Watch Liverpool

Posts Tagged ‘europe’

As an avid reader of some pretty heavyweight fiction, Roy Hodgson knows opening chapters are extremely important. Just like novelists, football managers benefit from good starts and he will be suitably satisfied with tonight’s assured formal opening to his Liverpool reign.

Two polished finishes – one dinked, one volleyed – from David Ngog on a balmy Balkan evening ensures that the first leg of this Europa League third-round qualifier was anything but the ordeal Hodgson had privately feared.

He asked a young, makeshift side to “swim” and, perhaps to his surprise, they generally did – none better than Ngog and David Amoo, a winger Liverpool fans are unlikely to have heard the last of.

Granted Rabotnicki were unexpectedly obliging hosts, but with his albeit at times understandably ring-rusty visitors playing with real width and intelligence, Hodgson’s Liverpool story could be worth sticking with.

On Tuesday locals here marked the anniversary of the earthquake which flattened large areas of Skopje in 1963, killing 1,066 people. Forty seven years on, the clock at the city’s former train station still has its hands frozen at 5.17am, the moment the quake struck in one of Europe’s seismically most unstable regions.

Two days after a series of services of remembrance, residents were ready for diversion and duly received some. Liverpool’s visit marked the biggest game in the 73-year history of FK Rabotnicki, last season’s Macedonian league runners-up, with the occasion only spiced up by the fact Hodgson had made it clear this was a debut he could definitely have done without.

The need for post-World Cup holidays dictated Liverpool’s new manager was without 10 senior players for his first competitive game in charge of the club he took over only a month ago, but it soon appeared he might just have been exaggerating the Macedonian threat.

Lucas, Hodgson’s captain for the night, is not every Liverpool fan’s favourite but the Brazilian was soon cutting an assured figure in the heart of a five-man midfield, winning some key interceptions. He also took the 17th-minute free-kick which was completely misread by two Rabotnicki defenders, thereby permitting the unattended Ngog to lift the ball over the advancing goalkeeper Martin Bogatinov. Goals rarely come softer.

Although young Jay Spearing was sometimes too easily dispossessed and novice right-back Martin Kelly found himself turned by Rabotnicki’s Brazilian forward Wandeir, the Macedonians found Martin Skrtel and Sotirios Kyrgiakos an obdurate defensive barrier.

Much as the 20,000 who had crammed into a stadium undergoing radical refurbishment and currently boasting just two stands delighted in booing the latter’s every touch – Macedonians are not generally over-fond of their Greek neighbours – Diego Cavalieri could have been forgiven for dozing off in the first half. The Liverpool goalkeeper’s most taxing moment was dealing with an extremely straightforward 30th-minute long-range, gently bouncing strike from Ze Carlos, Rabotnicki’s first shot on target.

Not that Bogatinov was exactly overworked. Despite the odd adroit touch from Milan Jovanovic, the Serbia winger newly signed from Standard Liège, and with Alberto Aquilani along with Amoo’s raw energy down the flanks, it is unlikely Steven Gerrard, Joe Cole and Fernando Torres will be sweating on their places.

On this evidence there could be some interesting cameos from Amoo this season, though. The former Millwall youth winger enthused the 100-odd Merseysiders who made the trek to a Balkan outpost twinned with Bradford courtesy of some exciting pace and fierce crossing ability. If Jovanovic and Aquilani were big on economy of effort, Amoo’s high-intensity exertions suggested he saw this as an important audition.

Ngog, too, is clearly anxious to please his new manager and Hodgson must have been delighted to see the young French striker arrive in the right place at the right time to claim his second goal.

Overlapping down the right, Kelly drove in a splendid cross weighted perfectly for Ngog to connect with. All that remained was for the forward to volley it right-footed into the top corner from around six yards. It was the sort of instinctive, first-time, poacher’s finish which indicated he may yet confound his many doubters.

Shortly afterwards the recently installed floodlights dimmed alarmingly. Fortunately for Hodgson’s peace of mind, power was at least partially restored, leaving Liverpool set fair for the return.

LiverpoolEuropa LeagueLouise Taylorguardian.co.uk

• Roberto Mancini hopeful of signing Liverpool striker
• City to make final offer for James Milner this week

Roberto Mancini has confirmed Manchester City are willing to underwrite a British record transfer for Fernando Torres should the Spaniard decide to leave Liverpool.

Torres’s future at Anfield remains shrouded in uncertainty with Christian Purslow, the club’s managing director, holding extensive talks with the 26-year-old striker and the manager, Roy Hodgson, but conceding he can do no more to convince the striker to stay.

Chelsea and Barcelona have been linked with the former Atlético Madrid captain but may struggle to meet Liverpool’s £70m valuation.

City’s hopes of signing Torres were believed to have ended when they failed to qualify for the Champions League last season but Mancini, who is also interested in Mario Balotelli of Internazionale and Wolfsburg’s Edin Dzeko, insists the prospect of Torres making a sensational switch from Anfield to Eastlands is not over and is willing to better the £32.5m record fee City spent to sign Robinho from Real Madrid.

The City manager, who has taken his summer spending to £78m with the £18.9m arrival of Aleksandar Kolarov from Lazio, said: “Torres is one of the best strikers in Europe and is already playing in the Premier League for three years and knows it very well. But it depends on his situation – his price and whether he wants to come.

“There are two or three strikers that we could go for, but it is the same situation as it is with James Milner. First there is the price and then it depends if the players want to change team. Until today, Liverpool haven’t bought many players.”

City officials have indicated the club has more chance of signing Balotelli and Dzeko than Torres, with the lack of Champions League football on offer still a determining factor despite their ability to fund a deal and to offer players £200,000-a-week.

The Spanish striker has stressed that money will not be the over-riding motivation as he considers his future at Liverpool this summer but, nevertheless, confirmation of City’s interest will further unsettle Anfield officials as they attempt to persuade their prized asset to stay.

Torres is settled in Liverpool but disillusioned with the club’s failure to secure new investment having been told a takeover was imminent when he signed a new four-year contract worth £110,000-a-week last August. His insistence that Liverpool require “four or five” top‑class signings to compete for honours next season is unlikely to materialise and Purslow has spent several days attempting to pacify the striker.

Hodgson confirmed at the weekend: “I made it clear from my point of view that I’m really looking forward to working with him and I believe he’s a key, key figure at the club. I obviously want him to be a part of the team we’re trying to build here and I can only hope he’ll buy into what the club is offering him. I don’t think there are any worries with him in terms of me personally or what we’re doing. I think the concerns go back once again to the time before I came to the club.”

City are expected to make a final £24m bid for Milner this week, having been involved in a prolonged pursuit of the Aston Villa midfielder this summer. “He is still a player who interests us but only at the right price,” said Mancini, who also confirmed the Brazil international Robinho does not want to return to Eastlands and that several high-profile players will have to leave City before the close of this transfer window.

“I don’t know about Robinho’s situation because he doesn’t want to come back. I have now, with all the new signings, 30 players. It is important that we get to the start of the season with only 25 players because that is the number of names we can put on the list. It is better for me and the other players who are not on the list that they go to another team. I think it is better for the extra that they go rather than staying and not playing. That would be a big problem, for the players and for us.”

Mancini has also revealed that his goalkeeper, Shay Given, is unlikely to be fit for the start of the new season, having dislocated his shoulder against Arsenal at the end of last season. “Shay is not fit at the moment. He is not 100% ready to go in goal but we must wait and be patient because it was not a small problem he had.”

Manchester CityFernando TorresRoberto ManciniLiverpoolAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk

It felt as if Liverpool had let English football down, when for 20 years they had been its finest ambassador

Phil Neal can recall arriving at the Heysel stadium 25 years ago tomorrow and being distinctly underwhelmed by its appearance. “My first thought was that it barely stood comparison with Wembley or Rome or other grounds where Liverpool had won the European Cup,” he says. “The game would have sold out any stadium in Europe, yet instead of Barcelona or Madrid we got Heysel with its frail-looking fence. I would still like to know who made that decision and on what grounds, because the tragedy could have been avoided.”

By the close of the 1980s English football was well versed in tragedy, yet there was a recurring theme to the grim progression that began with the Bradford City fire a couple of weeks before Liverpool’s 1985 European Cup final against Juventus and ended with the Hillsborough disaster four years later. While the causes may have been different, in every case the loss of life was avoidable.

The problem at Valley Parade had been the entirely predictable consequences, at least from a modern safety perspective, of a discarded cigarette, a wooden stand and a shameful build-up of combustible rubbish below. The blame at Heysel was laid squarely at the door of Liverpool supporters by Uefa the day after 39 people died. By charging at their Italian counterparts the English contingent had to bear direct responsibility for the panic and crush that followed, even the collapse of an inadequate dividing wall that increased the death toll. “Only the English fans were responsible,” Uefa’s official observer, Gunter Schneider, said at the time. “Of that there is no doubt.”

While that may be the case in terms of strict cause and effect, Uefa managed to get off lightly. Without an official inquiry into the disaster, the controlling body for European football never had to defend its decision to stage a showpiece game at an obviously dilapidated venue. The stadium authorities and Belgian police were never questioned either. Heysel was demolished and rebuilt in 1994, without hosting another major game in the interim.

The Liverpool fans had found it ridiculously easy to break through the flimsy wire fence that separated them from the Juventus supporters, and while that does not make them any less culpable, the confrontation began with both sets of fans throwing stones at each other across the barriers. Stones they found lying on the floor, inside the stadium, either hard-core from underneath the terracing or bits of crumbling steps. Heysel had struck Arsenal fans who had visited a few years earlier as a “dump”. It was a far from ideal venue for a major European final.

There was nothing particularly wrong, by the standards of the day, with Hillsborough in 1989. The reason 96 lives were lost was because we had become careless about the way we watched football. Careless enough to accept pens and cages as the only alternative to hooliganism and pitch invasions. Careless enough not to think about the crush consequences of letting a crowd build up then releasing it into a confined space.

Even as the disaster was unfolding in Liverpool’s FA Cup semi-final with Nottingham Forest people formed the natural conclusion that some sort of disturbance was taking place, and assumed the supporters trying to scale the barriers – poignantly the ones who had arrived at the ground early to secure a place at the front – were seeking to run on to the pitch or fight with neighbours. Only in the horrific aftermath of Hillsborough were lessons properly learned, with the Taylor Report paving the way for all-seat stadiums, CCTV, adequate stewarding and meaningful safety certificates.

Back in 1985, preparing for the biggest game of his life, Neal innocently imagined he would be following a glorious Liverpool tradition, rather than leading the club into its darkest period. The only player to appear in all four of Liverpool’s European Cup victories between 1977 and 1984, Neal was captain by the time of their fifth final, with every expectation of rounding off his Anfield years on a personal high. “I anticipated lifting the silverware,” he says. “It was going to be another glory night and I would go up the steps first.

“Looking back now means looking across Hillsborough, which involved an even greater loss of life, but in 1985 Heysel was the worst thing imaginable. It felt as if Liverpool had let English football down, when for 20 years they had been its finest ambassador. That’s what really turned our stomachs, the feeling that the club’s impeccable record over two decades in Europe had ended in something so horrific.”

Kenny Dalglish, who would take over as manager when Joe Fagan stepped down after an uneasy couple of years, makes the same point. “Liverpool made it public in advance that they were concerned about the state of the stadium,” he says. “Uefa said they must continue. Liverpool did all the warning, Liverpool made every effort to prevent trouble between fans, and when the worst happened Liverpool received all the blame.”

English clubs were banned from Europe for five years as a result of Heysel, and needed at least that long again to catch up when they were allowed back. Some Everton fans have never forgiven Liverpool for preventing them entering the European Cup as English champions that year, arguing that a potentially great team had to be disbanded instead of getting the chance to grow with European experience. And on an unreal, unnatural, unforgiveable night in Brussels, Liverpool lost a European Cup final for the first time.

Fearing further crowd problems if the match was abandoned, the game took place after an interminable delay. Both sides played as if in shock. Juventus won through a Michel Platini penalty. Neal does not remember kicking a ball. “I have absolutely no recollection of the match,” he says. “The delay in the dressing rooms was bad enough, but as soon as we heard people had died we lost all interest in the match. The difference between then and now is that now we know watching football can be a matter of life and death. At Heysel we still had it all to find out.”

LiverpoolFootball violenceUefaPaul Wilsonguardian.co.uk