level courses (all writing classes) which involve a tremendous amount of input and a lot of class prep. Throw in the fact that I’ve got several ongoing writing projects — including organizing my research for a new book and editing my second fiction manuscript — as well as a Rosh Hashanah celebration with the extended family, and attending in-person Boston Red Sox games (my favorite team), and, I don’t know, inconsequential things like sleeping and eating … and things have been a touch chaotic. Shoehorning Liverpool’s Prem games, plus games for other competitions like the Europa Cup, into my daily life, was much simpler before the fall semester began.
To watch the last two Liverpool games required serious multitasking on my part, something I have to imagine many American fans need to accomplish in order to follow football matches taking place on another continent, during hours when Americans would typically be working. Or sleeping.
For example, when Liverpool — resplendent in their lavender kits (above) — took on LASK (which stands for Linzer Athletik-Sport-Klub, an Austrian professional football club) in group play for the regional football tournament, the Europa Cup, I streamed it, split-screen, on my laptop. On the right half of the screen was a tiny box streaming the action, and on the other, a manuscript I was editing and into which I had to try not to accidentally input “Nunez,” “Europa,” or “Diaz” while I listened to the announcers. I stopped editing and pulled the game onto the full screen when the Reds finally came alive in the 56th minute after Darwin Nunez scored a penalty kick, followed by Luis Diaz’s 63rd-minute tap-in. “Liverpool are alive and Liverpool are in the lead!” a commentator shouted. In the 88th minute, the always-reliable Mo Salah nutmegged (kicked the ball through an opposing player’s legs) a LASK player and scored in what a commentator said has become Liverpool’s “usual way:” a come-from-behind win.
During the latest Liverpool game against West Ham United at home in Anfield, watching this 9 a.m. kickoff meant I had to juggle some things. My initial plan was to watch the first half at my house, drive to church, deposit myself in a back pew, and silently stream the second half from my phone. However, our Peacock account was maxed out on viewers so I wouldn’t be able to stream it. I had a choice to make: Church or Liverpool? Luckily, I could choose both because the Massachusetts church streams its services live. I watched the Liverpool game on the TV and church on my laptop. (See below) I texted Rev. Laurel — about whom I’m working on a book about being a Millennial minister — to explain my scheduling dilemma and she thought it was funny. I spent the second half petrified that I’d accidentally turn on my mic and have my cheers or my shouts of, “Shit!” ring through the church sanctuary speakers.
As has become rote thus far in Liverpool’s season, the club was cold at the beginning of the game, playing like they needed serious infusions of coffee (or tea, as they were playing in the land of tea). But the lackluster playing dissipated by the 16th minute when Salah easily scored on a PK. West Ham tied it by halftime, only to have Nunez score in impressive fashion in the 60th minute. Afterward, Nunez showily kissed his arms and wildly gestured toward the appreciative home crowd. I was even more impressed by the Diogo Jota goal in the 85th minute off of a very odd headed pass from Virgil van Dijk, who had just returned from a multi-game, red-card banishment.
Simultanously, my husband Scott was sitting across from me in the family room streaming the Chelsea game on his phone and my resident Chelsea fan son was in his room watching his preferred team, the Blues, which lost. And whenever Chelsea loses, a grumpy pall is cast over the house. No one is to speak about the game for at least 24 hours.
The only recent, Liverpool game to which I was able to devote my full attention was the Saturday, Sept. 16 match against the Wolves. That weekend, my house was filled with my three adult children and my daughter’s boyfriend. Football fans, all. We all got up early to watch the Liverpool game before I made dishes to bring to a family Rosh Hashanah dinner in the afternoon. (I made mini-potato kugels in cupcake tins, a salad whose components hailed from a local farm, and brought bottles of wine. My daughter baked an apple pie.) Outside, powerful winds from the dregs of Hurricane Lee which swept up the US East Coast, rattled the family room windows as rain poured intermittently. I gulped down several cups of coffee to wake myself up, seeing that the game kicked off at 7:30 a.m. Boston time.
The match began with the Reds playing … poorly. The Wolves were able to slice through their lackluster defense like a hot knife through butter. It was no surprise when the Wolves struck first, scoring the game’s first goal through the legs of Andy Robertson in the seventh minute. My ardent Liverpool fan son Jonah was edgy, 10 minutes in, “They’re on the ropes already!” For the bulk of the game, the Wolves’s lead felt more substantial than 1-nil because Liverpool was playing so badly.
Then … Salah.
In the 55th minute, Salah sent Cody Gakpo the ball who converted it into the first Reds goal. Thirty minutes later, Robertson’s goal (pic above) caused Jonah to raise his right fist in triumph, “He NEVER scores!” The room’s dour mood shifted like quicksilver as a Liverpool W seemed possible. A Liverpool win was cemented by an unlucky own-goal by the Wolves’ Hugo Bueno (he accidentally tipped the ball into his team’s net) making it 3-1 Liverpool.
Next up for the Reds in the Prem: A match at Tottenham (my nephew’s favorite team) on Saturday, Sept. 30 at 12:30 ET.
Random bits:
I’ve now learned that it’s routine behavior for defensive players who are lining up to block a direct kick on goal, to not only protect their crotches, but to also jump vertically. Additionally, one player lies facing toward the goal — away from the opposing team’s kicker — should the kicker try to send the ball rolling on the pitch beneath the jumping defensemen. (This nugget of info was gleaned after I asked my kids, “Why is that dude lying on the ground?”)
Several weeks into the Premier League season, I haven’t quite memorized the Liverpool players’ names and often struggle to identify them on the pitch, especially if I’m not wearing my glasses. I’m working on it.
XG. Who knew that XG means “expected goals,” meaning, how many goals each team and/or player is expected to deliver in any given game? Everyone in my family except for me, the football newbie. I likened XG to a Major League Baseball pitcher’s ERA or a hitter’s batting average. However any time I liken football to baseball in my attempts to understand it, I get eye rolls. Nonetheless, I persist!
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.”
Meredith OBrien 