Klopp after Tuesday night's game. EMPICS Sport
EMPICS Sport
“THE SECOND HALF we made a mistake – we didn’t carry on playing football.”
It was fitting that Jurgen Klopp couldn’t come up with any more complex an explanation for Liverpool’s collapse against Sevilla than that his team had just, uh, stopped playing football. Maybe Liverpool fans would have preferred a more analytical tone from their manager, something about not counterpressing the half-space or retreating too much into a low defensive block.
But perhaps Klopp, keenly attuned to football’s emotional chakras, understood that such a tack wouldn’t have been fair on the game he’d just watched. For this was a big, dumb, lovable eejit of a match; a freewheeling, white-knuckle roller coaster ride with fireworks and candy floss; a hell-raising night on the town with Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole type of game.
For all it’s dramatic ebb and flow, the crux of the game’s narrative was the Sevilla comeback, whose completion in the 93rd minute was inevitable from the moment Alberto Moreno decided to reprise his hapless Frank Spencer character.
Covering the game on television, the post-match focus was on the errors, the cock-ups, the bumbling ‘Ooh Betty!’ slapstick never far away with the Liverpool rearguard. Graeme Souness wielded the hammer on Moreno and Klopp, Neil Lennon poked through the defensive crash scene looking for the black box.
But afterwards my Dad texted me. “That’s what you call a game. Plenty action, two poor defences and 90+ minutes of excitement! A game of mistakes excites fans, if not pundits.” He was right of course, and we all enjoyed the game in studio too. But, y’know, just doing our job, Ma’am.
Still, it was a reminder in these uber-analysed times that sometimes a football match is just a football match, and when it’s a football match like that then maybe it should just be enjoyed for what it is. I figure my father has reached the stage of life where he has seen quite enough fascinating tactical battles, thank you very much: insane 3-3s all the way from here please!
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And for the continued existence of such matches we must thank coaches like Klopp. Where many a modern manager eyes victory like a cold-blooded Mergers & Acquisitions lawyer strategically plotting a takeover, the Liverpool boss prefers to whisk it off its feet with bold romantic gestures, serenading it with power ballads and naming constellations in its honour.
On nights like Tuesday Liverpool fans are within their rights to question his adventurous approach, and also the faith shown in Moreno and the rest of the defence, which Klopp has handled as an idealistic young cleric would a bunch of delinquent kids, in whom he retains faith that they could be something, goddammit, if only somebody believed in them!
Dejected Liverpool applaud their fans after the game. EMPICS Sport
EMPICS Sport
For the rest of us it is worthwhile to savour Liverpool’s regular conflagrations, because managerial styles that allow such runaway train-type matches may well eventually disappear. As coaching becomes an ever more academic discipline, with merging consensus on tactical approach and player preparation, expect top-level games to become increasingly cagey and risk-averse, with little room for the madness of Seville.
In fact, given the rapid developments in data analytics and in-game statistical modelling, how long before opposing coaches are replaced by two competing software programs, dugout-installed versions of those chess computers Garry Kasparov used to play against, continually reshaping formations and personnel in a football version of humanity’s automated, robotic future?
Frightening, maybe, but on the plus side there will be fewer touchline spats.
None of this is to decry the progress of understanding and analysis of the sport which is, really, just the Age of Enlightenment finally getting around to football. The desire to explain the game is only reflecting the scientific spirit that drives our society.For example, what has criticism of Martin O’Neill’s management of the Republic of Ireland been but an attack on primitive magic in the face of rational methods, O’Neill cast as a witch doctor eschewing medical science in favour of Cloughian hocus pocus?
But not everyone is on board with the Enlightenment. Last weekend Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling decried the increasingly prominent ‘Expected Goals’ statistic, describing it as “absolute nonsense”.
It was easy to attack Stelling for misunderstanding the value of xG (as it is modishly abbreviated), but perhaps he was reflecting a growing weariness among some who feel that goals, like laws and sausages, cease to inspire respect the more we know how they are made. This is a less sinister version of the backlash towards ‘experts’ and ‘elites’ that drove the Brexit and Trump phenomena, but it reflects the same irrational fear of modernity’s relentless technological thrust.
Though his football worldview is unashamedly emotional, Klopp is no luddite. But he is a socialist, as we learned this week. “I’m on the left, of course,” an excerpt from Rafael Honigstein’s biography of the manager revealed. “I believe in the welfare state. My political understanding is this: if I am doing well, I want others to do well, too.”
Sevilla show their delight. Daniel Gonzalez Acuna
Daniel Gonzalez Acuna
Like those other doomed lefties, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, Klopp seeks to make sense of grinding, algorithmic modernity by championing the humanity that remains, such as it is – “They are human beings. It was misjudgement,” he offered in final explanation in Seville.
And when the result is as gloriously flawed, vital and defiant of analysis as Tuesday night, then long may he continue to do so. At least until Liverpool download his replacement.
The42 has just published its first book, Behind The Lines, a collection of some of the year’s best sports stories. Pick up your copy in Eason’s, or order it here today (€10):
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Thank Klopp we still have flawed, human games like Tuesday's Seville cracker
“THE SECOND HALF we made a mistake – we didn’t carry on playing football.”
It was fitting that Jurgen Klopp couldn’t come up with any more complex an explanation for Liverpool’s collapse against Sevilla than that his team had just, uh, stopped playing football. Maybe Liverpool fans would have preferred a more analytical tone from their manager, something about not counterpressing the half-space or retreating too much into a low defensive block.
But perhaps Klopp, keenly attuned to football’s emotional chakras, understood that such a tack wouldn’t have been fair on the game he’d just watched. For this was a big, dumb, lovable eejit of a match; a freewheeling, white-knuckle roller coaster ride with fireworks and candy floss; a hell-raising night on the town with Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole type of game.
For all it’s dramatic ebb and flow, the crux of the game’s narrative was the Sevilla comeback, whose completion in the 93rd minute was inevitable from the moment Alberto Moreno decided to reprise his hapless Frank Spencer character.
Covering the game on television, the post-match focus was on the errors, the cock-ups, the bumbling ‘Ooh Betty!’ slapstick never far away with the Liverpool rearguard. Graeme Souness wielded the hammer on Moreno and Klopp, Neil Lennon poked through the defensive crash scene looking for the black box.
Still, it was a reminder in these uber-analysed times that sometimes a football match is just a football match, and when it’s a football match like that then maybe it should just be enjoyed for what it is. I figure my father has reached the stage of life where he has seen quite enough fascinating tactical battles, thank you very much: insane 3-3s all the way from here please!
And for the continued existence of such matches we must thank coaches like Klopp. Where many a modern manager eyes victory like a cold-blooded Mergers & Acquisitions lawyer strategically plotting a takeover, the Liverpool boss prefers to whisk it off its feet with bold romantic gestures, serenading it with power ballads and naming constellations in its honour.
On nights like Tuesday Liverpool fans are within their rights to question his adventurous approach, and also the faith shown in Moreno and the rest of the defence, which Klopp has handled as an idealistic young cleric would a bunch of delinquent kids, in whom he retains faith that they could be something, goddammit, if only somebody believed in them!
For the rest of us it is worthwhile to savour Liverpool’s regular conflagrations, because managerial styles that allow such runaway train-type matches may well eventually disappear. As coaching becomes an ever more academic discipline, with merging consensus on tactical approach and player preparation, expect top-level games to become increasingly cagey and risk-averse, with little room for the madness of Seville.
In fact, given the rapid developments in data analytics and in-game statistical modelling, how long before opposing coaches are replaced by two competing software programs, dugout-installed versions of those chess computers Garry Kasparov used to play against, continually reshaping formations and personnel in a football version of humanity’s automated, robotic future?
Frightening, maybe, but on the plus side there will be fewer touchline spats.
None of this is to decry the progress of understanding and analysis of the sport which is, really, just the Age of Enlightenment finally getting around to football. The desire to explain the game is only reflecting the scientific spirit that drives our society.For example, what has criticism of Martin O’Neill’s management of the Republic of Ireland been but an attack on primitive magic in the face of rational methods, O’Neill cast as a witch doctor eschewing medical science in favour of Cloughian hocus pocus?
But not everyone is on board with the Enlightenment. Last weekend Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling decried the increasingly prominent ‘Expected Goals’ statistic, describing it as “absolute nonsense”.
It was easy to attack Stelling for misunderstanding the value of xG (as it is modishly abbreviated), but perhaps he was reflecting a growing weariness among some who feel that goals, like laws and sausages, cease to inspire respect the more we know how they are made. This is a less sinister version of the backlash towards ‘experts’ and ‘elites’ that drove the Brexit and Trump phenomena, but it reflects the same irrational fear of modernity’s relentless technological thrust.
Though his football worldview is unashamedly emotional, Klopp is no luddite. But he is a socialist, as we learned this week. “I’m on the left, of course,” an excerpt from Rafael Honigstein’s biography of the manager revealed. “I believe in the welfare state. My political understanding is this: if I am doing well, I want others to do well, too.”
Like those other doomed lefties, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, Klopp seeks to make sense of grinding, algorithmic modernity by championing the humanity that remains, such as it is – “They are human beings. It was misjudgement,” he offered in final explanation in Seville.
And when the result is as gloriously flawed, vital and defiant of analysis as Tuesday night, then long may he continue to do so. At least until Liverpool download his replacement.
The42 has just published its first book, Behind The Lines, a collection of some of the year’s best sports stories. Pick up your copy in Eason’s, or order it here today (€10):
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Champions League column Liverpool Sevilla Seville tommy martin