Yes, and…Real Madrid
“Win at Newcastle, and.” That was how every rosy scenario for Liverpool Football Club’s final three months of this weird, elongated, World Cup-interrupted, injury-plagued and doubt-filled season began. Pick up three points at the sportswashers, and. And then you could talk about top-four, about signing Jude Bellingham, about making a serious go at winning something, about how it was just bad luck and bad injuries and bad FSG bumbling that saw us tumble into mid-table months after the quad slipped away.
Here we are at the “and.” And it’s another European night at Anfield. Where were you the last time competitive Champions League football wasn’t a Liverpool Football Club rite of passage every time the winter slowly turned to spring? Seven straight years in the tournament, three appearances in the final, and one shuffle-dance with club football’s grandest trophy has a way of clouding your perspective. Precious nights like these are are not ours by right, though it may feel that way, because glory is fleeting and good times come and vanish again before you knew what happened or what you had. The struggles of this season, then, came at just the right time, a patch of rough seas just long and dark enough to get you to tighten your grip, to hold fast to what you have before it leaves again.
Portentous, isn’t it? By right it must be Real Madrid. Who else would come to Anfield now but the competition’s dominant franchise? It is tempting to think about poor Karius and the debacle of the Paris police, but it’s not about 2019 or 2022 any more than it is about keeping the momentum going to collect six more points from Palace and Wolves, to top-four finishes and attracting a 19-year-old wunderkid to anchor our midfield for the next seven years. Because it’s Real.
Real visits at possibly just the right time for the 2022-2023 Reds. Real is in what qualifies for them as domestic off-cycle, eight points off of Barcelona, the La Liga trophy on track to make another of its periodic appearances in Catalonia. Madrid, cabron. Salud el campeon. That’s something we wanted to shout, didn’t we? And we didn’t. Because last year was an off-year for them, too. And look what they managed to do.
And they are still Real. They are still Ancelotti, they are still Benzema. They will be without Toni Kroos and Aurelien Tchouameni, the club legend and the up-and-comer who was almost a red. And that’s still a tall order for an 18-year-old in his first year in the first team, the happy surprise of the season.
Surely it won’t be as punchless and gutless and ghastly and weird as the muted visit two years ago to the empty stadium of Real’s B-team. Surely it will be something closer to 2009 than 2014’s lost group stage. Surely it will be a bridge to the next And. And there are a few. See Darwin knock a few in, and. See Trent exorcise his ghosts and shut down Vinicius Jr, and.
And nothing. Because it’s another European night at Anfield, it’s the knockout stage, it’s Real Madrid and we have a puncher’s chance. Up the fucking Reds, and nothing else.
