Larry Ryan: Did Liverpool prove losing isn't the end of the world?

Or did Clones remind us that fear of defeat is everything?

Fri, 03 Jun, 2022 - 20:40

Last Sunday brought one of those afternoons when perfect cosmic balance was achieved. In Liverpool they gathered in hundreds of thousands to convince us there is more to life than winning. At the same time in Clones they handpassed around in circles to prove that winning is still the only thing that matters.

That is the kind of healthy sporting diet we need to keep us on an even keel.

It was strictly a winners parade, of course, for the Pool. They did have two cups on board, plus the women’s Championship trophy. But it was a wake really, for the big ones they missed out on, that became a celebration, deejayed by Calvin Harris.

“One of the best days of my life,” was skipper Jordan Henderson’s verdict. Kloppo too, not brilliant in the immediate aftermath of defeat, like most of the greats, is typically top top once the dust has settled around collapsed dreams. And is already digging in the dirt for hope.

“These people don’t forget, they know exactly what a shift the boys put in. It’s such a boost for everything that will come.”

He was reminding everyone that you can’t measure everything in results and silverware. That Thibaut Courtois’s elasticity had essentially changed nothing about who they are or what they had given.

It’s a notion that Ronan O’Gara expresses too, in this week’s fine diary from the other side of the winning line in a European final.

The key ‘takeaway’ from that journal is that rugby players tuck into buns after training. But there was also some perspective on the precariousness of a results business.

“I know I am not as good a coach as some are saying, just as I would not be as poor as others would have said had Leinster survived and we’d lost by a few points.”

Of course we are always measuring something these days and in a season when we learned that Liverpool had made their 50,000th ‘pressing action’ under Klopp, there was a final stat to reveal, as one Reds fan told The Guardian: “We had a nine-mile parade and Man City did a 0.8-mile parade. That says it all, doesn’t it?”

Whatever it says, they were heartening scenes, evidence that the hours and days after loss need not be spent in recrimination.

As Tadhg Coakley suggests in his new book The Game: A Journey Into the Heart of Sport, defeat, like death, is the reducer that helps us live.

“The eventual certainty of defeat liberates us to take real joy in ‘any small victory’ – that one good shot (or tackle, or pass, or putt).

“We accept loss, we embrace loss, we understand loss. We know that sport is about loss. It’s shit, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

“The cycle continues: hope – loss – hope – loss.”

Overall, it was a good week for perspective in football, continuing into an emotional night at Hampden Park on Wednesday, which must have set records for the least amount of recrimination following a Scottish heartbreak.

Some attribute to Klopp that great phrase about football being the most important of all the less important things. And Ukraine gaffer Oleksandr Petrakov made some stab at colouring between the lines of that idea.

“We played for those who fight in the trenches, who fight with their last drop of blood. We also played for Ukrainians, for people back at home, who suffer every day.”

For the second time in a few days, Andy Robertson was again left looking for the bigger picture — and appeared to find it in his full-time embrace with Man City counterpart Oleksandr Zinchenko.

It would ruin sport though if we spent all our time riding these high horses. If we were able to accept defeat so gracefully. If the result wasn't all that important as long as we stuck to the process.

We already had a bit much of that stuff from Pep and Klopp this season, constantly congratulating each other and more or less telling us that it barely mattered who won it, in the finish, so handsomely were they all contributing to the spectacle enriching our little lives.

Is it any wonder people were pining for the bitterness of United v Arsenal?

Just in case that kind of thing gets out of hand, we must always be grateful for the Ulster Final, where the spectacle means nothing and where nearly all perspective is lost.

They were also measuring things in Clones. How many handpasses? How much time in possession? How many minutes without a shot?

This was the sort of match for which Tadhg’s phrase needs slight reworking: “It’s shit, but it’s better than losing, isn’t it?”

But despite there being not much to see, many witnesses testified that they couldn't take their eyes off it.

In the upper tiers of the Champions League, we have become used these days to teams playing with abandon, where the world's best athletes take the handbrake off their talents in rollercoaster ties with almost an acceptance that the value of their investment can fall as well as rise.

But on the Paul Rouse Football Podcast, Oisín McConville described well how desperate suffocating fear of defeat can make us feel just as alive as embracing loss.

“You know Páidí Ó Se’s phrase, a grain of rice. That’s how it felt. That’s how on edge it was. It felt like any time someone gave the ball away, or kicked a wide, or dropped a ball short, it was like the end of the world. I just thought it was enthralling.”

For every pinch of perspective, a grain of rice.

Kenny should pick his battles

As we know, there is a time and a place for our old friend, the war of words. But yesterday seemed a strange hour for Stephen Kenny to be picking at the scabs of well-worn arguments.

Roy Keane was a reliable soldier on that front for Martin O’Neill during international breaks, good for a distraction when there was something we needed to be distracted from.

But Kenny has no need to distract us for the moment and there was surely little need to revisit the early parts of his reign — whatever the questions asked — and launch what has been described as an ‘impassioned defence’ of Ireland’s Nations League record.

I think we can safely say that a Nations League record is keeping no supporter, of any nation, awake at night.

For once, there is a peace process around the national team, a ceasefire, no debates about style, few arguments about direction.

As Kenny put it himself yesterday, “the Irish public really identify with this team now”.

In Yerevan today, there will be genuine excitement to see what Ireland can produce — and a certain amount of tolerance too, for gaffes, in the short term at least.

Why not trot out the usual guff about only looking forward? Why refight old battles? Nervousness maybe, with a clean slate in front of him again.

Heroes & Villains

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Nottingham Forest: For the one or two misfortunes on these shores who climbed on the bandwagon during European dominance, or even the handful who leapt back on board during the Simod Cup era, your hour of redemption is richly deserved. And don’t give up now, our Luton and Blackburn brethren.

‘Mark’: The one fan in the gallery who was holding a beer rather than snapping a photo of Tiger Woods on his smartphone in that viral pic from the USPGA. Now been rightly rewarded with his own Michelob beer ad and merch line.

HELL IN A HANDCART

Conversations with Friends: Badly in need of a county final or something to liven it up, with Tommy Tiernan the worse for wear abusing that scut Nick Conway for another bad wide on his own side.