OCD: A Case Study in Red.
Oh my beautiful Reds. Where would I be without you? Just the thought of those giants of men doing battle under the bright lights of Anfield stirs something deep within. Unfortunately in my case though, I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and so these stirrings have to fight for a place amongst a whole host of other more unpleasant ones. Despite Hollywood’s very best efforts to portray it as such, OCD is not a quirky personality trait. It’s a debilitating disorder that makes you doubt everything you ever thought you knew about yourself. These words however are not to criticise film’s romanticisation of the disorder, but rather to talk about how Jürgen’s exhausted Reds might just be experiencing it a little themselves.
They, whoever they are, call OCD the “doubting disease”. It is an agonisingly accurate description. Most of those unfortunate to share a life with this troubling companion can consider themselves ‘grand masters’ of the bastard emotion that is doubt. There is nothing harder to kick when old Mr. Doubt comes knocking on your front door. Difficult without question, but a lifelong smoker holds the power to just stop smoking. Wake up one day and go no more. In fact the only thing that probably stops them is doubt — the underlying fear that they cannot possibly do it. More than anything doubt stops many of us achieving what we are capable of. Doubt breaks free from our minds and worms its way into our physical actions. It makes us pause for thought, and by the time that pause is over, the gap for the pinpoint pass has slammed shut. The opposition has 11 bastard men bunkered behind the ball and Jordan Henderson, once again, is attempting to swing in a first-time ball over a gang of real life giants onto the head of a 5 foot 9” Mohammed Salah. OCD or nofitCB, our thunderous Reds are, without a shadow of it… Experiencing a big fat dosage of doubt.
It’s hard to take. Hell, it’s hard to watch. But it could have been 20 months earlier. It should have been 20 months earlier. Scammed out of 3 cruel goals to 0 at the Camp Nou on a real dog of a night, that result shouldn’t have made Jürgen’s boys doubt themselves, it should have shattered them beyond repair. It should have ruined them. 97 points in the league, yet somehow still pipped to a first league title by Pep’s cult of passing weirdos. A 3–0 deficit to overturn against Messi’s Barca without two of the front three available. It was the stuff that haunts your dreams and leaves you waking up in the middle of the night in a hot sweat. “Babe, what’s wrong??”… “Vincent Kompany, I dreamt that he… he scored a 30-yard screamer against Leicester in the dying minutes to bag City the title… And then Klopp, he was just smiling on the touchline, Messi scored twice and…Gini was playing false nine”. “Don’t be silly, Kompany hasn’t scored from outside the box in his professional career, and Klopp would never use Gini in such an advanced role in a crucial Champions League game. It was just a bad dream. Go back to sleep”.
The events that followed showcase my point better than I or anyone could ever write it. Trent’s corner, which history will tell us was taken quickly, is the single most doubtless act that any being has ever performed. Ever. It took Isaac Newton, aged forty-four, twenty years of deep thinking to discover gravity, yet Trent Alexander-Arnold, aged twenty-one, took less than 5 seconds to catch Barcelona sleeping in their own box, place a picture perfect cross onto Divock Origi’s right peg, and send his boyhood club into the Champions League Final. If Newton is a ‘genius’, what does that make Trent? My point, besides dragging a gravity loving nerd into the dirt, is about the undisputed value of clear thinking in the quest for total football. And if not clear thinking, at least the value of acting instinctively. Did Johan Cruyff, the Dutch Adam Lallana, plot and plan for his big turn? Of course not, it just happened. Zidane definitely didn’t plan his big fat fucking head-butt in the 2006 World Cup Final. How could he? It was just his instinct that, in that moment, it was the correct course of action to take. XG nerds will tell you that this action stopped France’s attacking output dead in its tracks and handed Italy the title. Connoisseurs and lovers of the game will tell you that it gave Didier Deschamps the perfect team talk for the 2018 World Cup final. Boys, time to avenge Zizou.
In Liverpool’s return-leg win against Barca, only one team was thinking instinctively. The other was suffering from doubt. It sets in at 1–0 after a poachers goal for Div. It gets worse when Barbecue & Baptism King Ali Becker smothers Alba’s chance to kill the tie in the dying seconds of the first half. It’s unbearable when Gini bundles it under the keeper to make it 2. And at 3, it’s gone. Because what is going to happen here is an absolute dead certainty. The BT cameras, seemingly operated by Martin Scorsese, expertly cut between the faces of Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi as they walk back to the centre circle. They are dead behind the eyes. The doubt has exhausted them. Liverpool have exhausted them. Anfield has exhausted them. The following year, this same exhaustion devours every other poor bastard team in the league that dares step onto our pitch. Well, apart from Burnley, but they’ve all headed away so many crosses that they’ve lost the physical capacity to experience thought beyond ‘AWAY’. But everyone else, they were doubting themselves 3 nights before the game. On the bus on the way up. In the changing room as the manager muttered something about getting at the centre-half that isn’t Virgil Van Djik. Then they doubted themselves for 90 minutes until they got to go home. Beat — just like they were before the game started.
For all of Klopp’s brilliant tactical ideals, it is plain to see that this Liverpool team’s real barbed point is its energy, its rugged determination, its sheer relentlessness and will to win. I think the pundits call it finding a way. Obviously this desire is mixed in with a huge amount of quality all over the pitch — as passion can, unfortunately, only get you so far. It is no coincidence however that the Liverpool machine runs smoothest on big European nights. Everyone in the stadium has had a few extra pre-game pints to settle the nerves, to grow the confidence, and that euphoric under-the-lights drunkness, that electric energy, it carves its way through the stands and transcends to the players on the pitch. They are drunk too, but they are drunk on the vibrancy of the stadium. When Liverpool punish Barcelona, the players and the fans are one organism. One great fluid thing that is working together to overcome a common enemy. In the league it is no different, home or away, we’re all in this together. The fans don’t let the players doubt themselves, they are our heroes, and they should stand, run and play like giants. As they have done almost perfectly, until now.
In my whole OCD footy analogy, I truly believe that the Anfield crowd are the Obsessive Compulsive behind the Disorder. This in the sense that the disorder, the D, is the consequence of the OC. As much as we’d all like to believe it, Anfield, a big neat patch of grass surrounded by some seats, does not hold some unexplainable, magical power. As much as Jordan Pickford may argue it, there is not a grand old Bill Shankly looking wizard living below the pitch that controls the flight of the ball during big matches. It is Pickford’s own doubt that forces his error in the 94th minute of the derby, doubt tips Van Djik’s sliced strike onto the bar rather than over it, doubt puts the ball into Origi’s path for a tap-in, and doubt gives Liverpool the sweetest of victories. It is our greatest ally.
This year however there is no OC — no Anfield crowd. There are just 22 lads playing footy in a hollow pit. The opposition aren’t playing against Jürgen’s army, but merely his horsemen. The Anfield faithful are no longer sucking the ball into the net for the Reds, they aren’t there to sow the seeds of doubt into the minds of their foes. Teams are coming to Anfield with less dread and fear, and it appears the very opposite has happened to Liverpool. You don’t back a 97 point season up with a 99 point season without a burning conviction to your play, and the ruthlessness that comes with that conviction is what racks up win after win. Every passing victory builds the aura of invincibility. The opposition think surely not another one, the Reds think another one. But this season every time a stout, proud Englishman commandeers his Brexit boys to a point, or in Dyche’s case three points, the aura is damaged. The doubt begins to grow. The opposition begin to think fucking hell, another one… And Liverpool think exactly the same.
One win in six or something against Aston Villa’s kids and the doubt continues to grow. There’s doubt from us sitting at home, have we lost our mojo? Is the system that reliant on VVD? Will we ever taste the sweetness from a goal in the league again? Then there is the media, feeding this doubt with headlines and comparisons, is this Klopp’s Dortmund disaster all over again? And then there is the players. Our beautiful Reds. They are all suffering from the “doubting disease”. It is right there, on our television screens, plain as day. It’s in every extra touch they take, in every uncertain glance back at this weeks backline, it is living in every decision they are making in the ninety minutes. I suspect that if Trent was feeling how he is now, that corner against Barcelona would have been taken at a completely normal speed. There is no adoring crowd to fuel them, to reassure them, every shot that whistles over the bar is not met by an ‘OOOOOOHH’ and then a great fuck off, back into these, roar… But an eery silence. Nothingness. Of course it is the same for all the other teams in the league… But do they miss their fans as much as the Reds do? No chance.
I suspect that Liverpool will work it out without us. They will, and of this I have no doubt, find a way to make our weekends good again. But I also have no doubt that they won’t be the same devastating side they were with a packed Anfield singing their names, because without them, they quite physically cannot be. But one day soon fans will return, the doubt will ease until it is forgotten, and the Reds will be the most feared side in the land again. No team was going to stop us, that’s just how good this team is, the only thing that could slow it down was a global pandemic. It is fair to be concerned at current form, but do not doubt for a second that these boys will not be back and with a vengeance. I will continue to do battle with my own doubting disease, but I shall not worry for the Reds, because they’re going to be just fine.