Liverpool V Barca

Fantastic result. First time I haven't been able to come up with any criticism for our (Liverpool) performance. All the players did their job last night, and all did it well.

Barca didn't even need to play Ronaldinho did he actually do anything last night :oops: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Ah well we all have our good and bad games, best of luck to barca when they come to Anfield.

As for the fans, as someone said you get good and you get violent/bad fans everywhere (or most teams). When Man-U play liverpool the Man-U fans usually destroy buses trying to get past (we were on one last time that got a brick through the window :eek: shocking). You can't brand all supporters of a team the same it's just the odd couple of hundred that dissapoint.

And it's usually abroad too after a few pre-match shandys :lol: :spank:
 
i've tried to look at this as impartially as possible.

there were at least 15,000 liverpool fans in barcelona for the game and only 4,000 official tickets for LFC. i was totally shocked at the amount of LFC fans in the ground. generally, both sets of supporters were well behave (a mutual respect if you like) but as has been said, you get idiots everywhere. in the papers i read this morning, it said there were less than 10 arrests of liverpool fans (2 of which were mistaken identity and 6 were for buying fake tickets!:confused: with 2 thrown in the drink tank.)

in my area i saw 2 barcelona fans kicked out for trying, unsuccessfully, to drag a wheelchair LFC supporter out of the ground after bellamy scored. many of the FCB fans nearby were rightly appalled at this and tried to stop it, then a scrap ensued and the original provocatuers escorted out. clearly though, i believe this to be an extremely rare incident and certainly don't presume this to be normal for FCB fans.

i inherently dislike much of the culture/baggage that goes with supporting a british football club. i know i'm lucky that LFC have one of the best track records across europe for good behaviour (bar the most disgraceful of blemishes, again an example of how the few can tarnish the many).

the people of liverpool have their good points and bad points like any, but if we are generalising then the one thing that i believe can always be said of us is that we are friendly and good natured. behaviour that doesn't conform with this, is 100% rebuked by scousers. red or blue you can't seperate the concepts of football and being a scouser.

i think the point also has to be made that LFC has a high proportion of fans who are not actually from the region, whose values are not always in keeping with those of a true scouser. i'm not sure non-scouse LFC fans understand that they are not only representing LFC when they watch us in europe but they represent the city of liverpool too, regardless of their place of origin.

visca el Barça! YNWA, mai caminareu sols.
 
Jonny68 said:
As for Liverpool fans, the only thing we as Celtic fans have in common with them is that we sing the same song you'll never walk alone which contrary to popular belief was sung first by Celtic fans but how and ever i wouldn't slate all Liverpool fans as being the same although my Man United mate hates them, he said when he was @ Anfield before they threw bags of pi*s down at the United fans and sang Munich songs:eek:
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if you truly believe that the only thing LFC have in common with Celtic then you have a very poor understanding of your club's history.:eek::rolleyes: i can educate if you want. as for singing YNWA first, who cares, it's a song from a feckin musical so what does that mean...............i don't really care who sings it, it's how you represent that anthem that is important and how it is recognised/known around the world. after hillsborough, inter, roma, juventus (yes even after heysel) and other clubs around europe spontaneously sung YNWA as a tribute. that is why it's important, not cos we sung it first or second or third if you count the carousel version or fourth if you count rodgers and hammerstein doing a jig round the joanna with their pipe and smoking jackets.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

for every munich song sung at anfield by an idiot, prob an OOT, there is a case of similar ignorance and stupidity for every football club across the world. it's well known that Man U have historically had a hooligan problem and whilst i don't blame man utd or their fans for this (as hooligans are small minded criminals nothing to do with football) a bag of piss by some idiot is a drop in the water compared to what some of the folk 'attached' to Man U have got up to down the years.

so as much as i've made your argument for you, in terms of distancing that nasty element from real man united fans, don't then go and be hypocritical and link a bag of piss or munich songs to people who you think are real liverpool fans.

i have heard a munich song at anfield, the 2 guys who started it were forcibly expelled from the ground by kopites and after a petition barred for life from anfield. the most disturbing thing i ever saw at a football match was when stuck in traffic driving back from a victory at old trafford, a man pressing him and his (10 year old??) son's face against the car window shouting "was this what it was like at hillsborough"??:eek::rolleyes::rolleyes::cry::cry:
 
whoah :eek: chill the fu*k out man what the hell is wrong with you this evening?I never said all Liverpool fans were the same which im sure they are not, every club as well has a hooligan problem some worse than others, Millwall springs to mind here.

And please i know everything there is to know about the proud history of Celtic FC.
 
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Jonny68 said:
Because it is, im unaware of any other thing we have in common with LFC.
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here is an article i dug out written by dave bowler who wrote shankly's authorised biography and was a close friend of his and due to the friendship of shanks and jock stein, also got to know stein.

some of the stuff is anecdotal and very tongue in cheek but the basic idea is there. i'm not saying we're joined at the hip but i believe to say there is no link at all is also wrong.


Links as far back as I can remember then. Perhaps mirroring their respective
cities. World-renowned west coast seaports. Gritty dockers and resolute men of the shipyards. The intrinsic humour and toughness of the natives. That shared vitality. Those uniquely distinctive accents. Two bastions of sheer working classness. No religious links in the Reds case but as far removed from the establishment as it was possible to get. Just like the Celts. Leave that sort of stuff for yer Man U's and yer Rangers. The aristocracy. Our loyalties lay with the proletariat. We know our place in the class structure. Down here mate! I say down here!Not when it comes to football, I hasten to add.

The ''immortal'' Jock Stein. Our own Bill Shankly's term for his great friend.
The great protestant Celt - a contradiction in terms? [nah Kenny was too] - and his team arrived at Anfield in 1966. Before he had become immortal, of course. The second leg of the European Cup Winner''s Cup semi-final. Accompanied by hordes of green and white enhooped Caledonian revellers bowing and prostrating themselves all across our fair city to our matching colour Corporation buses as they swished past on their way down Sheil Road, would you believe ? Collaring one such denizen, I asked him why all the genuflections to a mere bus. He put it to me that the Pontiff himself was driving the blessed thing. It took me a good five minutes to convince the poor soul that the Pope hadn't driven the 26 since they'’d got rid of conductors. Still, that''s blind faith, I guess!

Generous to a fault as well, these Glaswegians. Like their Scouse cousins. That common thread of human decency. That milk - or should it perhaps be spirit?- of human kindness. Three thousand empty whisky bottles bequeathed to us following the match. And that was just in the Boy’s Pen! Do you know that with the deposits on those bottles we went out and bought Emlyn Hughes? I'’d had my first taste of such bountiful spirit a week or so earlier. It was an away game at Roker Park.

The Red hordes had taken up their usual position behind the goal. Utter disrespect for the rightful Mackem occupants but who gave a damn back then when we were busy spreading the Gospel according to Shanks? Anyway, a bit of scuffling to our rear. A guy around five foot nine dressed all in green was challenging all-comers to a fight. Now I have to confess here that there
weren't many takers amongst our lot. But who could blame them? I mean have you ever seen shoulders five foot nine inches wide? This guy made Victor Mature look like Charles Hawtrey for god's sake.

Fear not, though. My mate Billy to the rescue. ''Soft Billy'' as we used to term him. With good reason too. There followed some rather dynamic ballroom dancing and a few ****** noses. All of them Billy''s. Having strutted their stuff, the battlers went on to become firm friends. Later following a sex-change, they wed and Billy bore our coat-hangered Celtic warrior three strapping boys. One a Celtic fan, one a Red and the other a hybrid supporter of Tranmere and Queen of the South. It's a funny old game you know.

Big Ron Yeats's testimonial was our next communion. Early seventies. I was late home from work. Quickly donning my all Red paraphernalia I legged it up
Utting Avenue to the Anfield Road End to pay my respects to the big fella...
Disaster!!

How on earth was I meant to know that so many screaming Celts would come all this way for a ****** midweek testimonial for one of our players?!? Don't
these guys have anything better to do? I jest, of course. What on earth could be better than a day out to Anfield? Still it would have been comforting to have been the owner of five foot nine inch wide shoulders as I took a deep
breath and attempted to camouflage my Redness amongst ten thousand Highlanders resplendent in their green and white.Only one dodgy moment.

As the green hordes chanted reverently for Shankly so the Kop responded in kind for big John Stein. Well sort of reverently, anyway. "Jock Strap!" they chanted as only witty Kopites, wanting to put at risk the life of one of their own, can! Fortunately our Celtic cousins never deciphered this light-hearted affront to their messiah. In any case I do them a great disservice. They would probably have merely dismembered me. Seriously folks, they were magnificent to me, our Celtic cousins. And to big Ron, too. It was just that I was more relieved by the end of the proceedings than Big Ron. A limb is a limb when all's said and done! Even mine.

Back to our links.
Kenny's from Heaven! Er, no. Glasgee actually. Oh I see. You're saying it's
the same thing? Sure, pal, but try telling that to this out-of-work claymore
sharpener I happen to know from Cumbernauld!

Can any player ever have been more worshipped in the entire history of the
game? Why I alone used to pray to him twice every day - once at morning, once at night. Not forgetting Grace three times a day. That's my sister Grace by the way, another big Kenny devotee as you might gather from the number of times she, too, prayed to him.

Finally, some poignancy to follow all this frivolity.
We at Anfield shall never forget the magnanimity of Kenny's former club to
invite us up to Parkhead to play our first game following Hillsborough.
John Pearman of Red All Over The Land tells me that the singing that day by
both sets of supporters of our mutual hymn You'll Never Walk Alone was the
most emotional he's ever heard. I don't doubt him. On that day - not for the
first time as you will have gathered from this piece - Red and Green stood as
one.

Uniquely in football? More than likely. Brothers and sisters united in emotion.
The one entrusting its grief to the other. The other embracing it willingly.
Big heartedly. Two of the world''s great clubs shoulder to shoulder at a time
of adversity for the one. Football can produce poignant moments. That occasion was undoubtedly one of them.

And since? Well, as with most things that run deep, so the relationship has
endured. The kinship has surfaced in several other testimonials down the years and was particularly evident in our stirring UEFA cup clashes of several years ago when that Steve McManaman wonder goal stretched Green magnanimity to its limits.

Then, a few years back, to coincide with the return home of the last itinerant Celt from the '67 European Cup Final in Lisbon, we had the latest of the green and white invasions of our precious Anfield citadel.

The occasion was Ronnie Moran's farewell game, a glittering spectacle at which it was rumoured that the fallen Red's hero Titi Camara was so impressed by the glorious din emanating from the Celtic supporters - including no doubt our belated Lisbon straggler - he was considering buying himself a kilt. A red and white one, of course! And the Celts? Well for their part they decided to bust our stand. But hey we won't carp. After all, what's a broken stand between long-time friends.

You know, it can often prove fruitless trying to explain certain things. For every shared anthem, shared maestro or experience that shapes a relationship there can be a hidden nuance just as important. Equally as instrumental. Sometimes, then, some things are best just celebrated. That is what I have tried to do here. That underlying kindred spirit binding many Reds and Greens together is simply a bit special. Full stop. Explanations are not required. The fact is, somewhere along the way it happened and it is now there for all to see. And while not everybody approves of it - Liverpudlian Ibrox devotees and their Glasgwegian counterparts especially will rightfully be less than enamoured with it all - I know of one dear departed dog-collared soul who will be delighted how things have panned out. Why it must seem like heaven for Father T. In more ways than one.
 
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