Umbrella Academy
[Liverpool 1 – 0 Chelsea] [OT] [Carabao Cup Final].
It’s crazy. It’s insane. Where do I even start?
Gotta be the youngsters. I was fully convinced we were going to lose this game. We had no right to win it. As the Reds are facing an injury crisis of historic proportions, with no less than 11 senior players out, Klopp had to dig deep to even find enough players to occupy the bench. For perspective, 20-year-old Harvey Elliott was a key member of the opening senior squad today, as was Conor Bradley. By the time the game ended, Bobby Clark, James McConnell, Jayden Danns, and Jarrell Quansah played a big part, too. A couple of them are high school seniors.
All against Chelsea, a billion-dollar team.
In a cup final.
What a team of accidental superheroes.
Or maybe it’s Virgil Van Dijk? What he did today, by scoring two sumptuous goals – the first was chalked off, but as the commentator pointed out, that was a rather “subjective” call – is exactly what a captain does, rising up in a difficult situation to take matters by the scruff of the neck and force things through. Even more critically, his presence on the pitch in calming down and arranging the academy players was beyond merely imperious, which is his usual standard. It was Brobdingnagian, galactic, and ridiculous. It was, when all is said and done, a captain’s performance.
He won the officials’ man-of-the-match when he received the trophy, and I would be inclined to give it to him too, except that… well.
We’re not done yet.
Because Liverpool by all rights should have lost the game not just on paper, but on the pitch as well. The Reds were better throughout, but – no surprise there– lacked the maturity needed to put the game away. Chelsea, on the other hand, had decent stretches in control, and did have the maturity. Except that Liverpool had one Kevin (so sue me) Kelleher between the sticks. I had to rub my eyes several times to make sure I wasn’t looking at another one of those weird Alisson hairdos. What a tremendous performance from him, a match winning one, and not that it matters one whit, but also a man-of-the-match winning one from me.
When Klopp says Liverpool has the best second goalie on the planet, he ain’t kidding. In truth, Kelleher is better than most senior premier league goalkeepers, and if you wanted proof, today you got it. Petrovich was also excellent for Chelsea, but his task was made easier by the youthful wastefulness of his opposition.
Kelleher enjoyed no such benefit.
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Then there’s Klopp himself. When he made that triple substitution around the 80th minutes, it was not just a tactical masterstroke – Liverpool were breaking down from exhaustion – but also a show of defiance. It was as if he was saying to Chelsea, “come on, show us what you got; all we have are the kids.” It was a gutsy call to make in that moment in the game, but in a way, I suspect it served to demoralize that shining billion dollar collection of superstars. They already felt it by then, and for Klopp to do this at Wembley must have latched on to that seed of doubt in their minds and made it flourish. Something that became evident in extra time, when the rugrats outplayed their opponents on every level and in every aspect.
So yes, shake your head in disbelief. I know I still am. The circumstances make this victory one of the greatest, up there with the Barca recovery and Istanbul. It made no sense, yet here we are. Watching big Virg lift the cup together with Klopp – who for all his talk about exhaustion, looked like a little kid himself up there – was an amazing moment, too.
And… not to jynx it, but you know… one down, three to go.
