Fresh from the joys of a 10 hour transatlantic economy class flight complete with stop overs and the obligatory plastic food, I surrendered myself to my imitation leather Clapham sofa with the relaxing and comforting prospect of watching my first full game of football this season. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of my flat mate to keep me awake by shouting “fire!” every 25 minutes, I slumbered into a deep coma, missing Tottenham’s apparently electrifying first foray into the Champions League whilst I immersed myself in a deep, layered dream wherein I plotted to invade the mind of the man who invented touch screen monitors in the back of plane headrests and prodded him violently in the back of the head for 10 hours until the idea of removing them was firmly incepted.
Having been residing in Mount Pleasant, Michigan for the previous week – a place where driving round and round in a circle very fast whilst not attempting to get out of anyones way is considered the only sport worth televising – my junkie like need for a fix of football had reached an arm biting zenith. Thank Zeus then, for the Europa League. And for Liverpool, who’s sterling dedication to obtaining the one European trophy still in existence they’ve yet to win had seen them triumphantly not qualify for the Champions League again this year. Huzaar!
With Colin Murray promoted to Adrian Chiles’ old sofa, and the Collymoid (the rubber painted robotic likeness of Stan Collymore that usually graces these occasions on Channel 5) wisely left to rant conspiratorially to himself on talk radio, the prospect of broadcasting this game on our esteemed and revered 5th channel was apparently deemed too risky. Thus the task was left to iTV, who immediately stepped in to fill the comedic void by dressing Gareth Southgate like something out of Bugsy Malone and encouraging us all to laugh at him. Which we did.
At first glace Liverpool seemed to be playing an Aston Villa side from the early 1980s, but on closer inspection, they were actually playing the Transforeroids – or something – a Turkish side with a delightful collection of funny foreign names and the ball retention abilities of a herd of arthritic hippos.
Clearly aware of this, human owl Roy Hodgson had decided not to field England captain Steven Gerrard – last seen celebrating a goal against Hungary like he’d just saved the world from the apocalypse – or unsettled Argie leg biter Javier Mascherano, but was giving a first birth to new signing Christian Poulsen, one of the 8 Poulsens who seemed to be playing for Denmark in South Africa, and of course to Joey Cole, fresh from his unfair dismissal at the weekend and raring to prove his worth.
The game started far more open than I’d have expected, clearly not learning from my experience of watching Liverpool play in the Europa League last season (https://www.footballfancast.com/2010/02/football-blogs/the-amazing-adventures-of-liverpool-in-the-europa-league), with both sides getting good headed chances from corners. Liverpool managed to get theirs on target. Transanzibar managed to get theirs near enough to the corner flag to almost concede a throw in.
Someone called Balrog, or Bullfrog, or something like that, looked to be causing Liverpool a fair bit of trouble from set pieces, whilst Joe Cole displayed all his apparent guile (something which I’m still not sure how to accurately describe) by failing to do a Gazza against someone who seemed to be called “Piggyman”.
Obviously impressed by the little cockney’s aforementioned guile, one of the Transformers attempted to display some skill aswell, but this mainly consisted of standing still and waving his foot about a bit to little effect, either aesthetically or practically.
As the visitors continued to frustrate, the traveling Turks reaffirmed their reputation as one of the loudest and most fearsome footballing chanters and began comprehensively out singing the Kop with what sounded like grunted tribal chanting, but may well have been soaringly beautiful poetry to anyone with a good ear for Turkish. They even began booing every Liverpool touch, something which sounded most odd at Anfield, though on reflection this could have been an English thing still hungover from the World Cup (it is becoming a trend) which wouldn’t have been too out of place, as this game was certainly starting to resemble watching England labour against Algeria, or Slovenia, or Hungary, or the US, or anybody for that matter.
Happily for the home side however, Joe Cole guiled his way through the middle right on half time and fed Ryan Babel, who slotted it away neatly to give the reds some joy going into the break, and me a euphoric hit of footy goalness to tide myself over with for the next 15 minutes.
Having almost passed out again at half time, I shook myself back to reality to find that Fernando Torres was being brought on for the second half. Having watched the World Cup, this didn’t immediately fill me with a great degree of excitement, but within a minute of the re-start ‘Nando had rifled a shot in from 20 yards, forcing a good save from the Transistor keeper and suddenly things were looking promising again.
With the Transporters managing to look like they were going to fall over every time they attempted to dribble the ball (something Ji Sung Park has been perfecting with great success for years now) Liverpool won a penalty after intercepting another inept breakaway, enacted at the speed of a group of Geordies being asked to leave a pub at closing time.
Joe Cole enthusiastically seized the ball, but his guile deserted him, and his spot kick was saved rather easily and the minnows were still in with a chance of nicking something.
That chance came soon after as Uma Borat (possibly?) was put through by a ball so good it must have been by accident, only for Pepe Reina to smartly save and remind everyone he really is quite a good keeper, despite the fact Spain only trust him to fetch Casillas towels.
At this point it suddenly dawned on me that there was someone called Alanzinho playing. Alan-zinho! It sounds like a name made up during one of those pub conversations about how British players would be rated higher if they were foreign and had a ‘zinho’ at the end of their name. For a moment I refused to accept I’d heard this correctly, having clearly not paid any attention to anyone’s name for the duration of the evening, but after googling it, I found that yes, there is indeed a player called Alanzinho. I was now completely fulfilled, and the rest of the game passed me by as I contented myself with the warm and fuzzy knowledge that there was a footballer out there whose name combined the twin virtues of Alans and Zinhos in the same breath.
Luckily, at this point everyone else seemed to have given up too, and after Liverpool were denied a perfectly fair second due to some keeper shenanigans, the Transiberianrailway team decided they were going to defend for the last quarter of an hour, content to sit on a one goal deficit.
And they did. Which was nice for them, and though Liverpool will surely bring out their bigger guns for the second leg and win comfortably, they can be proud of their achievement, and I can be glad that the Premier League is back on again at the weekend. Very very glad indeed actually.
You can follow Oscar on Twitter here, https://twitter.com/oscarpyejeary as he valiantly attempts to recover from his jet lag by finding out what month we’re in.