i was lucky enough to be at the press conference in barcelona after our 0-0 draw there last year. that night was the origin of the whole 'boring liverpool' thing. it was unbelievable. gh came in pretty pleased with himself after what seemed a job well done. a huge pack of spanish journalists then attacked him for 'crimes against football'. surreal stuff.
they were really agitated, animated, angry about what they'd seen. they were gabbling maniacally and the interpreter was struggling to keep up - you could see her thinking hard about what to say, probably because they were being so offensive. honestly they were like children, didn't seem to get it at all. GH tried to explain that these tactics were part of top-level football, that the result was actually quite important, and that he saw nothing wrong with having an effective game plan. he said 'you mightn't have enjoyed that, but my fans wouldn't have enjoyed it if we went out to play a really open game and were torn apart'.
i remember the catalans saying 'but mr houllier, the joke is on you, how do you hope to get through the second leg when your team can't score? liverpool cannot score playing like this.' this made GH very angry, i remember he sort of craned his neck forward, bulged his eyes out menacingly and said 'we can score three!' the catalans sniggered.
at this point an english journalist who was there, i think it was james lawton of the independent, said to GH: 'did you know that liverpool are only the second side to get a clean sheet at the nou camp this season, after ac milan?' GH was delighted with this and used it as a stick with which to beat the stupid spanish journos. he was too diplomatic to say outright that barca had no right to call us boring, since it was their fault that they completely failed to break us down. it was blatant sour grapes from the spanish, but GH, although he was angry, decided not to bother getting involved in the cat fight.
john toshack was there too, my god he's a fat bastard. he was wearing an enormous baggy suit like a tent and looked like humpty dumpty standing there. he seemed delighted with himself and his sun tan. after the main press conference was over a few of us went over to ask him what he thought. he said don't mind the spanish press, it's always the same with them. that was a great result, he said, it's very hard to keep them out here. he said he fancied liverpool to win the return leg because barca were no good away from home. he did say he thought alaves were going to win the competition outright though.
then big fat john was chatting to various established hacks about the good old days and i became a little bored. i spent a minute watching the pretty boy boudewijn zenden, who was standing talking to some spanish kirsty gallacher figure. she was about six feet tall, much taller than the midget zenden, who was all showered and freshly towelled after his customary 90 seconds of blood sweat and tears as a last-minute sub. she was blonde and ditzy, covered in make-up. as he talked to her he put his hand on her ass and she giggled stupidly. he smirked. all very strange. i think maybe if claudio ranieri had been there he would have decided against buying zenden.
then i saw frank de boer standing off in a corner with a couple of hacks. i wandered over to listen but he was talking spanish, so i hadn't a clue what he was saying. i couldn't help noticing his clothes: bulky brown leather jacket, a very strange pair of voluminous white-and-pink-striped pantaloons and slip on patent leather shoes. frank is not the best dressed barca player, but contrary to what you might think from his diatribe about liverpool, he is actually one of the nicest. after the spanish journos were finished we got to ask him a few questions.
he is a dutchman and an ajax man, and as such has rigid beliefs about football and how it should be played: the ajax way, to be precise. he slated liverpool accordingly - totally negative, not real football, he didn't like it etc etc. however you shouldn't confuse that with a genuine lack of respect for the capabilities of our side, for individual players like owen, heskey, gerrard and hyypia. he had a lot of time for heskey in particular. he knew we were strong, he just didn't like our approach. fair enough. i stress that he is a very nice guy, very humble and easy to talk to, perhaps surprisingly given his obnoxious on-pitch persona. it's not his fault if he then talks bilge. he's entitled to his opinions.
he was saying the same things in the sunday times yesterday. at one point, after rabbiting on about how great arsenal and united are, and how liverpool are a boring counter-attacking team who have no creativity especially at home, he says 'the statistics prove it, liverpool have more points in the league away than at home.'
of course, by frank's reckoning, arsenal and manchester united must also be boring one-dimensional counter-attacking teams with no creativity, since they're both better away from home this season too - united are in points per game anyway - and liverpool's home record is actually better than arsenal's.
so the statistics prove nothing, and frank is showing that he actually knows very little about liverpool, and is judging us on the basis of one match, in which we inflicted a monumental disappointment on his team. to be fair liverpool WERE ultra-boring in that match, but only in the cause of getting an acceptable result from a very tough away game. it's astonishing that houllier was pilloried for his tactics rather than applauded: somehow i suspect if it had been the ferg he would have been hailed as a mastermind. remember, liverpool are the only english side to have beaten barcelona over two legs in european competition in the 90s. chelsea, arsenal and the mancs were all stuffed, but not us. barca will be queasy going into this match.
of course that whole night was seized upon by non-liverpool friendly hacks and inflated into this giant 'boring' myth that we have today. i think a lot of english journalists are really quite cowed by the opinions of foreigners - either they lack the means of independent or critical thought, or they have an inferiority complex, or they're just biased, malicious fuckers. nobody ever accused liverpool of being boring until barcelona and frank de boer (the dutchman! he must be right! dutch people know EVERYTHING about football!) said they were. then it was all over the papers, especially after the fa cup final caused such misery for the nation of london.
of course no-one ever talks about the most exciting european final for forty years (marc 'the oracle' overmars' preview was 'i'm not watching the game - i think alaves will put about nine men behind the ball and liverpool will put about ten men behind the ball and it will be so boring'). no, no, that's long forgotten, except by us. but don't worry about the boring stuff. barcelona said the same thing about roma, before roma bored them to death 3-0 at the olympic stadium. the astonishing thing was that the barca coach, rexach, said in the press conference after that match: 'if we played like that at camp nou our fans would boo us off the pitch'. he meant if barcelona played like roma just had. unbelievable.
so you see, it doesn't matter if we go to camp nou and win 3-0, they'll still call us boring. and will we care? no, it'll be adios amigos, and thanks for all the memories...
