« on: November 6, 2018, 05:37:44 pm »
Here we go again, and I am certain that after last time out, and Hellrazor's excellent preview of the home leg, we are all familiar with the current iteration of Belgrade's finest. This time, it's a trek to Serbia, and the latest news is that Xherdan Shaquiri will not travel, on account of not being the right sort of chap, which is a rum excuse for not playing a game of football.
That's a slippery slope, in my view. When you start leaving out players because of who they are, rather than on pure football terms, you have to wonder where that will end. In future, will a team be able to effectively select their opponents? It should be said that Shaq's celebrations in the World Cup for Switzerland against the Serbs did not help.
That, folks, is apparently a Kosovan gesture of support, and the Serbs do not appreciate sentiments like that, for reasons which are beyond our purview here.
In any case, back when Yugoslavia was still a Thing and Bill Shankly was at the helm for our club in 1973, we had to play Red Star, and it did not work out well. Peter Wooton explains...
We played Red Star Belgrade, who played a continental style of football. The boot room saw that and Shankly saw Red Star put on an exhibition of football at Anfield in ’73 and he realized then that the 60s tactics weren’t going to work anymore. He had to adopt a new style of football with ball playing centre-halves and that was in November 1973 and by May 1974 Liverpool were doing that in the FA Cup Final, so that was in just five months.
They were the first team in England to do that and obviously they were copying the continental style, the Dutch teams and of course what they saw first hand with Red Star.
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Larry Lloyd seems to have been the main victim of that cull, but the big Bristol man didn't exactly wilt under the pressure, going on to win two European Cups with Nottingham Forest in later years. Brian Clough clearly didn't agree with Bill Shankly's assessment.
Given Shaq's absence, I do not, as the Kaiser Chiefs did, predict a riot but these guys will be no mugs on their home turf. A draw might do just fine, thank you very much.
« Last Edit: November 6, 2018, 06:25:28 pm by Tepid T₂O »
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