An Evening with Sparta Prague
Last night Liverpool re-started their European adventure
with the away leg of their game against Sparta Prague. It also marked the first
foray in Europe for manager Kenny Dalglish.
During his earlier tenure at the club, Kenny did not have the chance of
going into Europe due to the ban imposed by the football authorities after the
Heysel stadium disaster.
The match itself had already been surrounded by controversy
due to the over-inflated price of tickets, which has led to both Liverpool
Football Club and the Spirit of Shankly Supporters Union sending letters of
complaint to UEFA. It appears that
Sparta Prague felt that the price of £145 for a ticket into the stadium for 90
minutes of football was a reasonable price, but of course it was not,
especially as the home supporters were paying a lot less. Looking at the stadium via the television
pictures certainly put a major question on why the price was so high - I may be
wrong, but to me it looked dirty, unwelcoming and with what looked like cricket
nets up in places, certainly not worth that sort of cost. I do understand that there were an initial
batch of tickets issued for around £50, which of course went very quickly,
although in my mind, these were also overpriced.
This though was set aside and Liverpool's travelling army
made their way to Prague hoping to see a great game after being buoyed by the
result of the FA Youth Cup earlier in the week. It had also been revealed that
Kenny had taken 4 of the youngsters involved in this along with him. One of these was young Raheem Sterling, who
at 16 has proved that if you put your mind to it and have the ability; football
can be a great sport to be part of. He
had scored 5 of the 9 goals during the Monday evening game and it was hoped
that he would take part in the game.
Kenny though had other ideas and out of the four it was
young Conor Coady who made the subs bench, with Kenny preferring to use his who
he had available from his first team squad.
These players included Joe Cole and Danny Wilson who up until now had
not really featured in the plans of either Kenny or the clubs previous manager
due not only to injury but certain pecking orders.
You knew though that he was going to be one of those
evenings, the moment the television coverage started. As it was an Europa League tie it was being
shown on Channel 5, whose production is never one of the best as it is, but
last night even they surpassed their own stupidity. In the space of 10 minutes before kick-off
they had made 5 mistakes including making the point that Raheem was 17 years
old. Their commentary throughout the
game was also pointless, with both
presenters preferring to talk about general football matters, rather than the
game itself.
Of course the match itself was the most important part of
the evening and with everyone's hopes riding on yet another European classic
the match kicked off. This though was as
far from the truth as it could have been as it became obvious very quickly that
both teams were playing safe. There was
no adventurous play from either side and using the quotes from many of friends
"it was enough to send you to sleep."
Perseverance though of course is the key and although Aurelio was
replaced by Joe Cole within 20 minutes of the game starting, the team stuck at
until the half time whistle went.
The second half proved to be just as boring although both
teams did have a couple of shots at the goal.
Indeed if it had not been for the exploits and quick thinking of Pepe
Reina, Liverpool may well have been one or two goals down. It was only towards the end of the game when
Kenny sent on Skrtel to replace Ngog - who quite frankly had been totally
useless, that as the team seemed to become more settled and began to play the
football we had witnessed over the previous five weeks. It was too late though
and the match ended as a 0-0 draw.
Why the Liverpool team for some reason seemed to forget that they were playing under Kenny last night and not Roy Hodgson I don't know, but the style of football appeared to be the hoofing and long ball style that Roy implemented and it was awful to watch.
Next week though the return leg is at Anfield and hopefully
with the 12th man behind them, the team will do much better and make Kenny's
experience a far happier one than it was last night
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