Night. The man turns around and looks back over his shoulder with his mouth wide open. He is too numb to put up more than a token fight, so as his assistant leads him away, he agrees. He tells Pep, “Forget it, it’s Chinatown.” As the camera moves back, the street lights flash. A police officer yells. As sirens scream, a sad saxophone shakes through the night.
It’s one of the best endings: our hero has done everything he can, but this place is ruled by forces much stronger than him and has its own rules. We are at Anfield.
On Sunday, after Liverpool beat Manchester City 1-0, Pep Guardiola said over and over, “This is Anfield.” He told the written press about it. He told the radio that “We are at Anfield.” His point was clear: you can’t win in this situation. Guardiola has only won once at Anfield, but that was when the stadium was empty because of a lockdown. Guardiola has led a team with fans there seven times, and his teams have drawn twice and lost five times.
But this wasn’t a tribute to how the Kop has inspired people. Since he kept saying this phrase about the controversy over Liverpool’s goal, it seemed like he was saying that referees are influenced at Anfield, which didn’t make a lot of sense since the crucial part of the decision was made by the VAR official at Stockley Park and was right.
Several City players repeated the line that Anthony Taylor had let a lot go. He had followed the Premier League’s rules for this season, which encourage a more physical style of football and let players touch each other. Why then, in this case, should you be different? Why not let this happen?
There are two clear answers to that. First, letting some contact happen is not the same as letting all contact happen, and because of how VAR is used, a stricter interpretation is always likely right before a goal. Second, a pull on the shirt is not a shoulder-to-shoulder challenge, two players wrestling for the ball, or a light touch of the leg as a tackle comes in. A shirt pull is never a good way to win the ball, and what’s more, it’s very easy to see on video.
Erling Haaland took Fabinho’s shirt, which is not allowed. Even if Fabinho was already falling, it doesn’t matter. Even though Taylor couldn’t see, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that you can get away with things like that sometimes.
It was a foul, and the officials later said that Haaland’s next challenge on Alisson was also a foul. Even if the pull on Fabinho hadn’t been called, the goal still wouldn’t have counted. In the middle of all the City craziness, it might be worth mentioning that the whole thing started with a goal kick that should have been a Liverpool corner.
It was a day of crazy behavior on the sidelines. Jürgen Klopp was also angry with the refereeing, and the fact that the foul on Mohamed Salah that led to his red card was the third one that wasn’t called doesn’t make up for his outburst. There’s also no reason to explain why fans are said to have thrown coins at Guardiola. It’s clear that Klopp should be banned from the sidelines and that anyone who throws objects should be charged.
But when you look at the whole season, it was Guardiola’s actions that were most interesting. This rivalry has been mostly free of the kind of psychological warfare in press conferences that he had with José Mourinho in Spain. Still, this is a long way from that. But Guardiola seemed nervous from the cold handshake before the game, long before he waved to the crowd after Phil Foden’s goal was called back.
Maybe it was just because of Anfield, but it was hard not to wonder if Klopp’s comments on Friday about how it would be impossible to compete with government projects, in the long run, had hit a nerve. This was less likely to be because he felt bad about how and why the government was funding his project than because it made it sound like he was playing the Premier League in an easier mode.
And the first turn of Guardiola’s tactical kaleidoscope this season was hard not to see in that light. There were no small changes to the usual 4-3-3 formation. Instead, there was a completely different formation, with Joo Cancelo playing high on the right and Phil Foden dropping relatively deep on the left. This meant that Foden couldn’t expose James Milner at right back as he did in the same game last season.
If the goal of offering a de facto back three was to strengthen City’s defenses against the counter, which has become more of a risk since Haaland was brought in, it didn’t work. Salah had already been stopped in a one-on-one situation before he scored, and Darwin Nez led two late breakaways.
Newcastle and Crystal Palace showed that Haaland’s defense had other problems besides the fact that he scored a lot of goals. But losing at Anfield showed there were other problems.
These problems against the counter are probably more of an issue in the later stages of European competition than in the Premier League, but if Guardiola is feeling the pressure and this is more than just an issue at Anfield, it may be best for City that this week’s game against the leader’s Arsenal has been moved. It might just be Anfield, but it might be more than that.
