Louisville Magazine

NOV 2012

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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immerse myself in the context of the club and its culture, and so I called myself a supporter, bought a jersey, and began watching matches at the beginning of the 2009-10 season. Over time, fragments of club history permeated my memory, and I learned the names of leg- endary managers and famous players, the re- percussions of the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, the importance of the Boot Room and the pass-and-move style of play. One of the first things I did after deciding to follow the club was to watch a highlights video of the 2005 Champions League final in Istan- bul, when Liverpool was down 3-0 to AC Milan at halftime and came back to win the game in fairy-tale fashion. One of the great- est finals of all time, they say, and I could see why, staring in a half-dark room at my laptop screen as Steven Gerrard, Liverpool captain and local hero, scored on a tremendous head- er and immediately ran back to the halfway "Istanbul spirit" from grainy stock footage played over pre-match montages of past glo- ries. Week after week, here I am in my bat- tered jersey, bleary-eyed and swimming in coffee, grinning like a lunatic because some overpaid player I have never met has man- aged to poke a ball over a white line on an- other continent. It is senseless; it is brilliant. It is not mine. And I keep returning to this question: What is this passion, really? Can it ever be authentic? I'd like to think that it isn't just the brilliance of the Liverpool marketing staff or the romanticizing of a great sports saga. Objectively, I can appreciate the aestheticism of the game, of bodies in motion with one another; the primal desire for conflict; the idea of some kind of implicit reciprocity be- tween the players and the fans (I love you this much because you love me back) — but that is, intellectually speaking, why I love soccer in Week after week, here I am in my battered jersey, bleary-eyed and swimming in coffee, grinning like a lunatic because some overpaid player I have never met has managed to poke a ball over a white line on another continent. It is senseless; it is brilliant. It is not mine. www.archlouschools.org [86] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.12 line, windmilling his arms, urging his team- mates on. Come on now, he seemed to be say- ing, reaching forward through history to grab me by the shoulder and shake me. Come on, we're Liverpool; we're not giving up. I was there and not there all at once, the liminal space between that victory and this moment carv- ing its way into my chest. I knew the result, and yet it mattered what happened because of how and where and why it happened, and what it meant to Liverpool supporters. His passion, and the passion of all the Liverpool fans in attendance, were unquestionably real. Could I say the same for mine, four years on and removed by the pixels on a screen, the distortion of the commentator's voice, and the complexities of history? Tese facts remain: I have never set foot in Anfield, never seen a Liverpool score line in the Courier-Journal, never known a time when players did not wear the names of cor- porate sponsors across their chests like some kind of bizarre armor, Samsung and Reebok doing battle for a trophy dripping with Bar- clays ribbons. I learned the words to "You'll Never Walk Alone" by watching YouTube videos. I am an eager consumer of everything the globalized, corporate world of soccer spoon-feeds me, ravenous for the crumbs of a stripped-down, artificial authenticity — if only because I have no other choice. At times I feel like a fraud, a pseudo-fan who only knows the significance of the never-say-die general, not why I love Liverpool. Te only rational answer I can formulate is that I have never seen such unconditional love shared by so many all at once, and I want to be part of that. No other club inspires the same passion in their supporters. Te sports-as-religion metaphor is terribly overused, but it is ap- propriate here: After watching so many oth- ers kneel so devoutly at the altar of Anfield, I want to worship there too, with them. Is it wrong that this perception of devotion, of love, is largely manufactured? Or maybe my love is simpler: that when I watch Liverpool play, my heart clenches slug- gishly, tenderly; that I cried when Gerrard returned to the field after a six-month injury; that I dream in red and white. As someone who did not inherit my club allegiance or fall in love with a team at an early age, I had a choice — and I chose Liverpool. I am not only mindlessly consuming the stories of oth- ers, but also writing new ones of my own, finding new meanings, part of a new passion. Maybe I don't need to place my passion in any greater context or any moment in time. I can't stop history. I can only hold on, one of faceless millions, a pinpoint of light on the map, looking at Anfield on the screen and hoping that it is enough. Pont Manual High School, is a freshman at Yale University. Catherine Jennings, a graduate of Du-

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