This is all just a misunderstanding, then; but misunderstandings are easy to avoid if you engage your brain and your decency and your love for your own club rather than your hatred for another.
The “victims” part is easy: anyone who’s been around English football for the last thirty years knows exactly what that means. Disgusting and needless; Manchester City should apologise outright on behalf of their players and management for that one, but they won’t and they won’t be obliged to. Which tells you all you need to know about the state of the world in 2019, and English football in particular. A thousand Kopparberg cans couldn’t compare, if only because physical damage is tangible and tends to be punished. The likes of this is far more insidious, and has been for 30 years.
“Battered in the streets” carries a little more in the way of plausible deniability, but let’s be honest: it’s definitely a dig at Sean Cox, and a pathetic, senseless one at that. Liverpool supporters being attacked in Kiev by local hooligans is, in itself, a disturbing thing to be signing about. But the haste with which club and fans alike have backed away from the association of those words with Sean Cox is telling. It carries with it a tacit admission that a line has been crossed, and it has. Yet again; as it has been on countless occasions since 1989.
“Victims of it all”. Think about the etymology of the term “victims” in this specific context. Its genesis, as much as anything, was vested in outrage that the people of Liverpool wouldn’t just go away after Hillsborough, but instead remained conspicuous on the national stage for many years afterwards campaigning for truth and justice. That was what rankled: the fact that they didn’t go away, their continuing profile.
If you think about Liverpool supporters who were “battered” last season: which ones had the most profile? Whose name was on a banner that club captain Jordan Henderson and his teammates hoisted in the Stadio Olimpico after qualifying for the final? For whose family and medical bills were Liverpool supporters (and players) all over social media and the nation’s TV screens for weeks and months appealing for assistance? The fans attacked in a restaurant in Kiev, whose names were never released as far as I know and were barely even mentioned again by the mainstream media after the 25th of May? Or the one whose injuries were so grave that he’s still learning to walk and talk again? The one who had a fundraiser played in his honour in front of 27,000 people as recently as last month?
The fact that Liverpool, supporters and players alike, have responded so enthusiastically to the plight of this man and his family is exactly the kind of fodder that has long since attracted the sarcastic, sneering accusations of victimhood at the people of Liverpool; not a group of largely anonymous supporters set upon in a restaurant. With all due respect to their ordeal, which must have been frightening, it had no real profile nationally, and what it did have certainly didn’t form part of any campaign. If a group of supporters, drunk on their own hatred and thirst for “banter” and a serious rival, were going to tire of hearing about the plight of a Liverpool supporter or supporters to the point where they were moved to sing about someone being “battered in the streets” in retaliation, who was it realistically going to be?
People like this have never understood that the tragedies of which they make such light at the altar of points-scoring and “banter”, be it 39 people at Heysel, 96 at Hillsborough or a single individual ahead of Liverpool’s game with Roma last season, could have just as easily been any match-going supporter. They never will, either; so be it, there’s very little anyone can do to change that. But those players…wow. Even if you believe that they were simply copying a fan chant and didn’t fully understand the meaning of it, to sing proudly about a fellow professional from another team being injured when you’ve just won a league title is both pitiful and stupid beyond belief.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but having fought for the best part of 30 years for even a sliver of recognition that 96 Liverpool supporters died at a football game through no fault of their own, I doubt Liverpudlians are all that “offended” by this. This is simply the latest in a long line of casual baiting, and I can only imagine you’ve developed a pretty thick skin by now, especially when that kind of abuse is coming from small clubs like Everton and Manchester City. I would like to think that Sean Cox and his family are not “offended” either (“disappointed”, I believe is the word Martin Cox used). “Offended” is the wrong description.
Now, “angry”, on the other hand…that might be a bit closer to the mark. People have been wondering since Sunday how Liverpool can close the gap on these next season: well, having had to eat shit in congratulating them on winning the league only to hear that they’ve been singing about a fan (or fans) of the club being beaten up and one of Liverpool’s players being injured, I would say that Jürgen Klopp, a man who mentions anger a lot, will be missing a trick if he doesn’t try to harness the folly of those City players into something tangible for next season. This is a game of small details, and if it’s going to come down to a single point again, vengeance could make all the difference.
But first, to Madrid; and a trophy of which City, to use their words, have “won fuck all”.
