On the Precipice of Greatness
Daniel Wise
Barcelona FC’s home, Camp Nou. The phrase, ‘Mes que un club,’ is the club’s motto, ‘More than a Club.’
House Liverpool. House Barca. House Ajax. House Hotspur. There is a land far off in the distance across a gaping ocean where these venerable families of soccer are vying for ultimate glory. There’s a funny connection that soccer fans have with fans of the Game of Thrones series. Both groups will watch with bated breath on a weekly basis as billionaire soccer clubs vie for their own Iron Thrones. May is an exciting month in European soccer. This is the time when domestic leagues start crowning champions and exiling the unworthy. Of the lesser domestic cup championships, teams claim supplemental or consolation silverware. On top of all the European championships is the UEFA Champions League. This is the yearly game of thrones that soccer fans salivate over from September until May.
Over 30 teams participated in a grueling group stage and knockout tournament. Now we have reached the final four. I have written about this year’s tournament in-depth, but this article is about what’s happening right now. We are in the closing stages of the two-leg elimination tournament, and four teams have already played the first leg of their two-leg set of games. Liverpool FC of the English Premier League faced a domineering Barcelona FC of Spain’s La Liga. Barcelona had the force of Lionel Messi and a full-throated crowd at their home stadium, Camp Nou. A 3-0 deficit was too much for Liverpool to overcome. Just a short ways away in London, England, Tottenham Hotspur FC hosted Dutch Eredivisie club Ajax. Led by a couple of young Flying Dutchmen, Ajax came out ahead with a precious away goal that gives them a tie-breaking advantage in the next game.
The stage is set for potential surprises and miracles. The Champions League has never lacked surprises over the years and anything can truly happen. Any of these four teams could pull through and punch a ticket for a date in Spain to determine the winner. The Champions League final will take place in Madrid, Spain on June 1st. Here’s a primer to get you up to speed on these dramatic semi-final games.
Matchup 1: Barcelona FC at Liverpool FC | Tuesday, May 7 | 3:00 PM
‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ is the song of Liverpool FC. And the Liverpool faithful will need to sing it loud and clear when Barcelona visits.
Liverpool FC is down but they’re far from out. This team will be channeling their inner Chumba Wumba as they are determined to get back up again from a surely embarrassing knock-down. Liverpool and Champions League Miracles go together like ice cream and root beer. Think 3-0 down with 90 minutes to go is hard? You should see what they did 3-0 down with 45 minutes. I’ll give you a little rewind to the 2005 Champions League final between Liverpool and the—at the time—Italian Serie A behemoths AC Milan. Milan weren’t quite on the gravy train as they were in the 90s. At that time, they were the Barcelona of European soccer. But they were still incredibly strong in the early 2000s. Liverpool were behind 3-0 at halftime in the 2005 final, but a second half miracle comeback by Liverpool took the game to extra time. After an additional 30 minutes and no advantage either way, the teams took the affair to a penalty shootout. Liverpool withstood the pressure and took the game 3-2 on penalties. The rest they say is history, which Liverpool fans love to sing about. And if you mention 2007 final to Liverpool fans, they’ll have very little to say about it.
This was a round-about way of saying that Liverpool has pulled a more desperate comeback, and this year’s team has all the tools to make the comeback. But there is an incredibly strong Barcelona team standing in their way. While that 2005 AC Milan squad was a nightmare with the likes of players such as Andrea Pirlo, Kaka, and Herman Crespo, they didn’t have Lionel Messi. Messi is Barcelona’s X Factor as he is a constant threat on the attacking third. That’s not even mentioning the likes of Luis Suarez, Phillips Coutinho, and Ivan Rakitic. To really drive the point home, Barcelona’s entire roster is a who’s-who of European soccer. It’s disgusting.
But Liverpool is not a hard-luck underdog by any stretch. Liverpool is a billion-dollar club with a squad worth about 3 of Oprah’s mansions, give or take $20 million. Their squad is spear headed by the prolific goal scorer Mohamed Salah and the speedy and clever Sadio Mane. Their midfield is stacked with talent and their defense is led by a stone golem of a man, Virgil van Dijk.
Lionel Messi is the golden god of Barcelona, and he’s a big reason why they’ll lift the Champions League trophy this year.
Liverpool’s head coach is the German maniac Juergen Klopp who will undoubtedly drop the hammer in the second-leg game. He’s the master of a high-pressure defense football style called gegenpress in German, or colloquially known as ‘heavy metal football.’ Barcelona on the other hand is coached by Ernesto Valverde who is both tactically and personally Klopp’s antithesis. He’s a reserved, soft-spoken man who pursues photography as a hobby when he’s not coaching. He takes a balanced approach to his squad that takes a more fluid style depending on the competition. The way that Barcelona is able to adapt to the competition is the balance that Valverde instills in his tactical style. This is different from the Barcelona of a few years ago that solidified the ‘tiki-taka’ style of Pep Guardiola’s fast moving and fast passing offense.
Why you should cheer for Barcelona: Everyone loves a winner, and this is a historic team that will be talked about for decades to come. This is a historic team that has dominated world soccer for the better part of 15 years. Lionel Messi will be written as the greatest player of all time (despite the lack of a World Cup championship). Lastly, the team’s history is expansive and fascinating.
Why you should cheer for Liverpool: Liverpool is a great club that would be the greatest of all time if English professional soccer stopped after the year 1990. Since that time, the club has always been second fiddle to the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal. But Liverpool has a certain scrappiness that’s appealing and an underdog mindset that’s endearing in the way that the New England Patriots are endearing. All joking aside, and I do have a love for this club, it would just be cool to see Liverpool pull off that 2005 magic all over again. No kidding, that 2005 final was bonkers.
Matchup 2: Tottenham Hotspur FC at Ajax | Wednesday, May 8 | 3:00 PM
Tottenham Hotspur is in dire straits, but there is still hope for them to advance.
Here we have the true underdogs of the Champions League aspiring to reach the final in Madrid. This is the fun game for the neutral fans to tune into and just enjoy because it’s going to be really hard to determine the winner for this game. Tottenham Hotspur is a team that’s had a roller-coaster of a year in the English Premier League while Ajax is having its own harrowing neck-and-neck race for the top of the Eredivisie. If this game had taken place a month or two earlier, I would have favored Tottenham to win with a healthy Harry Kane leading them to the final. However, Kane’s season was cut short last month when he suffered an awful ankle injury against Manchester City earlier in the Champions League. Now it’s not so clear. Tottenham do have an ace in the hole with Son Heung-min. On the other end, Ajax is a strong team that matches up well against Tottenham. Their midfielder Donny van de Beek was the hero of the first leg of the matchup, and he could be hungry for another to push them through to the final.
The history of these two teams in European soccer isn’t as deep as Liverpool’s or Barcelona’s. In the case of Tottenham, the club hasn’t lifted any sort of silverware since winning the English League Cup in 2008. As Liverpool has been cursed by the existence of better, richer teams, the same goes for Tottenham but on a worse level. In the case of Ajax, the team from Amsterdam has lifted the Dutch Championship a staggering 33 times with their last championship coming in 2014. As impressive as that may sound, we’re still talking about Dutch top-flight soccer. That’s not a dig at the quality of the league, but perspective is everything. The Dutch have traditionally fielded strong domestic and national teams, but they don’t carry nearly the weight that Spain, Germany, or England do in terms of cash, team strength, and world-wide appeal.
I find it hard to believe that Tottenham will advance past this game, but the opportunity is in reach. Prior to this game, the Lillywhites presented a disaster of a soccer match against Bournmouth FC in the English Premier League. Tottenham went down to 9 men from two red card ejections and gave up an injury-time goal to Bournmouth. How the team and its manager recover after this, I have no idea. That’s why I think Wednesday’s game could be a bit of a wildcard. They will either let the defeat carry over on a short week schedule or they will steel their resolve and find a way to win. Over in the Netherlands, Ajax is doing quite well and could end up lifting the Eredivisie trophy this year. However, they are competing against a strong PSV Eindhoven squad. And as of this writing, Ajax will compete for the KNVB Trophy—the Dutch domestic cup—against Willem II Tilburg. Both teams are facing an extremely short fixture gap, so this game is going to come down to whoever wants to win more. My money is on Ajax, but I’m not ruling out a surprise from Tottenham.
Ajax players taking on a training session. Just look at those young faces. Not a care in the world. No such thing to them as Champions League pressure.
On the Managerial side, Tottenham is led by Mauricio Pochettino who has practiced the importance of patience and cohesion. The team plays a possession game that looks to draw defenders off of passing lanes to move the ball forward with smart runs and passes into space. The concern that fans had this year, and unfortunately became a reality was that injuries could throw off cohesion. The team’s fitness has been tried, and their current state of free fall is due to that liability. Erik ten Hag for Ajax is the embodiment of what’s called ‘total football.’ A term that was made famous by Dutch legend Johan Cruyff. Total football is a possession-based tactical philosophy that emphasizes fluidity over rigid organization. This basically means that players can freely move about the field because they will always have a teammate backing them up. This allows for short passing to transition into attack and a high-pressing defense that can win the ball early. Prior to joining Ajax, ten Hag was an understudy to Pep Guardiola at German club Bayern Munich where he served as the reserves coach. That experience served him well as he is now restoring Ajax to dominance in domestic and European soccer.
Erik ten Hag is the evolution of ‘total football’ and his philosophy will be key to Ajax advancing to the final.
Why you should cheer for Ajax: They are a young squad with beautiful players. No kidding, they are like a flying squadron of Abercrombie & Fitch models. Their style of soccer is also attractive and can be argued as a prime example of ‘the beautiful game.’ They are a fun club to support if you’re the type who wants to stand out as a soccer fan.
Why you should cheer for Tottenham Hotspur: They really are the underest of the under dogs in this whole European championship scene. They are a club that has underachieved in comparison to the expectations set ahead of the season. They have fallen short in their domestic campaigns, and this is really their final hope to eventually lose to Barcelona in the final. If you embrace your inner Hufflepuff, then this is your team.
As the year of European soccer comes to a close, take some time to soak in some of this atmosphere as you watch vicariously through your or a bar’s flat-screen 4K TV. May is the best month to be a soccer fan. If your team is vying for championship glory, then you get to relish the wins or curse the losses. For the neutral fans, it’s just fun to watch both sides lose their minds. It’s really the closest I’ll ever feel to being one of those hoity-toity, pretentious, sanctimonious types who say they’re neither Democrat or Republican. It’s a time to sit back and just take in the scene; a chance to do nothing and make no difference. Okay maybe it’s not exactly like that, but hey this is just a really fun time to love soccer. I hope you’ll take some time to enjoy it, too. Thank you so much for reading. As always, live well and watch more soccer.