Football can be a cruel game. It can also be a game of incredible drama. Both of these traits were evident in the pulsating Liverpool v Arsenal trilogy this month. Arsenal, the young side built by ‘The Professor’ Wenger to play a free, quick, passing game lost their European dreams, and probably their hopes of a league title when they came up against ‘The Rotator’ Benitez’s hard-working, driving, tactically shrewd Liverpool.
The European games were worthy of a well-worked novel, or an intricate, yet exuberent stage drama – there was character development, twists in the development of the plot, heroes and villains and an almost Greek element of fate. The villains to the piece in most Arsenal fans’ views were the two referees: One who gave and one who took away – The Swedish referee gave Liverpool a penalty, while the Dutchman didn’t give one to the London team. ‘Villainy!’ cried the disgruntled Londoners, ‘Treachery!’ The argument goes that Liverpool were worse than lucky – even accusing the Reds of being fortunate ignores the sporting maxim that luck evens itself out over games – they were somehow complicit in perverting the natural course of events – an Arsenal victory. ‘If the referee had done this…!’ But as every good student of the Greek classics knows, the seeds of the downfall are sown a long time before the terrible denouement. In a strange twist on a classic myth, it was Wenger who destroyed his own child, in his blinkered vision of ‘purity’.
Those who uncharitably ‘blame’ Liverpool for their victory can take heart, however, in a more modern interpretation of the world, based on logic, reason and calculation.. Science tells us there an infinite number of universes and an infinite number of realities. I’m sure in one of those universes, in one of those realities, Arsenal gave Liverpool a good spanking and a lesson in how to play football. As a Liverpool fan, I’m just happy I live in the this world of drama with it’s great legends, literature and Liverpool victories.
