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!”
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’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 