As a lifelong Manchester United fan, this doesn't pain me one bit to say. Liverpool are an amazing team and they deserve all the plaudits coming their way. Here's why Liverpool should win the quadruple they are chasing. They might not. But they should. They deserve it.
This is not because their esteemed manager, Jurgen Klopp, has weaved some amazing tactical magic or that the team is filled with world-class stars. So if you clicked on this for some tactical analysis, I'm very sorry to disappoint you. This is just going to be another soppy lecture I’m afraid. Mainly because Liverpool are succeeding for one simple reason, desire. There are and will be a lot of people talking about the gegenpress, how Liverpool immediately try to win the ball back when they lose it, or how Thiago has been so deftly deployed in the heart of midfield or how the two full backs have once again been absolutely unplayable. At the same time, long balls in behind exposes the high defensive line, a blocker/marker on Thiago ruins his passing orchestra, a flat five well-drilled defence nullifies the front three and a quick and high press on the goalkeeper inevitably shows up his overconfident footwork: all of these in an ideal world, of course, where the Liverpool team is simply dependent on tactics. They are not. What Klopp has managed to do is put a fire in his players’ bellies. They want to win. Anything less will be a catastrophe. That is why he gets on to them even if one pass goes astray. Equally, he celebrates every single big tackle as much as he celebrates goals. He celebrates the same with teenagers as he does with the veteran 36-year-old James Milner. The players have realised that the only way to win is to give it everything they have got. That's it.
When everyone does the same thing, you bond, you come together. That's the other thing Klopp has achieved. He has built a team. A team he truly loves and cares for. You can see that in his interactions with the players. Then, you can see that between the players. They want to play for each other. They want to fight for each other. They're really just out there having a kickabout with their friends. They’d be too afraid. They're enjoying themselves. That's why such beautiful passing and footwork comes so easily to them. They're not trying to show off. They're just having fun. Liverpool deserve to win everything because each of those players knows that he is living the dream. They're playing football for a career. For many of them, it is a dream, an escape from an uncertain childhood, a reason to smile. They're doing what we have all dreamed of. They are playing the beautiful game. The game we all love and in that game, in that version of the game, there is no winning or losing. There is simply the joy of playing it.
That is what Man United lack at the moment. There is no desire, no enjoyment, no love for the game, no respect or care for each other – and, of course, there is absolutely no tactical awareness. Roy Keane in post-match analysis said: “They’re not even likeable. You don’t even warm to them. There’s no soul to them.” As a fan, you don’t really want to support this team. My mind goes back to the Leicester team that won the league in 2016. The players were nowhere near world-class. There wasn’t much of a tactical framework either. It was just defend well, win the ball back and hack it over the top for the fleet-footed Jamie Vardy to chase. This Man United team have become a prime example of what happens when things become too professional without an ounce of love and respect for what you are doing. They don’t care. The last and ultimate reason why Liverpool should win everything is their fans. They are also upset with their ownership. They have known frustration for a very long time. But their love for the club is immense. In the last match, in which they went on to destroy Man United once again, the entire Anfield Stadium heartily applauded and sang their anthem You'll Never Walk Alone for one of their most hated enemies: Cristiano Ronaldo, whose partner a couple of days before had suffered a miscarriage. What will we do? Us, the United fans, we'll pour more bile on to the club. We'll hiss and snort at the players who, rest assured, are doing the best they can. They simply lack the desire, the motivation and the heart that make up a winning team. There is no love between them, no respect neither. They are unwilling to fight for each other or the shirt they are putting on. We will also hate the players. We will send them abusive messages and comments on social media. We will make memes about them and make fun of them for being unable to bring a little bit of joy into our sorry lives. We will talk about cold tactics, philosophies and professorial management, complain that we are stuck in nostalgia for a lost time. But we cannot detach ourselves from our histories. No one can. The past gives us our identity. It shapes our present no matter how much we rail against it. This railing against is in itself an engagement with it. Who we are and what we used to be are not mutually exclusive terms however different they may be. If we were to forget the past, games against Liverpool and Manchester City won't matter. We're not there anymore. We used to be mid-table minders for a very long period in our history. We should be more worried about Wolves and Aston Villa. In fact, we are. So, it's fine that we lost 4-0 to Liverpool. They are much better than us. We should accept that as United fans. We are not some special tribe that gets to win all the time at the expense of others. We need to stop acting so entitled, as do the players. If we are to forget about our history, as is being bandied about constantly, then we should also forget our entitlement to trophies. We should start again: expecting nothing because we have no reason to.
We need to relearn what it is to be deserving. We need to understand that love is not conditional. It is not justified only by winning. The success of any enterprise, relationship or idea is, first and foremost, caring about it, loving it, and being willing to nurture it through tough times and joyful times. Loving a club, or anything, or anyone is not only about how much they give you. Entitlement cannot come simply from identity. Just because we're United, we must win everything. That is unacceptable. More importantly, it is an impossibility. Till then, you'll never walk alone. P.S. The song "You'll never walk alone" is originally from an American musical called “Carousel” which was first sung as a football song on the terraces of Old Trafford after the Munich air disaster that killed half the Manchester United team and bestowed upon the club its persistent identity of a phoenix rising from the ashes. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/youll-never-walk-alone-is-our-song-1121768 It was a song meant to inspire hope, togetherness and love at the end of the Second World War.
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