The Umpteenth Journal Attempt (Version III)

Last year Liverpool made it to the Champions League final, perhaps unexpectedly considering their rather shoddy domestic league form. But after getting that far, you’d expect them to go all the way, even if they were up against the mighty AC Milan. Of course, going 3-0 down at half-time rather put a damper on things. And then, in what will go down as one of the greatest football comebacks of all-time, they pulled back the score to 3-3 in six minutes, and managed to hang on to penalties, which they won. The cafe where I watched the game with lots of fellow Liverpool fans, after feeling like a mausoleum at half-time, became deafeningly at the end. I had never hugged so many sweaty strangers in my life, and I never thought I’d ever have reason to.

Last night, it happened again.

This time, Liverpool were in the FA Cup final. Not as big as the Champions, by any means, but it’s still the oldest club competition in the world. And any way you look at it, it’s nice to have another piece of silverware in the trophy cabinet. Unlike last year, they were the firm favourites against West Ham, who’d just been promoted to the top flight and had a season exceeding all expectations. Given that Liverpool had stuffed them twice in the league, I’m sure everyone was expecting they’d win comfortably.

But no, they had to go two goals down within 28 minutes, through a Jamie Carragher own goal and a Dean Ashton tap-in after Jose Reina had fumbled the ball. Liverpool had a Peter Crouch goal wrongly disallowed for offside, but managed to pull one back through Djibril Cisse shortly after in the 31st minute, and then equalise via the super-fantastic Steven Gerrard on the 54th. You’d think by that point they’d be able to gain momentum and carry on for the win.

But no, West Ham scored through an absolute fluke, as a cross from the wing by Paul Konchesky suddenly ended up in the net on the 63rd. As the game wore on, it seemed like we were in for one of the biggest FA Cup final upsets in recent memory, especially as Liverpool’s players were starting to cramp up and no clear chance was in sight. It felt like it was all over as the 90 minutes were up and the fourth official informed everyone watching that there’d be four minutes of stoppage time.

And then, inevitably, the cramped Steven Gerrard volleys the ball home from 35 yards. Again with the hugging of sweaty strangers at the cafe I was in. The score remained the same for the duration of extra time, and then on to penalties, which no one really wanted but seemed like that’s the way the universe had it planned. Liverpool won that, with Reina doing what Jerzy Dudek did last year at Istanbul and saved most of the opposing team’s penalties.

Cue more hugging of sweaty strangers, followed by an overwhelming feeling of fatigue. Winning a cup final once this way is more than enough for one lifetime, but they just had to do it again. Not good for my health, that’s for sure. I really wouldn’t mind if they went for a boring 1-0 win once in a while. But then, that’s not much fun, is it?

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.