Three-plus days in Liverpool

This was the reason for the whole trip, of course, as we'd landed tickets through the local supporters' club back in January and had picked the last game of the season simply because we knew the weather would be warmer than the other options (games in February and April.) A couple weeks later, Jürgen Klopp announced that he was leaving the club. At the time, we were also leading the league, so here was an amazing opportunity: to see his last game as manager and to maybe watch us lift the most important trophy, the league title. In the end, the latter didn't happen as we went through the typical January fade in April and finished a few points back. But despite having been a Liverpool fan almost as long as I'd been a Michigan fan, I'd never managed to get to a game at Anfield, so this was my opportunity to redress that, no matter how the team finished.

I titled this "Three-plus days" because although we did get there on Friday afternoon after traveling all day (Reykjavik to Luton to London to Liverpool), we were both so wiped out by the process that we didn't do a whole lot on Friday, other than search for a place to eat. We managed to get to a place called The Black Horse, which is your traditional English Pub and also happened to be an Everton bar (which I probably should have expected, given that we were in their section of town.) I only noticed this after we'd ordered (bangers and mash and steak pie) and turned to see the large Everton badge on the wall, surrounded by black-and-white pictures of heroes of yesteryear, like Dixie Dean. We were both wearing LFC gear, but they let us order three minutes before the kitchen closed, so no trouble. Money is money, after all.

And that latter point is blatantly obvious in much of Liverpool. It's a large city, but not a widely wealthy one and the difference between the US standard of living and the UK one- even with the UK remaining one of the wealthiest nations in the world -is often stark. Prices in Iceland were often absurd because it's a tourist haven (#1 industry,) In contrast, some things seemed absurdly cheap in Liverpool, ranging from Uber to food to basic grocery items. The Tory governments, which have somehow remained in power for the post-Brexit period despite the negative effects of that change being blatantly obvious, are still operating on the Thatcherite/Reagan model that infects our society, as well. There are probably just enough racists/xenophobes in the wider society to keep them viable as a political entity that regards all change as an evil that must be resisted, which includes continuing to screw the poor at every opportunity.

We had this message driven home when we stopped into The Park on Saturday night, which is one of the more famous bars right next to Anfield (the place we were staying was two blocks from the stadium; you could see the roof of it when we stepped out the front door.) We grabbed a drink and went out back and were immediately hollered at by Janey, a woman who definitely works there and may have a piece of it, as well (I'm not sure if her referring to herself as a "part-owner" was a joke or not.) She wanted to reassure us that we could share the covered space with her as we were looking for a place to sit. Immediately, I thought: "Yeah, this is someone I want to meet."

Janey is a Scouser, through and through. She grew up in Toxteth, which is one of the rougher parts of the city (lots of projects; "council estates" to the English) and had been ripped by riots in 1981, while she was still living there. She'd spent a few decades working as part of the cleaning crews at Anfield and was a season ticket holder. She speaks Scouse which is a sharp dialect/accent of the King's English. I understand it because I've been listening to it for 45 years. Tricia did a lot of nodding and smiling to things that were said for the first couple days before looking to me to quickly translate, but she picked up a lot of it by the time we left on the morning of the 21st. Not everyone speaks it in the city and it's always been that way. You don't hear Scouse in any of the Beatles' recordings or interviews, aside from a mild bit of the accent on Maggie Mae.

Janey and her friend, Melanie, who later joined us talked a lot about the state of the club, the state of the city, and the world as a whole. Melanie had spent many years in the army as a way out of south Wales, even though her family had been one of those that owned the local coal mines and had the local town on a hook for its very existence. She wanted none of that and, at one point, asked us what we thought about the prospect of a second Trump term. I said: "It would be an absolute disaster." She sighed: "Oh, thank God!" We talked a lot more about the economy (Melanie wants to buy a house in Liverpool, live on the main floor, and rent the top "at a reasonable rate!" to a young couple trying to start their life), since England has the same housing issue we have, where big corporations own most of the housing and younger people have no place to go and are stuck living at home with their parents or other relatives. (Janey's two nieces and their boyfriends, who all live at Janey's sister's house,later showed up to punctuate that point.) 

It was a great way to spend the evening with "genuine Scousers", as it were, even if one of them was a Welsh transplant. They were a lot of fun and were agog that we'd traveled all the way from Detroit. I mentioned that Detroit had a lot of similarities to Liverpool (steep decline in the 70s and 80s, kinda recovering now) and Tricia mentioned the even closer parallel when we first stepped on to Walton Breck road where we were staying and she saw the row houses: "This is Baltimore."

We, of course, toured the stadium and spent way too much on LFC gear. We also hit all of said famous bars: The Park, The Albert (which is on the same lot as Anfield), Taggy's, and The Sandon. The latter was right across the street from where we were staying and we spent a lot of game day (Sunday) hanging out there with a horde of Reds. At other points during the weekend we took a ferry out onto the Mersey river and did the requisite Beatles tour (went to the Cavern Club, etc.) The section of town where the tour operates is the center of the city and the roads are a bit more of a medieval layout. I learned a lot that I didn't know about the band and even more about the history of the city, which was cool. On the tour with us was a couple from Singapore; a man who was taller than me (mildly uncommon) and a woman who was shorter than Tricia (incredibly rare.) They had become fans similarly to the way I had (British TV in the former colony.)

The game was kind of anti-climactic, as Nélson Semedo for Wolves got himself ejected on a straight red (studs up into Alexis Mac Allister's ankle) about 25 minutes in. Plus, it was the last game of the season and neither side had anything to play for, except us trying to send Jürgen out on a high note. But I ended up hoarse from singing with The Kop for almost three hours, before the match, and through Jürgen's extended departure after it. His song was deafening for the last few minutes of the game and there were a lot of people crying in the stands as he was saying his goodbyes. I loved the fact that someone started up "Poor Scouser Tommy" three or four times during the match, too, since I can't get anyone but Tim to sing it with me at Magee's.

Can't say a ton for the food. Much of it was stereotypically English (high fat, high carb) and not especially thrilling. But the traditional stuff we got at The Black Horse was good and we went to a nice seafood place down by the Albert Dock called Cargo. Am expecting much better in London. The weather was extraordinarily warm for the area for this time of year, sitting in the low 70s for most of the time we were there. That meant we had to buy a couple extra T-shirts at the club store, as you do,

It had been a lifelong dream to sit in The Kop and watch a match and now I've done it. I'm still not quite sure how I feel about that because of the down note which was Jürgen leaving at the end. I definitely feel like I'll be back to do it again a lot sooner than the first time.

The purity of struggle

22-0

I saw my first Michigan football game on November 20th, 1976. Michigan picked off OSU in the end zone to secure a 0-0 tie into halftime and then came out and scored 22, unanswered, to beat the Buckeyes for the first time in 4 years. I remember being fascinated by the helmets early in the game, with a design so unlike the animal pictures or simple letters of other teams that I'd seen; a simple design that implied uniqueness and the power that came with that; yellow wings on a blue field and lines that could be claw marks or simply the streaks of light as the last thing you'd see as they went racing by. I turned to my dad and asked which team it was that wore them. He said: "That's Michigan." I replied: "That's where I'm going to college."

That's actually a game against West Brom.

I saw my first Liverpool game sometime in April, 1979. It was a replay on CBC of the match between LFC and ManU that had taken place on April 14th. Kenny Dalglish scored just before the half and Phil Neal scored just after it to secure a 2-0 win at Anfield. I remember being fascinated by the all-red uniforms of Liverpool, even though that was the diametrically-opposed color of the hated Buckeyes. Of course, by then, I'd only seen 3 straight wins over the Bucks, so I didn't have quite the visceral response that other Michigan fans would have had. To me, the Reds looked glorious, menacing, dominant, flames alive on a field that burned only when and where Liverpool wanted them to. Of course, they were dominant and would go on being so for much of the decade that followed, just as Michigan had and would. My fandom was born in the bonfires of success, like many people. One tends to follow winners because winners are more fun.

Times have changed. Michigan is just now emerging (we hope) from an extended streak of futility and Liverpool hasn't won the Premier League since the top division was renamed to that, 23 years ago. Michigan has been irrelevant to the national scene in football since 2006 and Liverpool has seen its place in the traditional Top Four of the first division usurped by Manchester City, previously not even good enough to be considered an afterthought, and Chelsea. I'd thought before about how similar my main rooting interests are, since they're both entities and fanbases that have great history and expectations to match, despite current struggles on their respective fields, but a great article by Brian Phillips on Grantland the other day kind of crystallized a few things for me.

Happy, happy! Joy, Joy!

In it, he questions whether the Liverpool fanbase, mired in the tradition of their club and the majesty of that tradition, can handle the ebullient, energetic and, yes, happy Jurgen Klopp. The picture is of the brooding fans of LFC, having famously adopted the grudging respect nature of the home city; its port lessened in importance by the Manchester canal, its musical glories long since faded; the only thing left being its football team (Oh, yes. Fine. Teams, if you stoop to including Everton. /LFC fan) and its heroic record from previous decades.

At this point, the easy answer is: Of course we can! [pause] As long as he wins. The piece echoes the many questions surrounding Rich Rodriguez's arrival at Michigan back in 2008. Could he handle Michigan? Could he handle Michigan since he's not a Michigan Man? Could he deal with the expectations of playing real football, as opposed to that spread stuff that won't possibly work in the Big Ten? Uh, yeah, on that last point? Urban Meyer would like a word.

The tone of disgust in that last paragraph probably reveals my attitude toward most of that glory and majesty routine. The last few years have drained a lot of the prototypical "arrogant Michigan fan" out of me, in part because they've been so awful, in part because my distaste for the injustice of the college athletic system has only continued to grow, and in part because I find it really aggravating to be identified with a lot of people who don't know shit about the game even after decades of watching it. I've gone through a similar transformation with LFC, in that even though I still sometimes think of ManU fans as bandwagoners, there's no denying that they've been one of the best teams in football for the past 25 years. That's a long time to be on a bandwagon. But it's more recent to me because I was watching Liverpool dominate the world for over a decade prior to that. I have the same reaction when people talk about Wisconsin "always being good." While I was growing up, Wisconsin was bloody awful and we routinely beat them by 20 or 30 points. So, no, they haven't always been good. But they have been quite good for over 20 years now, so it's easy for people, especially younger people, to think that way. There are probably any number of younger people out there right now who think that Michigan and Liverpool always suck.

I think that's part of what Philipps was referring to, in that (like Rodriguez) Klopp represents a younger, more modern way of approaching the game and Liverpool is so mired in its history that it makes him wonder if people can enjoy a brand of football that doesn't try to overwhelm you with the ominous nature of how "This is Anfield" but tries to shock and bewilder you and score before you realize what's happening and you're already on the way to the next fixture on Monday.

(As a side note, I've always been really disappointed in the appearance of the "This is Anfield" sign. I mean, really. That's it? Just the words and the shield. Shouldn't there be a picture of Shankly melded with Leonidas, roaring at you with the liver bird embedded in gold on one extended fang: "THIS! IS! ANFIELLLLLD!"? Maybe a little OTT...)

But right there is both sides of my mindset, struggling with each other. The expectation is for the grandiose, the glorious, the dominance. But is that just covering for the club's inability to meet those expectations for most of the past couple decades? Should the implied majesty of the simple sign and the simple phrase be enough, akin to the "This is Michigan" tagline that will be Brady Hoke's one positive legacy for much of the fanbase? By the same token, as much as I can acknowledge the failings of Michigan's program for the past decade, when people dismiss them as irrelevant, I can feel my chin starting to stick out. More wins than anyone in the game, man! Biggest stadium in the game! Best fight song! Most recognizable helmets! Huge TV audiences! Everyone wants to see Michigan, whether they suck or not! Because we matter! Same thing with LFC: Most wins! Most points! Highest average finish for the past 50 years! 2nd highest for the 20th century! The only reason I knew they existed as a kid was because everyone wanted to see them and they showed up on the Windsor station! Because they matter! Man!

It's a fight response because it's touching on something that I grew up thinking was worth fighting for. As Philipps notes, there's a kernel of that in the Liverpool fanbase, as well. If the Reds get back to the top of the football world by hopping on the Klopp Joy train, will the purity of the struggle be sidelined? Is it possible to get to that position of dominance while making the struggle... fun? Does that diminish the seeming righteousness of the whole thing? Or is victory enough?

The question has meaning to me because I've spent most of my life in that mode. Most of my major interests have centered around the struggle to change things, whether it was building a political party in the face of the systemic obstacles and massive corruption of the American system or running a tiny business in a market completely dominated by two players who spammed a genre that we weren't interested in. The struggle, for many years, was my life and was always pursued with the idea that we were doing the right thing, if people would only listen; similarly to how many Michigan fans wax poetic about doing things the "right" way, even if it derails pursuit of a national title, but then go on to extol the virtues of the dominance of Michigan's program, anyway. My two major rooting interests are actually the mirror image of my life's other pursuits, in that they have been dominant, whereas consistency would say that I should be rooting for Purdue and West Ham. But winners are more fun. Or is it the struggle that makes it fun? Is there purity in struggle or is it simply a way to spread a salve over the fact that you keep losing, as I have, so often? I wonder sometimes if it's been easier for me to keep struggling in other areas, simply because when I turned to the sports world, I could go back to being a kid when Michigan and Liverpool simply couldn't lose.


In the end, I can't say that I identify very much with the fanbase that Philipps describes for the Reds, in the same way that I don't identify with much of the Michigan fanbase. I like modernization. I like change. I like looking forward. That's what most of my life has been about. The past, in many ways, seems magical, but it's easy to see it that way through eyes that were 6 and 8 years old. Jim Harbaugh is doing a great job of returning Michigan to some of that past, in more ways than one, given the Stone Age roots of his favored form of offense. But there are enough tweaks in it that it's an odd form of back to the future. I think Klopp will do the same for Liverpool, even if his strategic route is more direct; less borrowing from the past, more pushing into the future. At least, that's my hope. It'll be fun to win again, as we return to the flashing helmets and the flames on a field that won't die and, of course, the glory.

That's our guy. And our sign. YNWA.

Fandom

Brian’s recent brief explanation (last question) about how to pick an EPL team to root for got me to thinking. As some of you know, I’m an LFC fan and became one largely because it was the only professional club that we could get footage of when I was a kid (mostly via public TV and occasionally CBC) and that was largely because Liverpool was the dominant team of England’s first division at the time (late 70s/early 80s.) I knew of the other big clubs like Arsenal, but I mostly saw Liverpool so I developed an attachment for the Reds. I’ve been accused of having a similarity in my rooting interests for aged teams with great histories but little recent success to show for it, because Michigan is the same way. But that sentiment is accurate in that I had the geographic advantage of living in the state where one of the most successful college football programs in the history of the game happened to exist. I became a Michigan fan because that’s what I saw and one of the first things I vividly remember is the cool helmets compared to almost every other team that they played against. Coming full circle again, I remember thinking how distinctive the all-red kits of LFC were compared to their opposing numbers (young communist even then…)

But the point that Brian made that triggered this post is his measure of disdain for the “petrosheik” clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City (even though the former is owned by a Russian, not a ‘sheik’, it’s still oil money.) While both of the latter clubs have history in the Premier League (Chelsea’s considerably superior to City’s), their recent success is (ahem) fueled largely by their respective owners’ status as billionaires. This allows both clubs to spend vastly more than most of their rivals and, therefore, sweep up the world’s soccer talent and use it to create championship teams. The Premier League’s spending rules are fairly few; nothing like many American sports’ leagues salary caps or luxury taxes and certainly nothing like the Bundesliga’s defined spending limits, as most of those clubs are municipally-owned. That kind of largesse is looked upon by Brian and many others as, ironically, ‘cheap’ in that the club didn’t work to build its own development system or “play by the rules” in direct competition with its rivals, but instead bought its way to success. Consequently, they’re considered less viable from a fan interest standpoint because they’re seen as artificial and it’s assumed that a new fan would only be interested because they’re two of the best teams in the top division right now, rather than something more genuine. Of course, part of my attachment to teams like Liverpool and Michigan is the fact that they were very successful. That meant it was gratifying to watch them play, because they usually won, but it was also one of the main reasons that I saw them in the first place: lots of people wanted to see them because they usually won. Therefore, TV networks were glad to show them because the networks made money and they also paid out money to the teams in question, enabling Liverpool, at least, to pay more for players and Michigan to at least create better facilities under the NCAA’s artificial “amateurism” system.

Considering that the NCAA is currently wrestling with critics of that artificial system that prevents giving athletes a share of the money they’re earning and requires schools like Michigan, with vastly more resources and far greater fanbases with even more resources, to play by the same rules as the Ball States, the disgust with teams like City is a bit questionable from a college sports perspective. It’s not as if I don’t understand the reaction. I share it. Liverpool is one of the most successful teams in the history of both the Premier League and international soccer (although they haven’t won the home league in quite some time, just like Michigan…) Man City has long been a member of the top flight, but has almost always been an also-ran. Their recent run of success has been created entirely by their essential status as “Qatar FC”, as Brian refers to them. They lack anything remotely like the fanbase of LFC, Arsenal, or their crosstown rivals, Manchester United, but they’re the hot item of the moment because they’re winning with a lot of the talent from the Continent and South America, bought and paid for by oil money. It seems cheap, in a sports sense, that they simply tapped a few holes in the ground and are suddenly winning the League and competing for the Champions League title on a regular basis.

But, what, exactly is wrong with that?

When the stake is finally driven through the NCAA’s heart and some share of the billions in revenue is distributed to the players of major college football and basketball, it stands to reason that the archaic rules of amateurism in terms of recruiting will also be swept away. If that means that Michigan and its huge alumni base can suddenly bring their full powers to bear in terms of attracting talent, why wouldn’t they? Michigan, the school, can outspend all but a few other institutions. Based on occasionally quantifiable evidence, it seems that the world’s largest alumni organization can outspend anyone. If we can bring the best athletes here, would that make Michigan a different form of Man City?

The counter-argument is that Michigan, while playing by the rules, built up one of the largest and most devoted followings of any program via sustained success. Consequently, the school has money to spend because it won within the rules and isn’t winning because it has money (barring the fact that facilities and other incidentals generated from that success are pretty attractive to the average athlete.) Michigan, ostensibly, earned its fans the “honest” way and now benefits from succeeding in that effort to a degree greater than any other school. But is being a dyed-in-the-wool, “traditional” winner a better choice for a new fan than another school simply because that team has the institutional and historical advantages that other teams do not? Liverpool is in the same situation. Sustained success earned sufficient money and fan support to enable that success to be continued until LFC, too, was purchased by very wealthy Americans (former money managers and now sports, specifically the Red Sox, not oil) who now spend considerable amounts of money trying to keep the club at the elite level.

Contrasting again is the question of: What makes fandom worthwhile? Is it more satisfying to root for a little guy like Northwestern, long the stepchild of the Big 10 until achieving decent success in the last couple decades? Or for a Purdue, which has almost never been able to rise above the traditional powers of its league? Tottenham and Sunderland are good comparisons in the Premier League. But would you suggest that to a new fan, to immerse themselves in the frustration of watching an average or poor team simply because they’re the little guy and it might be extra satisfying once a decade when they make 5^th place? Is it likewise a bad idea to suggest that they simply join the crowd and root for one of the other big powers, because that’s what so many other people do (the best example in this case from an EPL perspective being Man U over the past 20 years)?

I guess my answer to that would be: watch what you like. Watch a ton of EPL (or college football) and see which teams’ style you enjoy or which players you really like to see perform. That one is likely to be your favorite almost regardless of record. Winning will still affect things, of course, because people are naturally drawn to successful things. But it won’t be everything. As Brian notes, Chelsea, while enormously successful in recent years, plays godawful, suffocating, boring football. Man City, OTOH, plays an up-tempo, attacking style which is far more entertaining. From my own interest, I’m thankful that Liverpool’s current style is also the attacking game, as they’re striker-heavy. In contrast, watching Michigan’s team in the past couple years on both offense and defense has been an exercise in head-pounding against the nearest hard surface. I can imagine new fans of the game enjoying LFC on the field. I cannot say the same for Michigan, but I know there are plenty of other fans who would say otherwise, because that's essentially what fandom is about.