We finally won the English Premier League (EPL) title.
This is Anfield. We are Liverpool. We dare to dream. Those dreams paid dividends (with hefty interest).
I started supporting the Reds around 2007-08. I clearly remember being pissed off when Xabi Alonso was regularly substituted (in) to replace Xavi in the Euro 2008 tournament. Why didn’t he start? I fumed.
So it must be around that time I became a fan.
I adored the specific crimson shade of the club’s home jersey. Specifically, it was the free-flowing style of play the club employed which converted me. I later found out the approach was called pass-and-move.
It was poetry in motion.
It was the Liverpool way.
The 08/09 Pool team comprising Alonso, Gerrard, and Torres (among others) finished second in the English Premier League (EPL), their best league showing in years. The performances, however, did not hold up in the following seasons.
But by that time I had fallen in love. Win, draw or lose, I have persisted with them.
The rot began with the sale of Alonso, who Benitez wanted to replace with Gareth Barry (who instead secured a move to Manchester City). In a couple of years’ time, the team got pretty mediocre. I counted Kuyt, Benayoun, and Glen Johnson as key players in our squad, for which I was ridiculed by the fans of other well-to-do sides.
At one point, we had Ngog as our first-choice striker. These were dire times. Konchesky, Charlie Adam…... Terrible, terrible, terrible.
Still, I took pride in our Maxi Rodriguezes, and our Craig Bellamys. But it was evident the caliber of players who wanted to join us was sub-standard. So was the amount of money the owners wished to expend on talent.
The worst aspect of this period was our washed-out, old-fashioned, and defensive manager- Roy Hodgson. He (probably) held Charlie Adam in the same bracket as Pirlo; he had a thing for mid-table footballers he could never buy- as the gaffer of a clutch of teams in the bottom-half of the EPL.
But we always had Steven Gerrard, Captain Fantastic. A real-life superhero (for us), and a complete midfielder, his package of skills of long and short passing, shooting, tackling, and running was unmatched by any other player in the world (at that time). He did all that was expected of him and a lot more.
Fernando Torres was our main striker when I started supporting the club. He was one of the top forwards in the world, and his expectations, ambition, and performances were not matched by the rest of the line-up. His sale to Chelsea funded the Luis Suarez purchase, who I rank as the finest player I saw in a Red shirt.
This was followed by shrewd signings of two massively under-rated forwards- Sturridge and Coutinho. In addition to their brilliance, the emergence of Henderson and Sterling brought us as close to the PL title as I ever saw as a fan (by then). Even though we finished second, it is my favorite Liverpool season of all.
The SAS (Suarez and Sturridge) partnership is my choicest memory as a Red. Both of them were supremely creative and clinical. If only Henderson had played our last stretch of matches, the title would have been ours.
These were memories for life.
Then Suarez grew too big for his shoes, and left for Barcelona. We squandered his transfer money and bought a clutch of duds. The newly-assembled side bombed. In this period, we had a matchup against Madrid, in which we (mostly Rodgers) accepted defeat even before the match began. It broke my heart.
Rodgers was sacked with the resumption of the next season. I loved the guy. He was a good man. He was succeeded by a passionate-maniacal gentleman who loved rock-and-roll.
What was to follow was totally unexpected.
It was phenomenal.
If you are a football fan, you surely know.
If you are not one, search ‘Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool’.
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