It’s cup final day, and many Liverpool fans the world over are worrying their socks off. Liverpool football club today face an opponent who, off late, has been in scintillating form.
Having just the mighty Barcelona recently with only ten men in a Champions League semi-final, and after demolishing QPR 6-1 in the league a short while after, the London club and its fans (if you can call them fans) will surely be fancying their chances against a Reds side that has fallen short of the mark all too often this season.
As a Liverpool fan who can’t help but see the odds stacked so insurmountably against us, I keep asking myself, “what do WE have going for us in this cup final?”, and it’s hard to think of an area in which we have a clear upper hand.
Player for player, Chelsea seems to have the better of us, except perhaps with regard to Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez. Confidence-wise, Chelsea must be light years ahead of us. Tactically, we can’t really predict who will be better on the day (even with Steve Clarke’s insider knowledge of Chelsea). However, after scouring my brain for hours, I have managed to find one clear and perhaps all-important advantage we hold over our opponents today.
Liverpool, unlike Chelsea, is playing for more than just Silverware today. Liverpool is, in fact, playing for more than even pride. Liverpool today is playing to preserve the dignity of a club that for so long has revelled in the legacy of its past glories. Liverpool today plays to keep the flame of its legend alive!
Chelsea on the other hand is under no such burden. Chelsea does not have the threat of club and career suicide hanging over its head. If anything, Chelsea will probably be more concerned with keeping its players fit to compete in what it surely regards as the bigger of its two priorities this season, the Champions League final against Bayern Munich later in May.
Everybody knows how much the Champions League means to Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, who already has several FA Cup Final wins under his belt. I’d be willing to bet that the Chelsea manager is all too aware of this.
Also, I’m pretty sure that there isn’t one Chelsea player out there who isn’t at least a little worried about ruling himself out of the European finals by sustaining some FA Cup Final strain or pull while going all out in a 50-50 scrap.
I hope to god that today, Liverpool is ruthless enough to invoke this fear in Chelsea’s players, and to capitalize on it. Liverpool has the opportunity to bully the Chelsea team into submission simply by demonstrating on the pitch with rabid fervour how much more the FA Cup means to us than it does to them, and how much further we’d be willing to go to win it.
Our woeful season, coupled with Chelsea’s relative success, has meant that in this aspect at least, we have the advantage. While we have nothing else to play for, Chelsea is caught in two minds.
That being said, scaring the likes of Essien, John Obi Mikel, and John Terry will nonetheless prove to be no easy feat. With an army of Red-blooded, scarf-wielding, banner-waving fans spurring our team on at Wembley though, it would by no means be impossible.
