THE Europeans know how to make the game of soccer or as some others choose to call it football look beautiful. They recreate life with some of the things they bring to make it attractive and easy for marketing by trained marketers. It is always amazing when the Europeans celebrate the final match of their cup competitions. Trust them to make the event a carnival of sorts with all the trappings (drama, excitement, entertainment, and the thrills and frills) which leaves the soccer lover (s) eager to watch another final game.
Hitherto, many a football fan would have tagged a barren draw game boring with one team parking the bus in front of its goalpost. It was a common belief too difficult to wash off the minds of ardent followers of the game. But Sunday’s Carabao Cup, which stretched on its seams for 120 minutes on a barren string ended in the pulsating 11-10 victory for Liverpool against the current World Club Cup champions Chelsea at Wembley Stadium, goes down in history as one game to debunk such an untested theorem.
Last Sunday’s game was a clash of two teams with contrasting styles of play, making genuine pundits call the game one tie too close by way of predicting its outcome. Fans of the Blues could put their heads on the guillotine to tip Chelsea to lift the Carabao Cup, citing the club’s string of cup victories, since Thomas Tuchel’s reign as the club’s manager. Such fans could easily have forgotten that Wembley hasn’t been a good hunting ground for Chelsea, especially against Arsenal. Conversely, these Blues fans could have submitted too that Jurgen Klopp had lost two cup finals at Wembley, thus throwing the game open to one for the best team on the night to win the trophy, even if such a winner emerges from the penalty kicks – it turned out to be so.
For Liverpool fans, Wembley hadn’t brought good fortunes for the team in recent years. The Reds have rediscovered their scoring range – one in which any team could be beaten groggy by Liverpool when in their element. Manchester United fans won’t forget in a hurry the 5-0 away thumping by Liverpool over the Red Devils at the Theatre of Nightmares (or sorry Dreams). The Red Devils were torn to shreds with goalkeeper De Gea making the 5-0 drubbing not reflect the number of saves he made on the night
Indeed, anyone who predicted that Reds would beat the Blues by what the Special One Jose Mourinho often called hockey scores would amount to taking loyalty to a ridiculous height. And nobody was going to bet on that. A close game was on the cards, although thought such closeness would translate to over 89,000 spectators watching a cup final where everyone on the field after 120 minutes was compelled to score a goal on the pitch, no matter his antecedents from taking penalty kicks.
Traditionally, when it gets to penalty kicks after the regulation time, scorers of goals after 90 minutes lose theirs in the shoot-out exercise. With no goals scored after 120 minutes, such jinxes were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean, leaving the neutrals with an open mind to wait for the eventual winner to emerge.
Chelsea in recent times carved out a strategy where the goalkeeper if he wasn’t Kepa be replaced towards the end of the 120 minutes. It was the Blues’ way of prospecting the penalty shootout exercises preceding Sunday’s final game. It worked for them. After all, nobody changes a winning strategy. And it didn’t matter how well the goalkeeper being replaced by Kepa fared in the 120 minutes tie. Those who faulted Tuchel’s decision are either fair-weather fans of the team or those who are poor with the club’s recent history under Tuchel.
In fact, one of my childhood younger friends Edirin Erhiaganoma tweeted as Kepa stepped onto the pitch that Chelsea had lost the game with that tactical change. Edirin called it a blunder. How prophetic, dear Edirin, though he was challenged with records. Edirin stood his ground and waited for the eventual outcome to prove him right or wrong. As for The Nation newspapers’ education gem, Kofo Belo Osagie, in a post-match discussion inside the newsroom, Monday evening said it didn’t matter who won the penalty shootouts. Kofo’s interest was in supporting all dark-skinned players (Chelsea and Liverpool have them in their numbers) to score their kicks. Part of the drama on the night. Kofo isn’t a racist. She is not known to be a football follower. So, if she expressed such sentiment, it is her right that ought to be respected since both sides had more than enough dark-skinned (to use Kofo’s real words) players. Yes, Kofo chose her words. Dark-skinned can’t be racist. I digress!
As a Liverpool fan, I wanted my team to win to avoid the taunts from friends. Yet, as the Editor of Sportinglife, I’m always happy whenever Chelsea win matches not to talk about trophies. Under such a dilemma, I chose to watch as a pundit, knowing that I could write on it this week. Under this setting, it occurred to me to look at the trio of Mohammed Salah’s, Sadio Mane’s, and Mendy’s performances to hazard a guess on who the 2021/2022 Africa Footballer of the Year would be. Mendy reminds this writer about the great Cameroonian goalkeeper Thomas Nkono who stood in between the goalposts like a colossus. Nkono had reliable gloves which he used to save goals for his country during matches. Mendy’s 2020 transfer to Chelsea has been a Hollywood success story. Little known outside France and Senegal before the move, the goalkeeper became a compulsory first choice star at Stamford Bridge. He is unarguably one of the best goalkeepers in the world producing incredible reflex saves manning the goalpost for the Blues. He added an international trophy to his cabinet, winning the African Cup of Nations with Senegal.
To date, Mendy has been decorated as the Best FIFA Goalkeeper, Champions League best goalkeeper of the season, Champions League squad of the season, Ghana Football Awards’ Best African international, and AFCON’s best goalkeeper. Are these awards enough to guarantee Mendy the most votes as the 2021/202 Africa Footballer of the Year? It doesn’t look like a possibility, if the essence of making the game exciting is to score goals with aplomb.
The voting trend in most big awards in soccer globally tends to favour the strikers as if they don’t rely on passes from their mates including goalkeepers. Yes, Mohammed Salah’s opened scoring against Norwich in the Premier League clash which ended 6-0 at Anfield through a goal kick taken masterful from the Reds’ goalkeeper Alisson which Salah controlled expertly before dribbling the Norwich defenders in their numbers, including leaving the opposition’s goalkeeper sprawling on the turf. If scoring goals is the opium needed to be decorated as the next Africa Footballer of the year, then Sadio Mane who has scored 16 goals in 39 games and Salah with 29 goals in 39 games are the top contenders, leaving Mahrez of Manchester City and new Barcelona recruit Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as also-ran candidates. Pity no Nigerian can displace any of these lads.
Mane looks like the odds-on favourite to retain the award having led Senegal to lift the Cameroon 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, beating Egypt which paraded Salah on penalty shootouts, the Egyptian’s awesome goal-scoring prowess notwithstanding. The trio, Mendy, Mane and Salah have done well in their European clubs. Liverpool where Mane and Salah play are still in the champions League, English FA Cup and the Premier League. Hence the parametres to gauge who among them would be the 2022 Africa Footballer of the Year lie in the wait.