The Carabao Cup: From Crap to Class
By Jordan Carreno
First and foremost.
How did you watch it?
Was it on a phone? Did you pull it up on a web-browser and put the headphones in? Were you, like me, stuck in traffic with the game propped up in front of the odometer as you crawled across town?
I’ve never had quite as good a time in traffic in my life as I did trying to keep up with the first half of the Arsenal match.
The constant stopping allowing me to glance down and catch a bit of the action. Speed up through this yellow? Sorry Honda, but Rhian Brewster is arguing the minute details of the rules dictating whether he can or cannot try to block the keeper’s kick, and a stop light means a bit of respite from focusing on the road.
It was enthralling. Captivating. Joyous. It forced your emotions to constantly sway and for your beliefs on the importance of this particular cup competition to change by the minute. If the you that existed in the 5th minute had an argument with the you that existed in the 85th minute about the merits of the Carabao Cup, it would be a heated and polarizing affair. Pre-match me and post-match me have irreconcilable differences on the importance of this competition.
I eventually pulled off at a park and ride and settled in when the second half kicked off. Though I had previously committed to just having the audio on while I drove, there was no way I was about to miss the Liverpool Olympic Team’s finest moment at Anfield (this is a terrible joke that completely revolves around the strange selection rules for Olympic Football). Yes, even if it was in the Carabao Cup.
Oh, the Carabao Cup. The trophy that we mock for having more names than winners. A competition Klopp has openly despised and “disrespected” with his team selections since losing on penalties to City in the final in his first season. The one we have written off the past 2 seasons after running head on into Premier League teams at the first hurdle.
The one that only begins to matter when it means an early chance for a Cup Final day. The one where, if it’s the only thing you win for a decade, it doesn’t count, but when presented beside other, much larger trophies becomes something akin to a jackpot multiplier.
That absolutely boss competition we’ve won a record number of times.
That’s where I’m at now with it following the Arsenal match. In this space where Liverpool have assembled a team of really promising youngsters that they can sprinkle in and around more senior, potential first teamers who need minutes, it is my favorite competition. And now I want to win it just so I can continue watching this ragtag team of tested professionals and starry eyed youth prospects.
That match ranks up there with some of the best in the Klopp era. It had all the ingredients. A night under the lights at Anfield. An opponent who has a history of rocking up to Anfield and dashing our hopes and dreams. Lots of goals and great ones at that. A comeback. A Kop end penalty shoot out. Scousers playing their part in the action.
It was Barcelona-lite.
Or better said, it is as close as any Carabao Cup match could possibly come to matching the spectacle that was the whole week leading up to the Champions League semifinal second leg last season. Those two points are a galaxy apart, but that distance is much smaller when compared to the number of dimensions between the feeling of that Barcelona match and your usual Carabao Cup match.
Now that I think about it, they strangely mirror one another. Both followed matches where Liverpool came from behind to snatch crucial league wins. In both the Newcastle and Tottenham matches, Mo Salah scored and got injured. Though it was voluntarily this time, both sides featured below full strength first 11’s. Both featured late, great Divock Origi goals. Both tested the limits of our abilities as fans to believe rather than doubt. Both featured Liverpool teams that believed at times when the reasons to believe were slim.
And in this particular case, the odds may have been even greater. There were children going up against seasoned professionals.
There’s Harvey Elliot, a 16 year old, going down the wing at Saed Kolasinac, a bloke who chases off knife wielding, would be kidnappers with his bare hands, like he’s been starting week in and week out for Liverpool. There’s Rhian Brewster giving Mustafi, a world cup winner, fits and picking his pocket. Curtis Jones is playing through Real Madrid’s Dani Ceballos. All the sudden, a wild Chirivella appears. Then Neco Williams, on his professional debut, skins 25 million pound Kieran Tierney and floats a perfect ball in at the death. Last but not least, and after conceding 4 goals and a worldie, Kelleher, our young goalkeeper with the most confusing name, gets a strong hand out to save a penalty. All before the aforementioned scouse Curtis Jones scores the winning penalty at the Kop end.
You literally could not have written it. And all of this courtesy the Carabao Cup.
Yes this match featuring all that is beautiful about football and all that is beautiful about Liverpool Football Club came to us by way of the most ugly and disregarded competition in English football. The irony couldn’t be more perfect.
So, last and most important.
How much did you enjoy it?
Did it remind you of those scrappy, underdog performances of Liverpool’s past? Did you thrive in that chaos that is sometimes bereft of the current first team? Did you revel in the joy of watching a bunch of kids, with the help of Anfield, will it’s way to an incredible victory?
How much do you love the Carabao Cup now?
