Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...
* Over in Amsterdam, Luis Suarez spent the weekend saying goodbye to his former club. There were fireworks, and an MC, and kicking souvenir balls into the crowd, and laughter and tears and smiles and waves and and and I really don't quite get it. Where's the screaming? Where's the cursing? Where's the tossing of industrial-sized mason jars of pickled herring? But even if I don't quite get it, it was still exceptionally classy on all sides and good to see. I don't have to particularly understand people behaving far better than I likely would were I in their situation to appreciate the sentiment, and with how hard the January window was at times for Liverpool fans it's nice to see Ajax, Suarez, and their Dutch supporters all seemingly able to move on and move forward with hugs all around.
* Meanwhile, back with the Academy, u18 coach Rodolfo Borrell took the time to talk about the boost to the youth sides that comes from having a first team manager with recent first-hand experience with the reserves, which Dalglish has from spending much of his time at their Kirkby home when he returned to the club as an ambassador. There's also mention that despite all the talk of Sterling recently--and on the back of his five goal performance and with the potential to become Liverpool's youngest ever player in a competitive fixture--Borrell believes that as u18 captain, Conor Coady was the best choice to make the bench in Prague amongst those who went along for the experience of a European away fixture.
Borrell also worries about keeping the kids' feet on the ground after a couple of high-flying demolition jobs with a date against Manchester United coming up quickly in the FA Youth Cup, but that seems a far better headache for a coach to have than the alternative.
* And I don't really know what to say about this one. I do know that since it involves some bloke whose last name is Torres and some club that reminds me of Phoenix, there's an awfully good chance somebody will call me a prick or devote a week to passive-aggressive retribution as to even mention a player who until a month ago was proclaiming his loyalty or the club he has gone to and that Liverpool is also looking to compete with at the fringes of the top four should everything go better than expected is obviously so far beyond the pale that I'm worse than a thousand mini-Hitlers, which for the record are worse than the one regular sized Hitler that Chrisitian Purslow is himself worse than. Oh, and that "Christian Purslow Is Worse Than Hitler" tag I like to use sometimes? It's satire. Because it's inherently silly in modern news and punditry when some blowhard or other compares somebody who really probably isn't in any way worse than Hitler to Hitler. Or Goebbels. Or the guy who delivered milk to the athletes' village at the 1936 Olympics. But there's an interesting natural tension between the hyperbolic and quite obviously ill-fitting comparison and the dislike or disdain or outright hatred that drives it.
So: Satire. Just wanted to get that on record. So there's no need for anybody to sue us. Satire. Besides, I'm broke, so good luck getting back any lawyer fees.
Oh, right, I did have a point five minutes ago: Fernando Torres, when he first met his new teammates in the Chelsea dressing room, had to sing them a song in one of those asinine sport bonding rituals where multi-millionaires act like five year olds who haven't got their circle circle dot dot cootie shot yet. So he sang them "You'll Never Walk Alone," and apparently he sang it sincerely. Like I said, I have no clue what to say about that, but it seemed so bizarre it had to be passed along.
In the meantime, while you wonder if a stroll through the Ardennes might be just the thing to help pass the time between now and Thursday...