Tag: Luis Diaz

adventures in british football: too. many. freakin’. games.

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.

This is exhausting, this British football stuff. 

Image credits: William Hill and Colombia.com.

adventures in british football: of red cards, VAR & live-streams in a church pew

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.  

Image credits: ESPN, The Sun, and Reuters.

adventures in british football: so many games … so little time, plus a choice: church or liverpool

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!

Image credits: Sky Sports, ESPN and Google.

adventures in british football, week two: liverpool beats bournemouth at anfield

During my second week of watching the Prem as a Liverpool fan — I was told to stop writing the “Premier League” because it makes me sound like the football newbie that I am — I had to do so on a tiny cell phone screen because I was joining my husband Scott and my Liverpool fan son Jonah to move my Liverpool fan daughter Abbey’s belongings to her new apartment in the Bronx as she starts a Physician Assistant Program. Abbey, who attended a Liverpool game at Anfield in May and likened its atmosphere to my beloved Fenway Park, drove and listened to the Liverpool v Bournemouth match audio while I rode shotgun and held aloft that diminutive screen.

It was definitely an inferior experience watching the game a cell phone while keeping an eye on the other two vehicles in our move-Abbey-to-the-Bronx caravan. Additionally, I couldn’t totally get into the spirit of things because I wasn’t wearing my brand new (retro version) Liverpool jersey which had recently arrived because I didn’t want it sullied as I unpacked boxes. Instead, I opted to live dangerously by wearing a Boston Red Sox tee while the Sox were playing — and beating — the New York Yankees just a few miles away from Abbey’s new digs at Yankee Stadium.

As for Liverpool’s come-from-behind 3-1 victory, it was initially quite grim inside our vehicle as not only were we stuck in atrocious traffic from Boston to NYC, but we were witnessing Bournemouth land two shots on target and one goal in the match’s opening minutes. And Liverpool, as an entity, was playing like a wet dish towel. I kept thinking about the video Jonah had shown me hours before in our kitchen, where Liverpool scored nine goals against the Cherries in a prior season. Had we unknowingly jinxed the game by musing about a possible repeat performance? I’d had Jonah knock on wood because, well, I can be a tad superstitious.

Feeling as though, after my reading about and watching of EPL football, I could speak with a teeny bit of verve about the match, I started live-tweeting. Luckily, after my first disgruntled post — “WTF @LFC @LFCUSA? Good God. Is this going to be a 9-1 but with the Reds on the wrong end? @premierleague” (the 2022 game was 9-0, I later learned, but you can’t edit tweets) — things started looking up. As Eurosport put it, “It took Liverpool half an hour to wake up but they hit two [goals] in nine minutes thanks to [Mo] Salah and an acrobatic finish from Luis Diaz.”

That Diaz goal, a quasi-bicycle kick move … a chef’s kiss of deliciousness to lift the gloom inside our vehicle as we remained stuck in stubborn traffic. Add in Salah’s goal on the rebound after his penalty kick (PK) was saved, and Abbey and I went into halftime quite happy.

Even though I’m quite new to British football, I thought the red card issued to Alexis MacAllister was bogus. Here’s what I wrote in my Notes app on my phone while watching the game on my daughter’s microscopic iPhone: “MacAllister gets bad red card. No malice. Learned that they [Liverpool] had to now play with 10 [players].” Another new football rule I filed into the recesses of my brain: red card = playing with only 10.

The issuance of that card came just 24 hours after Abbey, who’d been packing up her childhood room (!), came across the red and yellow card packet she had from her youth soccer reffing days. She never did find the right moment to flash either color card. However after watching the video of the controversial call (after our caravan took a breather at a rest area) former youth soccer ref Abbey concurred that it should’ve been a yellow.

The least surprising response to this red blunder came from my football-mad, Chelsea-supporting son Casey who did not make the trip with us. Via text, he said he agreed with the ref, adding that MacAllister’s studs were up and over a foot off the ground, a clear violation of the rules, which he’s read thoroughly. Two days later, I sent Casey a screenshot of an Instagram post from a (biased) Liverpool fan site, LFC Newsroom: “As widely expected by everyone with reasonably adequate eyesight, LFC have formally appealed for Alexis MacAllister’s red card to be overturned. … Surely it gets overturned. It was a clear mistake by the referee to give MacAllister a red card, even Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola said it wasn’t a red card.”

Those anti-red card folks were vindicated when the call was later overturned. I may have gloated (*I absolutely did*) in my family’s group text. Score one for the football novice.

Other tidbits:

Red = angry: The MacAllister red card seemed to inspire Liverpool to play a more aggressive style of football in the second half against Bournemouth, fueling a barrage of powerful shots. After the beginning of the game during which it seemed like the Reds were sleepwalking, this was refreshing.

Salah staying put: For the past few days, the internet has trembled with rumors that Salah was being wooed to leave Liverpool with the lure of a massive paycheck. Fortunately, those rumors have been dispelled. For now. (*fingers crossed and knocking on wood*)

Now, it’s onto the dangerous Newcastle team at St. James Park on Sunday. I’ll be wearing my Liverpool red!

Image credits: EuroSport/Getty and LFC Newsroom.