One Last Month, One Last Run
This sure beats playing FIFA (or even PES) all summer.
“So,” a casually football-curious friend asked me the other day, in between a few (meaningful! intriguing!) Games 7s in other, lesser sports: “when do the playoffs start in soccer?”
I resisted the urge to talk down and explain, as if I were lecturing a lobotomized child, the basics we’ve all explained to so many other debutantes many times. Instead of another refresher on domestic cups vs European tournaments vs league seasons, I gave the clearest and most honest answer:
“It’s right now.”
Because it is. Because it’s been right now. The high stakes are here and have been, and not just since the (latest) Real fiasco or the toxic hangover burp at Bournemouth or the shameful immolation at the Etihad.
Because, tomorrow, when Liverpool host the Fulham Football Club at Anfield – a dizzying and logic-defying (by the standards of other, lesser sports) nine months nearly to the day since this season first turned sour and wrong in a disorienting, sun-soaked, still-hungover-from-the-quad-that-wasn’t early August tie at Craven Cottage – the “playoffs” (the play-in, the run-in, the race to salvage something from this long, weird, unlucky and frustrating year) will have been ongoing for months, if not from that very day on the Thames.
That’s how this works. In the Premier League, you’re always in the running, until the day you aren’t. That day could come in May, or it could come much sooner. So here we are. It is May, with only five games before us ahead of an empty summer of empty transfer gossip. And there is much to play for.
That’s something. It’s not what we’re used to and it’s not what we expected. The disappointment and the frustration (and, probably, the entitlement) is seen all over. Surely, when Jurgen ran over to blow up the fourth official on Sunday, blowing up his hip or leg in the process, earning himself at least a one-game touchline banishment in this crucial month, we could all relate somewhat.
The drama with Paul Tierney is telling. Winners don’t whine about the officiating. But it also belies a turn of fortune. All of a sudden, with Luis Diaz back after six long tortutous months and Diogo Jota finding the net like Eric Adams finds new weird shit to say and Curtis Jones in strong form – as, meanwhile, all the other clubs desperately gameplan for New Trent – we have the horses and we have the swagger.
It’s kind of nice, except for the Champions League theme to ring out at Anfield next fall comme il faut, we’ll need a fair bit of help. Doing everything right and falling short is a bitter pill, but that’s the meal before us.
It was long ago last summer, away at Fulham, whom Anfield hosts tomorrow, when you first opened a can of 2022-2023 vintage Liverpool Football Club, inhaled the bouquet, and wondered who the hell had left it on the window sill to spoil. Then you took another sip early Sunday and knew the mix was right after all, that the brew just needed to be properly aged and served. Then if you blinked and drank again you spat it right out again before savoring the final sip, Diogo Jota squatting on the Anfield pitch like a button-mashing Buddha, swishing it around your mouth for delicious days. Keep your shirt on, Richie.
lolololol
All of us keep our shirts on, for now. It’s May, and the ingredients for intrigue and meaningful football are there. We are underdogs again. We will need help, but we can’t worry (too much) about that. Our five games left are against three tricky midtable clubs and two in the relegation zone, but since this is the Premier League and this is a Liverpool that’s dropped three points to Leeds and Forest, they are all “playoff games.”
You’d think this is our game to lose. Fulham are missing their captain Tim Ream. And Aleksandr Mitrovic, their tough and prolific center-forward, the guy who mugged a meek and tentative Trent on the way to stealing two precious points from us way back then, is still on a long ban for roughing up the refs. Yet they can play just fine. Just ask City, who needed luck and work and trickery to escape Craven Cottage with three points before our Tottenham tragicomedy.
“Playoff” football, baby. Let’s go get it done, and leave aside the owner intrigue and transfer soap opera for another few weeks.
