Liverpool vs Barcelona – a game of sublime ugliness

The goal started with an aimless pass lofted from the back by Joël Matip. It looked like it was going to be cut out by Barcelona’s midfield only for the ball to be knocked to Sadio Mané. Two touches later and the ball was at the feet of Jordan Henderson, bumbling and bumping his way through the line of luminous yellow defence. Proof that human willpower can shape luck, the ball bobbles erratically at his feet yet he digs out a shot that’s weak but well placed. Goalkeeper Marc-André ter Stegen can only push it away and towards Divock Origi who taps it into the net. If Liverpool were to lose, they would certainly “fail in the most beautiful way”.

That phase was Klopp’s and, of course, a typically German concept. They probably have a word for it. Yet it’s also an approach to the game and, indeed, life that has resonated with supporters. As rivals are quick to point out, it’s a while since Liverpool enjoyed significant silverware. Liverpool fans, on the other hand, are the first to laugh at glory hunters. If City are crowned champions on Sunday, we should be the first to celebrate their achievement. It might seem like a fine rationalisation to make victories from defeats but it also speaks to other football fanbases: supporters who spend cold night in the stands at Newcastle, Leeds, Wolves, Tranmere Rovers, Charlton, Mansfield, Yeovil, or any other town, city, or village where a team fights for something more than glory. Liverpool might well be a huge club, spending a fortune on wages, agents’ fees, and the rest, but not all its supporters remember the glory days.

I live midway between the two great footballing cities of Liverpool and Manchester, as different in culture as they are in prosperity. Manchester is big and sprawling, much closer to London or Birmingham, and aiming to get bigger. Liverpool, on the other hand, is smaller and, for all its reputation as a tough place, in my experience, more human. It’s easy to feel alone in Manchester. You rarely feel that way in Liverpool.

The approach to football over the past few decades echoes the character of the two cities. Manchester seeks to be the biggest and has the infrastructure and talent to do just that. Liverpool has no such pretensions. It is a city that was built on past glory and that is true of the football club. It has never won the Premier League, which some hold as the gold standard, wiping out the history of 18 league titles. Yet what Klopp has brought is something that was already there. He talks about passion and intensity but the keyword is “willpower”, that belief in self-determination and overcoming the natural order. It’s also about community and a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

It goes some way to explaining last night. Three goals down to arguably the best individual players in the world, with two potent thirds of our attack force injured: what reason could anybody have to believe that Liverpool could come back?

There was certainly no sense by half time that there would be another three goals in this team. Andy Robinson would soon be substituted, kicked out of the game by Luis Suárez. Lionel Messi hadn’t sparked into life but there was no indication that wouldn’t happen. We’d been the better team at the Camp Nou yet had walked away with a three-goal deficit. That had certainly been a beautiful failure; the better team succumbing to the better individuals.

When the second goal came it was unsurprising that it came about through a determination not to let the same happen again. A deflected cross by Alexander Arnold somehow fell into the path of Gini Wijnaldum, powering in from midfield. He hit his shot firmly and Barcelona’s goalkeeper got a heavy hand on it. He might have saved it too but the margins were fine. The ball crept under his body and Barcelona’s hopes for Madrid crept a little further away into the night.

Wijnaldum scored again two minutes later. Befitting the goal that would level the tie, it was the best of the night: a strong header from a perfectly arcing cross from Shaqiri. The small Swiss playmaker had perhaps been the weakest of Liverpool’s attackers – unsurprising given the few games he’s played this year – but he usually delivers one or two chances a game. If that ball was his only contribution, it justified his time on the pitch.

The momentum was clearly now with Liverpool but the logic of away goals still favoured the visitors. At such times, narratives begin to write themselves on the brain: brave Liverpool outdone by the cruelty of one away goal, so near yet so far, a beautiful failure… We come to expect it because Liverpool are not a team blessed with talent. It’s a team that makes the most of the talents it has on offer. It’s why we remember victories and celebrate semi-finals like they are championships; as though they are acts of defiance against the natural order. Whatever beauty is afforded to us is a beauty that comes through graft. Liverpool outrun teams. They grind them down to make the spaces where those moments of beauty can happen. It’s about beating a team in body and then in mind. It’s about primal animal aggression to establish dominance.

To underscore the point, it’s hard to think of a goal that was quite as replete with psychology than Liverpool’s fourth. Barcelona’s team of talented stars stood around like individuals locked in their personal visions of hell. What else explains how they switched off, didn’t react when Alexander-Arnold sneakily took a quick corner, angling a sharp pass to Origi who managed to lift it into the back of the net?

It was the story of the night. It had not been a game of well-struck free kicks or eloquent sequences of passing. It was a night about the controlled aggression of Fabinho, Henderson running through the pain, Milner’s tactical guile, and Alexander-Arnold’s craftiness. Rather than a match that would be remembered as a beautiful failure, Klopp and his team had achieved the opposite. This was sublime ugliness manifested in tangled legs, heaving lungs, and agonising effort. A different but equally powerful human aesthetic had won the night.

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