Victory (and Revenge) is Sweet

My first post here was all about my disappointment in my (former) favourite footballer for abandoning my beloved Liverpool FC. So I’m not going to try to hide the fact that this post is about the glee I felt watching Liverpool down moneybags Chelsea and their new £50 million striker.

Every time we play Chelsea I go in to the game with a certain amount of apprehension. They are a club that have had some success in the past few seasons, which Liverpool, admittedly, have not. We have appeared, in recent matches between the two sides, to be relatively evenly matched on most occasions, so it’s a game that really feels like it could go either way.

Of course, I want to win every time, because I loathe Chelsea with a burning passion. Mostly for the attitude they have towards players and success – that money (which they have obscene amounts of, thanks to owner Roman Abramovich) can not only buy the former, which all clubs agree on, but the latter too, which is a point of contention with most football fans, especially those of clubs that have fought hard for their successes without such funds. This time, however, it was about more than just continuing a rivalry.

Liverpool versus Chelsea is already one of the most hotly anticipated fixtures in the league, but this one was different. This one was Liverpool versus Torres. The travelling Kop would be singing against their former sweetheart, fans would be wearing his former number nine with “Traitor” emblazoned on the back instead of “Torres”. We wanted this one badly. And I’m proud and deeply satisfied to say, our boys didn’t let us down.

To give you some idea of the feeling towards Torres in the Liverpool camp since his transfer, people burned shirts bearing his name outside Liverpool’s Melwood training ground, betting agencies took money on who would be the first Liverpool player to foul him when he played against us, and Robbie Fowler, a Red legend, wore a Torres Liverpool shirt as his “Shirt That Hurts” in a charity event. The whole situation could not have played out more dramatically if you’d scripted it. Torres leaves in the last minutes of the last day of the transfer window, disrespects the club in his first interview at the Blues, and then gets given their number nine and a debut at Stamford Bridge against Liverpool? The only thing that could have made it more unreal would have been playing at Anfield.

Let’s face it: it was never going to be pretty for Fernando…

To the not-so-secret delight of Liverpool fans worldwide, a fantastic goal from Raul Meireles gave us the three points at the Bridge, putting a massive dent in Chelsea’s flagging title hopes, but more significantly, spoiling the debut of our former darling, who made no meaningful contribution to the match and was substituted shortly after the hour, and just moments before our goal was scored. Demonstrating how skewed the coverage of the match was towards the Torres saga, rather than focus on the goal celebrations of the Liverpool players and fans, the cameras cut immediately to the forlorn face of a certain Spaniard on the Chelsea bench.

The post-match headlines were scathing, Torres being declared a flop, a waste of money, and a misfit in the Chelsea team, among other things. Various reporters described how positive things now looked for Liverpool, how we were continuing an excellent run, how Chelsea were a team in free-fall, how it was difficult to see them coming back from yet another defeat. But the feeling among Reds supporters was fairly uniform… Missing us yet, Fernando?

Victory, and revenge, were indeed sweet.