While we’ve had to raise our expectations to superhuman levels to try and beat the cheats, Liverpool and Florian Wirtz remain human to a fault…
THERE’S a lot to be said for being on the right side of history. For being human to a fault.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently in relation to the vastly differing international retirement tours of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
One has – through hard work few are capable of, admittedly – turned himself into a deeply unlikeable machine sent to Earth to destroy all our goal records, before returning to whatever planet values petulance over having even a shred of self-awareness and care for others.
Such is the desire behind his pursuit, he made himself the poster boy of a sportswashed, glorified version of our English Conference League, with the sparse crowds to match.
The other is getting the acclaim he deserves, having relocated to a league akin to a luxury retirement home, so that he could save his depleting energy to ensure he ended his national career on a high.
That one just reached a World Cup final and was perhaps only kept from winning it again by the actions of Enzo Fernandez, who gives Ronaldo a run for his money in the petulance stakes, while the 1,000-goal-snatcher has just burned his bridges with his national team manager in 2,000 words.
Jorge Jesus ain’t reading all that, bro. He’s happy for you, though. Or sorry that happened.
Luckily, the bad actors attached to Manchester City – an ever-increasing number on the strength of the scenes around their win over Liverpool on Sunday – have been slightly better at summing up their feelings in fewer words, and even fewer blinks.
Their cheating brought them plenty of great times, and clearly will continue to do so until the Premier League decides it would like to restore some meaning to its competition.
And yet, there’s a lot to be said for being on the right side of history. For being human to a fault.
Jürgen Klopp was just that, and it’s why even if we don’t always agree with him, we’ll always love him. His humanity is more consistent than a Greater Manchester-born referee making life hard for himself.
He continues to show this – though, again, we may disagree – in his public and frequent support for Florian Wirtz, who continues to leave Liverpool fans scratching their heads.
The truth is, when you’re operating in the hundreds of millions, it’s a level of money that is hard for any of us fans to relate to, and therefore we struggle to relate to the human beings behind the pound signs.
It’s a superhuman price tag that used to only be so freely spent by serial cheaters in an attempt to maul any competition in the transfer market, but now has become more commonplace, hence why Liverpool were able to field two players of such value yesterday.
But while Bradley Barcola had almost as little impact as Wirtz did on the game, the recency of his arrival allows us to rationalise our feelings towards him with more humanity.
That period of grace is well and truly over for his German teammate, and yet he still hasn’t hit those superhuman heights we expect from such an inflated price tag.
Will he ever be able to hit those heights to end up on the right side of history at Liverpool now? It’s hard to say, this is after all, a player clearly lacking in confidence who looks human to a fault.
Some will argue he needs some consistency in terms of fitness of The Reds’ first-choice players around them, but it could also be argued by the same token that players of his price tag should be the ones who drag others up to their level, rather than allowing the opposite to happen.
Perhaps it is once again worth positing if, in fact, Richard Hughes et al would’ve been better off using those hundreds of millions to beef the squad out so that we could match the cheats being able to bring on the match-altering Jeremy Doku with more than the inexperienced Trey Nyoni.
The truth is we find it far easier to relate in a human way to a young kid being given the uphill task of regaining control when his team are down a man, a couple of titles, and at least 900 million pounds over at least nine seasons.
We’ll keep expecting superhuman perfection from the humans who cost nine figures. We’re used to having to expect perfection cause of that shower of sham, anyway.
Klopp may yet find a way to help him deliver that. After all, he’s managed to find that miracle when up against these cheats before.
