Picture the scene.
A beaming and drained Gary Lineker turns from his studio guests to face the camera. He and they have just been watching a replay of Steven Gerrard losing his shit at Mo Salah’s winning goal. The Rangers manager is so spent with joy that his eyebrows have long since disappeared off his narrow forehead. Rio Ferdinand is panto-annoyed but magnanimous and gushing about an ‘truly epic’ achievement at the NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium.
Lineker makes a quip about Liver birds, chicken Kievs, and filleting Real. He signs off by saying something about how Liverpool fans have been waiting for this feeling to come, then winks and bids goodnight. Cue montage. The twangy low-fi strains of Blur’s Tender start up with slo-mo footage of Liverpool fans walking towards the stadium, before the anthemic beat kicks in. Images of Klopp holding aloft the European Cup coincide with the line ‘Love’s the greatest thing.’
The next morning’s papers and your timeline are saturated with the wall-to-wall coverage of Liverpool’s Champions League victory. Images of Firmino biting down on his winners medal with unfathomably white teeth make sharp contrast to Ronaldo’s exasperated and contorted face. ‘My hero, my mate’ descriptions accompany a widely shared picture of a hands-in-pockets Jurgen Klopp, drinking in the moment alone on the pitch; looking into the middle-distance like a happy drunk.
Po-faced journalists, who normally waste no chance to reprimand football fans for their raucous behaviour and *gasp* use of flares, suddenly put their sanctimony and pearl-clutching to one side to wax lyrical about the atmosphere and frantically search Getty Images for plumes of red smoke. They gush about what this could mean for Liverpool as a ‘genuine footballing superpower’ once more, whilst quietly deleting their alternative pieces about how Klopp has a cup final problem.
The Liverpool squad return home to a rousing – and live-televised – welcome. Sky Sports News spend forty minutes just staring at airport tarmac. Their reporter-on-the-spot interviews the only type of football fan who takes part in Sky Sports interviews, wearing official club merchandise from head-to-toe and needing little prompting to give a shockingly bad solo rendition of the Salah song to camera, whilst a mortified child tries to shuffle out of shot.
Gleeful Scousers start using more than one hand to display their European Cup haul, with an open palm and either thumb or middle-finger, depending on who it is directed to. Fan forums are filled with Lord of the Rings based photoshops, flowery 12 stanza poems, and faux Shakespearean essay posts. And then there’s the flags. Poems on flags. Neo-Soviet styled manager faces on flags. Beatles based flags – the ‘Fab Six’. And the classic My bird – ‘My bird’s got a boss set of jugs’ – flags.
Depending on your personal allegiances, this all sounds either dreamlike or nightmarish.
I’ll level with you, as a Manchester United supporter it is absolutely the latter. Not just because of skewed bias and unashamed pettiness, but because no one revels in their own glory quite like Liverpool fans. They wrap themselves up in their own mythology like it was a glittery sari. It’s irrational and immature to lump a whole set of people into one archetype, but I’ll do it anyway. It’s gonna be unbearable. Fucking Liverpool fans are gonna be unbearable. And they know it.
It was all so obvious as soon as they beat Manchester City 3-0 at Anfield. Some United fans celebrated blue implosion, but they didn’t see the bigger picture. Quite apart from the fact that Liverpool are – and always should be – the real enemy, it was all leading to ultimate Scouse victory. There were self-assuring excuses and caveats we could use for City winning the thing, but for Liverpool they don’t exist. Less money, ‘proper’ football club, great football – it’s all so sickening.
Liverpool Football Club – *six* times European Cup winners. Good or bad, get used to it, because it’s going to happen. Wake me up in September.
