Ironies abound as we pray Rio will be Grande again

AS has been said before, a week may be a long time in politics but in football it can prove to be an eternity.

Where, after the Spurs sensation, is the predictable crowd of over-excited grief-monkeys hopping around at Wembley calling for the head of Berbatov? That same shower, it should be remembered, had witnessed and then promptly forgotten a historic European performance just days earlier in Oporto, when Berb had been a sophisticated model of intelligence and control.

Against Spurs, he produced a couple of the greatest touches of the entire spring, assisted in three goals and knocked one in himself. How ironic that in a month when we Reds are all bathing in Eric Cantona reminiscences (as The King’s new Ken Loach film opens), so many of us are still refusing to give this century’s most Cantonaesque player enough time to fully establish himself.

Then again, there’s been more irony than in a ‘monger’s window around here recently. As I noted last week, Fergie lambasted Benitez the other week for his disrespect to ‘small club’ Everton — and then surely displayed exactly that same disrespect by fielding eight reserves. And Moyes’s pre-semi rant disgracefully alleged Mike Riley was a biased penalty-giving Red — only for Riley to hand the semi on a plate to the Toffees by refusing to give one.

Now to cap it all, we see Howard Webb, recently exposed by Red Issue as someone who likes to sing You’ll Never Walk Alone, giving the match-turning penalty against Spurs, in what must surely rate as one of the most hilariously incompetent decisions of the decade.

Again, it was as if the alleged Anfieldite’s subconscious was all too keen to emphasise his impartiality, Riley-style. The cliché goes that these events even themselves out over a season, but here they’ve settled up within the week.

Having seen Liverpool win so many titles in the 70s and 80s thanks to homer refs, we ain’t gonna lose much sleep here over such an obvious injustice.

But perhaps it should still be noted that Michael Carrick’s instant shabby appeal was not his finest or most honourable moment. When we say we want Ronaldo to inspire his team-mates, such Iberian practices are not what we had in mind.

Still, job done in one other respect too; the outrages that greeted Berb’s Wembley miss and then the Spurs penalty decision have had the effect of leading everyone to have instant amnesia over Rio’s equally lame Wembley spot kick, and his catastrophic first-half blundering against Spurs that almost handed his boyhood faves Liverpool the title.

But that’s Our Rio: drop him in manure, and he’ll emerge clutching a rose. Never mind just making him captain: with that priceless knack, he could be this escapologist team’s mascot. Stick him on the shirt badge, rose in hand, to replace the devil and trident.

Naturally, all such bad-tempered facetiousness will go out of the window if Rio turns in the kind of performance tonight that he gave us in Barcelona at this juncture last season. He was exceedingly inconsistent in Europe last time out, but and his three unbeaten hours against Messi’s hordes constituted a career high.

Arsenal have made him look uncomfortable in the past, of course, and his nightmare on Saturday will presumably be playing on his mind, so it’s something we’ll all be keeping a nervous eye on for the first ten minutes.

Naturally, I don’t need to hype tonight: we have been blessed to have now had three truly mouth-watering semi-final draws in succession, and Wenger as a Euro-opponent was ridiculously overdue too. You know the record; you know what’s at stake. And for once, let us win in beauty, and in fair play — the United Way.

*Richard Kurt, whose Red Army Years is only available via [e-mail]