"Do I want to beat you, on a personal level? Oh hell yeah I do. But on a professional level, which bleeds over into my personal existence, I need to beat you... I need it more than anything you can ever imagine." - Stone Cold Steve Austin.
There's a list of reasons about as long as the list of Jordan Henderson's haircare products as to why I would never make it as a top level footballer. Chief among those is because I get carried away far to easy. Even Sky's habit of attaching hyperbolic significance to those games that barely deserve it pales in comparison to the kind of platform I can put them on. You can only imagine how I'm feeling about Saturday. Hopefully this will explain somewhat.
It was a rather mundane afternoon when I got my hands on the FA Cup. We were the current holders at the time it was taken but Dennis Bergkamp had made sure that this would be as close as anyone in a Liverpool shirt would get to lifting the famous old trophy. A happy coincidence on a routine shopping trip - this was back in the heady days before Newcastle found it fit to name their stadium after a certain magnificent sports retailer - saw me find myself in a queue to lift the cup.
Having ransacked my house in order to try and exhume it, looking at it now it feels like a lifetime ago. I was fifteen at the time but you'd be forgiven for thinking I was half that age - still taller than Jay Spearing mind. My only real contact with the Liverpool Football Club I adored were the games on TV and the sadly now defunct Mexican stand-off I'd have with the teletext on a Saturday afternoon. Message-boards and forums were about as foreign to me as the concept that in less than four years time we'd be European Champions.
Unlike any other form of entertainment - and I'm loathed to refer to it as such - football has no end point. Darth Vader dies, somebody else lives and Liverpool FC goes on. There are however points of reference. Every match has implications but the FA Cup final tomorrow is one of those points that could help to springboard the winner onto greater things. Case and point in the Premier League being when we played Chelsea for fourth place in 2003. They won and got an Abramovic to take home with them. Perhaps the biggest one I can think of is 2005 at Anfield in the Champions League semi final. There's a certain theme developing here regarding our opponents.
Ideals are dangerous. People have gone to war over ideals. Put them together in a footballing context and you get people as diametrically opposed as Pep Guardiola and Sam Allardyce. It's far from perfect and I know full well that my love the game is not one that is reciprocated however I continue to immerse myself in it. Whereas some people see rigidity, restriction and organisation - mostly those at Villa Park these days - I see freedom and artistry. The word mentality became a Rafa buzzword, almost to the point of cliché but that's what counts. is almost impossible to fake. Even if you can aesthetically simulate it, only the utmost application of desire and heart can get you where you want. Talent makes you a player but what's inside will define you as a footballer. It's the reason why I have such a man crush on Lucas Leiva. He never hid when things were going wrong all around him. 's a certain purity in honest effort. To try and accept the possibility that things may not go your way is almost the very definition of what it is to be human. We may not have seen the flair and skill of years past but that never say die attitude that surrounds Liverpool Football Club no matter what the circumstances still remains.
Life is loud. In those few moments where I can actually sit down and take a breath, I hear a voice. Sleep brings no respite. I had a dream this morning where Glen Johnson scored the winner. It isn't the first time this week I've woken up and had the cup ripped from my grasp. It's not so much a whisper as it is shouting out to the footballing gods. I don't think I've ever felt like this before, Istanbul included. When it comes to trophies I'm like anyone else, of course I yearn for success. This time it's more than that. I ache for it. I don't just want it, I need it.
The game itself will be horrible. I won't be able to sit nor think straight until after the game is over, it'll just be ninety minutes of me by sheer will alone trying to manifest it into the universe. They're missing a couple of players but I know Drogba will be there, regardless of whatever is said about his injury. Ivanovic at centre back will mean that Bosingwa will have to play at right back and that will hopefully be something we'll be able to exploit. As always with a game like this however, it'll be the midfield battle which we have to get right. If Lucas were playing I'd be very comfortable about dealing with Ramires and Mikel, having done so already twice magnificently this season. Having already been to Wembley twice this season I'm pretty confident that all those who seemed to be in awe of the occasion in the league cup final have now got that out of their system. Of course, it helps that we're once again in the role of underdog. Against Cardiff we were supposed to put down a hammering and obviously that was never going to happen. Now we're back in a place which we're both familiar and comfortable with. How can we - playing the way we have been - beat the team that's just knocked out Barcelona? Watch and learn.
Our own line up hinges on the speculation surrounding Carragher's inclusion. I've gotten myself used to the idea of Agger at left back already just so that I'm not taken by surprise should it happen tomorrow afternoon. I'm not about to debate tactics or personnel, when that team sheet is released - regardless of whether or not it is the one I want - then that's the team I will place my faith and more importantly my support with. The first eleven might not even be what tips the scale. Tight as I believe it will be, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody came off the bench to win it. That could mean Dirk Kuyt (you wouldn't bet against it), Andy Carroll or even Fernando Torres - though I believe Daniel Agger will have something to say about that. Personally speaking, I would love to not to have to come from behind in a cup final for a change, but the last time we took the lead against anyone in a final was Chelsea in 05 and that didn't turn out to well. I don't care who, how or when. I'm giving them the licence to do what they've done to me so many times. Take me on that emotional roller-coaster. Just make sure that when it's all said and done there's a trophy there waiting.
Kenny Dalglish deserves this trophy. Whatever happens, my opinion of the man won't change. Football is littered with the worst kinds of people. Kenny is the opposite of that. For so long I was naive enough to think that it was important everybody see just how good he is. Too many people around the country - too many agendas - have made that impossible. Now I'm past caring. What I care about is Liverpool Football Club and nobody does a better job of that than The King. I'm just about too young to remember Kenny Dalglish the first time around. There's something about watching a man who is so clearly as devoted to a football club as the rest of us are, it fills me with immense joy and pride to watch him celebrate on the touchline - Everton especially. I'm talking now about the man himself. His name has been dragged right through the mud and some people need to take a hard look at themselves. I'm not trying to say he's perfect, nobody is. I just want people to realise what he's done for the club, this season. 29th April 2010. That night we played Atletico Madrid in the Europa League semi final. It was to be Rafa's last European hurrah and we couldn't quite get ourselves over the line. I thought that may be our last game in Europe for ten years. Forget the Champions League, we were turning into the Aston Villa we now see before us.
People often point to the six months with Hodgson, Hicks and Gillette as a way of measuring just how different things are now. Have results been bad this year? Certainly. Everything was bad back then. Now our main issues are Coates and Sterling, Bellamy's knees or how to utilise Andy Carroll. Two years ago, we were losing a quarter of a million a day. If you think these are dark times right now, clearly you did not have your eyes open last year. Whatever happens at Wembley, whatever happens in the summer, I'm looking forward. It's may not be anywhere near as glamorous or rewarding as the Champions League but it's Liverpool in Europe, thanks to Kenny. If you asked me to think of Rafa's first season in 2005, do I immediately think of Djimi's break dancing in Burnley or battering Birmingham City only for Darren Anderton of all people to win it? When you ask me to think of this season I'll remember Cardiff, Everton and hopefully tomorrow.
Those that know me closely know that football is my everything. It is my introduction to people, I've lost count of the amount of strangers I've talked to for hours over the complexities of this simple game. More importantly than that it is my escape. For so long I'd been lucky enough that the worst thing that could possibly happen to me was that Liverpool lose, that's changed dramatically over the last couple of years. My mother, who had been disabled all her life - I say disabled, she was deaf, it never struck me as anything other than normal - has seen her health rapidly deteriorate over the last couple of years. She only ever watched football because it was the only time I'd ever sit in front of the television and became somewhat of a Liverpool fan, loving Steven Gerrard as the rest of us do. After Istanbul I had promised her a long time ago that I would take her to Anfield one day. Because of her health, it's a promise that I will never be able keep. I hate breaking promises. I'm going to see her on Monday in the care home she lives in. There are days now where she barely even recognises me. I can still see that glimmer in her eye when she looks at Steven Gerrard however and I hope to be able to show her a picture of him with our latest piece of silverware. Even if we're lucky enough to make it to yet another final in the next twelve months, I don't know if I'll have that same privilege next year.
There is, one more reason – as if I didn't have enough – that this game matters to me. I fell in love with one of theirs. April 16th 2011. I was watching the Man Utd-Man City game in a pub, talking to a complete stranger – as you do. She was a small, intelligent, incredibly attractive and knew her football - a rarity in any Chelsea fan. Paul Scholes hasn't done a lot for me in his life, but our revelling in his sending off in the FA Cup Semi final of last year sparked off something that burned brightly and fizzled out just as fast. I happen to know she'll be there at Wembley. The eight months we were together were the happiest of my life. As the months went on I really fell for her, to the point where I didn't even rub it in when we beat them twice in the space of eleven days. It was the kind of self restraint I never thought I had, all because I didn't ever want to make her upset. Having said that, you won't be entirely surprised to hear that I managed to screw it up. When she ended it I felt hollow inside. I took that pain - along with a stomach full of beer - to Anfield with me a few days later, against Oldham in the FA Cup. It was the first time I felt anything other than empty. Our paths and the FA Cup are so intertwined I guess it's almost inevitable that it would come down to this. I might not yet be fully over her but that doesn't change things. She already has my heart, they can't have this as well.
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