Tag: promotion in British football

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.

adventures in british football: liverpool at chelsea

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.

Image credit: ESPN/Getty Images.