Focus on the Football

AN ARTICLE BY MATTY

Football fans are more passionate than any fan base on Earth, with the exception of Bills Mafia (shameless advertisement on my part). We get so fixated on every aspect of the team, we fail to take a step back and recognize how good we have it at times. Something else that seems to be swept under the rug time and time again is the incredibly long odds we are constantly against.

Under Klopp, we have constantly punched above our weight and played beautiful football in doing so. No team should’ve been able to challenge City for so long. We’ve done so. No team should’ve been able to defeat Barcelona down 3-0 from the first leg. We did. No team should’ve become champions of everything unless they spent bucket loads upon bucket loads of money gained through sports-washing. We decided to flip the double birds at the world and win everything possible under Klopp, net spend be damned. But I’m not really writing about the past, or about results even. No, my purpose of this article is to describe a mindset change, where I feel like I am a much better fan as a result.

Before I continue, the main focus of this change is the title: focus on the football, not the results. Everything you could possibly think of is stacked against us. City and eventually Newcastle will become kings of this game with their money, it is inevitable. Madrid are still kings with their money, Barcelona are selling off anything they can to try and keep up with these teams, United will continue to spend loads whether or not it’s wise, Chelsea will do the same. Football as a sport has become one giant game of Monopoly, all that matters is who has the most money when it comes to results and trophies.

So it’d be unfair to base this Liverpool side’s success on the trophies won or the results, when the circumstances make it nearly impossible for us to win trophies. I’d much rather enjoy myself watching fluid, strong football than worry about winning leagues or European cups. The trophies would be awesome, but they might as well be considered the cherry on top rather than the entire reason for watching. And that’s what separates us as a whole from the glory hunters. Glory hunters bounce from club to club, supporting whoever wins the most and despising those that don’t meet their unreasonably high expectations. That’s not a fan. That’s TIA.

Imagine you’re playing a game of blackjack, and you’ve got a decent hand, but your opponent has a 10 and an ace. And your opponent cheats every single game so this keeps happening. And every time you speak up, you get kicked out of the casino. Congratulations, you’ve just seen a rendition of Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp versus the FA and Manchester City.

That Ajax game was a brilliant lesson for me in this. I frankly didn’t care that much whether or not we won that game, if we got the result we wanted. We played good football, the Liverpool way, and that’s what mattered to me. The results are secondary to the football. If we win trophies, great. It’s never gonna get old, winning trophies. But it might not happen, due to circumstances that are oftentimes out of our control. And that’s okay. As long as we play the Liverpool way and I like what I see from the lads, I will be happy. Win, lose, or draw.