Brighton were hosting Man City on the final day of a Premier League season which turned out to be a remarkable 9+ month race to the title between two of the best clubs that England has ever seen, with City going into the day on 95 points, a point ahead of Liverpool in the table. Whomever lost out, and came second, wound amass a point total ranking ahead of all but two clubs in EPL history – one of those being Man City’s 100 pt. season from a year ago, and the second being whomever claimed the title today. Liverpool went into their final game having won 10 of their past 12 matches, having drawn the other two, only to have lost ground in the table, as Man City had won 13 straight. They had run-up a gap of 24 points – eight wins – over their closest foes, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal, who’ve done nothing all season other than oh, you know, reach European finals. (More on Spurs in a minute.) It seems somewhat cruel that one of these two élite teams would come up short. They were essentially separated, going into the final day of the season, by 11.7 mm – the amount of the ball which didn’t cross the goal line on a Liverpool shot in the Reds’ 2:1 loss at the Etihad back in January, a shot cleared off the line which, in the end, was verging on saving Man City’s season:
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| Saving the Season (photo by Shaun Botterill) |
And I’ll admit this right up front: I have no real rooting interest here. As a general rule, I’m more inclined towards Liverpool than most other large clubs, and also as a general rule, I’m disinclined to think much of clubs that are p.r. shills for authoritarian petrostates, but I really don’t have a dog in this hunt. But Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp earned Friend of The Lose status for life this past Monday, during his press conference in the run-up to Liverpool’s return match against F.C. Barcelona in the Champions League semifinals. Down 0:3 after the first leg, and seemingly needing a miracle, Klopp said that he wasn’t sure how they would prevail, but that he hoped that, if they didn’t win, they would “fail beautifully.”
And given the cruel turn of events, you can see where he was coming from. Liverpool had lost by three goals at the Nou Camp against Barca, putting the Champions League final seemingly out of reach. They were going to play the return leg against Barca without Mo Salah, their talisman, who’d been concussed over the weekend in a 3:2 win at Newcastle which had kept their Premier League title hopes alive. Then come Monday, Liverpool are watching Man City being played to a scoreless draw for 70’ by Leicester City – a result which would mean two points dropped for City – and their hopes for an EPL title are sky high, only to be dashed by a thunderbolt from Vincent Kompany, of all people. A glorious season, an incredible season, was all about to go out the window. No EPL title, no Champions League final – and no one cares who finishes second.
But Klopp called upon the Liverpool faithful to gather for the Barca rematch at Anfield on Tuesday night and, if nothing else, for the game to be a celebration of the season. Sure, they were likely to fail on Tuesday night, but they were going to do it on their terms. They were going down swinging, playing with passion and joy and love. They were going to fail beautifully.
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FAILING beautifully has been an art form in the Netherlands ever since the Oranje forgot to score the second goal in the 1974 World Cup Final. The Dutch lose more stylishly than anyone, and it’s almost a matter of pride, at this point. No country has had a greater influence on the way that the game is played while, in terms of results, had so little to show for it.
And I mean that with the highest sense of admiration. Soccer is still a game where how you play actually matters. No one cared last year that José Mourinho got Manchester United to finish 2nd in the EPL, because none of us want to watch United lining up ten behind the ball and playing on the break. The “pragmatic” sides that care about results come hell or high water are ultimately looked at somewhat skeptically (by everyone other than their fans, of course, and sometimes even then), and there is still a lot of room for the quixotic types that will joust windmills and flip the bird to The Man along the way. We’re mired in the analytic and statistical era in sports here in America, this dull infatuation with ruthless efficiency which leads to garbage like Three True Outcomes baseball and the insufferable Houston Rockets in the NBA which, while damningly effective, also leaves the viewer feeling somewhat unsatisfied, since so much of the variability and unpredictability of the game – traits which make the games appealing in the first place – seem to have been snuffed out of it. There is still room in soccer for those who dare to dream.
For those of us romantics, Ajax Amsterdam captured our attention with their run to the semifinals of this year’s Champions League. Ajax went to Real Madrid in the Round of 16 and beat the living snot out of the defending champions, triumphing 4:1 at the Bernabeu in a game which wasn’t even that close. In the Quarter Finals, they went to Turin and completely dominated Juventus, winning 2:1 in a scoreline that flattered the losers. In those two brilliant road performances, Ajax played spectacularly progressive football: fast paced, attacking, their players elegant on the ball, the unit so well drilled that guys could essentially “pass guys open,” playing balls into spaces where they simply knew that teammates would be. It was gorgeous football and also wicked, because it was apparent, from the attitude of the players dressed in the Ajax colours, that they gave zero fucks about the pedigree of their opponents. Who gives a shit if you’re wearing the Real or the Juventus shirt. You’re soft, you’re lazy, and you’re not any good.
Which, frankly, neither of those teams were.
European soccer is in a weird place at the moment, a place where the enormous financial advantages that a handful of clubs have allow them to be successful without actually being particularly good at the game. If you throw enough high-priced talent on the field, they can probably pip enough results over time, even if they don’t seem to be much of a cohesive team or even seem to like each other very much. Most of the major European leagues are basically won on a trot by a dominant club which not only can afford to pay the high wages and high transfer fees of the élite talent, but can also afford to cripple their greatest domestic rivals simply by going those clubs’ best players and throwing a dump truck full of euros in their driveways, enticing them to come to the Bayerns and the Juves and the Reals and the PSGs of the world and ply their trade.
But over time, a certain amount of laziness sets in. When you’re a star-laden, top-end club, you don’t have to actually play well to be successful. There isn’t a single person whom I know who follows the Italian game who thinks that Juventus have played worth a damn this season, and yet they have cruised to a championship in Serie A this season while barely breaking a sweat. This sort of institutional malaise can be hard for even sheer talent to overcome, over time.
But it still prevails a lot of the time, as much as we hate the fact that it does. Just this past Thursday, I tuned in to watch the Europa League semifinal match between Chelsea and Eintract Frankfurt. Chelsea may have finished third in the EPL this year, but so what? They are awful. The squad is stale, the football is bad, they’re facing a transfer ban, they constantly waste the careers of good young players and their only legitimately watchable player, Eden Hazard, wants a transfer to Real Madrid this summer. There is this collective sense of malaise about all of the proceedings. They’re playing this young and energetic Frankfurt squad which you know is fool’s gold. You think to yourself, “oh, hey, look at all of these really nice players that Frankfurt have. They won’t be playing in Frankfurt a year from now. All of those Serbian kids will have Spanish or English addresses a year from now. They’ll all command a nice price this summer during the transfer windows.” Sure enough, Chelsea won on penalties and advanced to the Europa League final despite being outplayed, which made the entire endeavor feel unsatisfying.
But this is the nature of the stratospheres of European football at the moment. Big clubs come to halfass it and do just enough to advance and cash the big cheques, while up and comers then go into the summer and sell off all of their best assets for big money, filling up their bank accounts but giving no hope to their fans. It is, ultimately, still an unfair game.
But every now and then, one of the minnows turns out to have some teeth. The effect of Leicester City winning the EPL in 2016 cannot be overstated. Leicester caught all of the big guys with their pants down. The big English clubs had grown soft, lazy, and self-satisfied, and then here come these weird outsiders who call them on their bullshit, at which point they had to adapt and change what they were doing. What we’re seeing now, with Man City and Liverpool, was a direct result of that: teams that, yes, have money to spend, but who’ve also employed coaches and staffs who – gasp! – actually try coaching. What a concept!
And Ajax was calling bullshit during this season’s Champions League. They gave no fucks whatsoever about pomp and pedigree. Come on you lazy slugs, get out here on the pitch and let’s ball! They were young, talented, brash and fearless. But this is no surprise coming from Ajax, who have been, for probably 50 years now, one of the greatest talent development operations in the sport. It was interesting, during their Champions League semifinal, to run down a considerable list of guys playing for Spurs, their opponents, who had previously played for Ajax. It’s one of the most important clubs in the history of the game, a place where much of what we consider to be the modern game was originally conceived of and tinkered with, but the club simply cannot consistently compete any longer owing not only to finances, but also to the overly abundant influence among those who control those finances. Every year, we seem to inch closer to some sort of a European Super League, something I suspect won’t be anywhere near as good as people would like to believe. The irony was not lost on people that one of the clubs driving that plan, Juventus, got absolutely hammered in the Champions League by Ajax, who are precisely the type of club that a European Super League would like to exclude.
Ajax are fun as hell, an exciting young team that’s about to be a really, really expensive one. If anything, they’ve been too good. Given the value of their young talents, it’s only a matter of time before bigger European clubs start picking their players off, and Ajax cannot help but open for business, because the values are just too high. This has a feel of 2016-2017 A.S. Monaco, who reached the Champions League semifinals with an exciting young team and then promptly sold everyone, netting well over €300 million but also rendering themselves irrelevant again in the process. This Ajax side was always going to be a one-off side, regardless of the final outcome. Even if they were to somehow win the Champions League, the entire operation would wind up starting over next season.
That they went out the way they did was, in hindsight, somewhat predictable, even if the circumstances – the deciding goal occurring in the 95th minute on basically the last kick of the game – were stunning and shocking and cruel. Wild attacking sides rarely make for great game managers, and all of the things lovable about this team – youth, naïveté, idealism – wound up being their undoing. After winning the first leg 1:0 in London, and jumping to a 2-0 lead in the first half in Amsterdam, they simply needed to see the game out, but then Spurs manufacture a goal – aided by a rather sloppy piece of Ajax defending – and the entire foundation crumbled. They couldn’t defend, they couldn’t stop Spurs, and they completely forgot what to do. Tottenham then quickly got a second, and proceeded to put them under more pressure than they’ve probably ever seen.
If nothing else, what the last two rounds of the Champions League have shown us is that Spurs are the masters of madness. The crazier the game gets – and few games have been crazier than Spurs’ quarter final match up with Man City – the more Spurs seem to thrive. This game at the Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam descended into absolute chaos over the last 30 minutes, with the game stretching end to end, Spurs playing about six forwards, and all tactics having been thrown out the window. Obviously, it was a gutting loss, and yet there was something almost poetic about the fact that Ajax went down swinging, still bombing forward late in the game against their own good sense. They did it on their own terms. They failed about as beautifully as you possibly can.
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| photo by Paul Ellis/AFP |
MEANWHILE, back at Anfield, needing to make up a huge deficit after a 0:3 loss at the Camp Nou, Jürgen Klopp’s stated hope was that the return leg with Barcelona would be a celebration of a great season regardless of the final outcome, as it seemed pretty apparent they were got to wind up with nothing to show for a truly amazing campaign.
But then a funny thing happened: Liverpool 4:0 Barcelona.
And while it was, of course, a shocking result in the moment, the overwhelming sense that I was left with, having watched both of these games, is that the real shock result wasn’t in the second match, but actually occurred in the first one.
That 3:0 scoreline at the Camp Nou flattered to deceive. In between the first two Barca goals, it was one-way traffic for almost an hour, with Liverpool enduring one of those nights which reminds you what a stupid fucking game this can be. They were all over Barca, but the goddamn ball wouldn’t go in the goddamn goal. Then Barca cooks up a second goal against the run of play, and then Messi does Messi things, and it winds up looking like a completely lopsided result. But the fact of the matter is that outside of Messi, Barca weren’t very good.
Which is a recurring theme with Barca these days. They basically win because they have the best player on the planet. That fact alone was enough for Barca to cruise to a La Liga title in a year where their two Madrid rivals ran the gamut from stale to dysfunctional. The skill level is still there, of course, but it’s now an older club of seasoned vets who know how to think their way through games rather than overwhelm an opponent with dynamic attacking play. They basically play fundamentally sound football and wait for Messi to do something brilliant – which, clearly, works most of the time, but their margin for error is far smaller than it used to be.
And blowing a 3-goal cushion on the road in the second leg of a Champions League semifinal would be more shocking if we hadn’t read this script before, but the except same story played out in last year’s quarterfinals against Roma. A year ago, Barca won the first game 4:1 but Roma shot themselves in the foot and scored twice on themselves. Roma then came up with a plan of attack: high-press, lock down the midfield to cut off the supply lines to Messi, get that early goal and dictate the terms, forcing the game to be all about speed and athleticism.
Klopp’s blueprint at Anfield was a carbon copy, although it felt a bit precarious at times in the first half. Barca gifted Liverpool an inexplicably stupid goal 7’ into the game, but then created a number of really good chances themselves, only to have Allison come up the saves. On a night where Barca’s finishing was a bit better, it would have been over at that point. Having withstood what would turn out to be Barca’s best shot, Liverpool just kept ratcheting up the pace and the pressure and the tempo. Then Wijnaldum scores two quick goals early in the second half, and now Liverpool is running riot. Barcelona just literally couldn’t do anything. They’re second to every ball, the back line looks disorganized, the midfield looks old and slow and unathletic. It didn’t feel like a question of whether or not Liverpool would get a fourth goal, but would they possibly even get a fifth or even a sixth?
And this is inexcusable from Barcelona. We saw this film before! Barca were old and slow and unathletic a year ago as well, and the club’s response was … well, what exactly? How did this team get better? It’s bad enough to lose once like that. It’s far worse to do it twice, having failed to learn from your mistakes.
And a trend which appeared time and again throughout the small sample size theatre of this year’s iteration of the Champions League was that the big clubs who covet this title – the Juves and Reals and Bayerns and PSGs – all seemed to approach the competition as being one where they could just flip the switch and everything would be okay. Barca fell into the same trap. They haven’t had a meaningful domestic match in months. They haven’t had to play hard, to be at their best. The teams which, week in and week out, were playing meaningful games in their domestic leagues were much sharper when it came time to contest the Champions League. Literally every game Liverpool has played for the past nine months, in their pursuit of Man City, has been an urgent affair. Ajax were in a title chase in the Eredivisie which went down to the middle of May. Those teams stayed sharp, whereas those pudgy big clubs, who feel like they can just show up and win their domestic league and do some great party tricks along the way, showed up for the Champions League and looked slow, soft, and unfocused.
Perhaps there was no greater example of this than Liverpool’s fourth goal against Barca, a quickly taken corner which caught Barca not paying attention, an appalling lack of focus you’d be unlikely to ever see in a U-12 game, much less at the game’s highest level. It was some quick thinking on the part of Liverpool but, as we often do here at In Play Lose, let me quote Louis Pasteur here and say that luck favors the prepared mind:
In the end, Barcelona got what they deserved. This was not a fluke. They got crushed. The better team won.
Now, suffice to say, this pathetic midweek showing from Barca hasn’t gone over well in Catalonia. Barca’s 99,000-seat stadium was half empty over the weekend for their game with Getafe, and those who did turn up felt free to boo the home side. It was a pretty gutless performance at Anfield, particularly against a Liverpool team that was missing not only its best player in Salah, but one of his strike partners in Roberto Firmino, as well, yet who just plucked some guys off their bench and slotted them into the lineup and looked better than Barcelona in every way. Barca’s been linked to buying several young Ajax players this summer but, given how tired and leggy their lineup has become, given the slow and sloppy performance at Anfield, and given Ajax’s zest and zeal, Barca might be better off at this point just buying the entire Ajax roster.
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LIVERPOOL will have to make do with a chance at winning the Champions League, in the end, since their EPL title quest came up a point short on Sunday. They had hope for all of about 83 seconds, the time between Brighton’s shocking opening goal and Man City’s equalizer, after which City commenced pulverizing their useless opponents into submission. The 4:1 win for City rendered a Liverpool 2:0 win over Wolves at Anfield moot, giving Man City the title by the narrowest of margins. I know how much winning the league would have meant to the club, which hasn’t done so since 1990, but there is still something big to play for. Same can be said for Spurs. Neither club got what they wanted in terms of the Premier League this season, of course – Spurs were pretty damn good themselves for much of the season before a rash of injuries wiped them out. The two clubs are going to play their style of game in Madrid on the 1st of June no matter what. Liverpool is going to attack, Spurs will be look to be expansive and slick. It should be one helluva good match, in part because, over the course of two days last week, they played like they had nothing to lose in a seemingly no-win situation. Neither feared the possibility of failing beautifully, and both clubs wound up succeeded spectacularly.
