Author Topic: Hesbighesred's Take on who should be favourites for the final?  (Read 50145 times)

Offline Hinesy

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Interesting thought from Hesbighesred.



If you’ll allow me the indulgence, I’d like to take a moment to look ahead to the final, and to tell you what I’d like to see there.

I’d like to see us be the favourites.
 
What do I mean by that?

 
I mean that I would like us…
 
 
  • to believe that we are the better team.
  • to use our greater experience.
  • to play like the trophy is destined to be ours.

 
 
Let’s think, for a minute, about how we’ve lost finals before, and how teams have beaten us. In particular, look at what Real did to us. Real – the cynical, white-shirted manifestation of the cold reality of greater power. The instantiation of superiority.
 
 

  • They stayed tight.
  • They let us expend our energy.
  • They did not get caught up in the emotion of the occasion.
  • They were, above all, ruthless.

 
 
No matter what happens, our opponents will be not just first timers, but first timers with the added ‘what a dream to even be here’ factor that we had last season. They will have a certain freedom because of that. They will have nothing to lose.
 
So how do we take a team with nothing to lose, and make sure that they lose everything, nonetheless?
 

We become that bastard, stubborn, resolute and impossible to breach Liverpool that’s been so dominant this season. We spoil, we ruin, we let them expend their energy. We understand that the longer the game remains even, the more likely we are to win it. We understand that the more they come at us, the more likely they are to be open at the back. We realise that teams are often at their most vulnerable when they’re at their most positive – a counter attack, a cool finish, a ‘first chance of the night against the run of play’ taken, and reality comes crashing in on the power of hope and dream.
 
And then, if they have any fight left in them, we take the sting out of the game. We keep possession when necessary. Take the ball when necessary. Defend deep when necessary. Foul the young ingenue out of the game when necessary. We do whatever is necessary. And when our opponent pauses, in the flurry of his youthful intensity, that’s when we plunge our hidden knife deep, deep, deep into a heart that was just not broken enough to fight men like us.

And our hand of death, in twisting the knife, will show every bit of the hard-won skill and ability which lies behind our ruthlessness.


The crushing embrace of inevitability overcomes them. An Icarussing of our opponents: “Who were we, to reach so high? Did we really dare to raise ourselves to the redness of that Liverpool sun? How nice to have flown, but how inevitable that our pale wings should melt, and we should come crashing down into the sea, here, where it’s cool. Here, where gravity doesn’t pull us down anymore. Here, where we belong.”

We do that not because we are cruel – but because this is not a game to us. This is not a beautiful journey. This is who we are. This is what we do.
 
This is our destiny.
 
Dreams are beautiful. Dreams give you wings.
 
But destiny is the sun.
 
And the sun is red.
Yep.