EVERYBODY LOVES JÜRGEN
Borussia Dortmund v Liverpool is a game that needs no introduction. But 11-word cliches like that are of little comfort to a teatime email that needs to fill around 400 words to avoid a passive-aggressive dressing-down from The Man. Thankfully sentences like that last one – and this one, and the next one if we really feel like pushing our luck – help fill 60-odd words. Only 340 to go!
So, yes, Dortmund v Liverpool. The tie of the round in Big Vase and arguably all of Europe. A story of goodwill, gegenpressing and Joe Allen’s beard. The team Jürgen built against the team Jürgen’s about to rebuild. Dortmund are big favourites. Domestically they are only five points behind Bayern Munich, who last dropped a Bundesliga point in 2012. Their home record this season is mildly terrifying: 69 goals in 22 games, 19 of which they have won. But then Liverpool have scored six away from home twice this season, as well as five at Norwich and four at Manchester City. If this match doesn’t bring goals, then the man upstairs really does have it in for all of us.
Liverpool are outsiders, despite having a significant insider. In the context of modern football, Klopp achieved the impossible at Dortmund: he left without a deluge of outrage on Twitter. It means there will be a Klopp End behind both goals tonight. “A lot has been said but it is easy for me as I just have friends here,” said Klopp. “It’s better to be here than North Korea or something,” he continued, inexplicably mispronouncing “Rochester High Street at 2.30am on a Saturday when Aaron Stones has just chucked out and Jon Lusher is on the warpath because nobody would slow dance with him.”
Not that the warmth will stop everyone doing what they need to do in the name of professionalism and ego, whether it’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang ruthlessly roofing his 34th goal of the season, Marco Reus demonstrating his post-Iniesta genius or Klopp dancing down the touchline when Christian Benteke gets his fourth. “I will not take some pills to stop me from celebrating a goal,” said Klopp. “We all started playing football against our best friends when we were young and I can’t remember a moment when, because it was my best friend, I did not want to win against him,” he concluded, callously assuming everyone had a best friend growing up, and that that there were no lonely teatime emails whose best friend was and still is an imaginary gerbil called Clodoaldo.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I have known him for a long, long time. When he played at St Etienne he played there for a few years and we watched him many times. He has all the attributes to be a top, top player and is that in fact … we had this kind of player and we had no need [for more]” – Dimitri Payet joins Anthony Martial, N’Golo Kanté, Him, Johan Cruyff, The Wire, Diego Maradona, The Beatles, Bobby Moore and Twin Peaks in the big book of Things Arsène Wenger Knew Were Great Before Anybody Else Knew They Were Great Yet Yet Still Didn’t Bother To Follow Up On Them.
FIVER LETTERS
“In a working class way I was sipping tea from my grossly oversized Sports Direct mug, my eyes racing across my computer screen hoping to quickly finish yesterday’s Fiver and move onto getting a good deal on next year’s Rotherham trip … when … slap me silly and call me Rafa … Newcastle United Football Club are in profit. Well sweet zombie Cissé, my beloved Toon operate in a prudent and measured manner. North-east Football hey … you can fantasise about it, you can grieve over it, be saddened or elated by it; you can pray or wish to change it; you can beg and plead, but sometimes a howl of anguish is all that there is left: ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah’. Back to that oversized Sports Direct mug … cheers Mr Ashley, well done” – Steve Pharoah.
“What one earth is David Wright on about (or on)? There’s not been a new layout has there? As far as I can remember the layout has always been terrible, and the pictures uninteresting enough that you don’t want them to download anyway. By the way, isn’t it time for some funny anagrams of coaches’/managers’ names? I feel like that hasn’t been trotted out since El Tel managed Dirty Leeds. I’ll get the ball rolling with this if you like Pochettino – Tinpot echo” – Jeremy Adams (and no other satisfied readers).
“After seeing the reference to Father Ted in yesterday’s Fiver, it got me thinking about who would star in a show called Fifa Ted. I won’t name names, but we’ve got the ranting, inappropriate old man banned from all church-related activities (‘Fifa family! Girls in shorter shorts’!). We’ve got the disgraced priest with money fraud against his name (‘My money was just resting in Fifa’s accounts’). At a stretch we have the slightly dim one who speaks without thinking (‘Ted, why don’t we just put all the best teams in a super league? Man U invented football anyway, it’s only fair’). Can any Fiver readers think of candidates to play Mrs Doyle/Bishop Brennan?” – Paul Rockliffe .
• Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet The Fiver. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Paul Rockliffe.
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RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Rejoice! It’s this week’s Football Weekly Extra! And you can now get tickets for the pod’s live show at … the London Palladium. Yes, the London Palladium. And the pod makes its first ever trip to Norn Ireland on 8 June. Tickets are on sale now. Get them while they’re still warm.
BITS AND BOBS
Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s Mr 15% says the PSG striker will sue a Swedish doctor who made “crazy” doping allegations against him.
Bobby M has helpfully translated Leighton Baines’s criticism of Everton’s on-pitch “chemistry” into Bobby M-Speak. “What he intended to say is that when you’re not getting the results you lose confidence, so a ball that could go in hits the crossbar and it goes out,” he Bobby-Md. “That’s what he meant and it was more of a feeling of disappointment and frustration.”
Apologies if you’ve heard this one before: Arsène Wenger has backed Union Jack Wilshere to finally fulfil his potential.
Former Leeds managing director David Haigh has claimed he was repeatedly tortured and abused while in prison accused of fraud in Dubai.
And the Wolfsburg boss, Dieter Hecking, has told Marcelo what we’d all like to tell Adam Sandler. “I have told him to stop his acting,” honked Hecking, after the Real Madrid defender headbutted Maximilian Arnold in the chest before collapsing to the turf like a right one.
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
There’s gold in this here gallery: the boys of 1966 – the England World Cup-winning squad unseen.
STILL WANT MORE?
What does almost £1bn buy you these days? A series of honks in a Big Cup quarter-final, reckons Barney Ronay.
Thomas Tuchel and the brilliance of Jürgen Klopp’s shape-shifting successor at Dortmund. It’s Raphael Honigstein on the Terminator 2 baddie who stands in Liverpool’s Big Vase path.
Not strictly football, but who cares? When PSG once had an egg-chasing Super League team. By Gavin Willacy.
Keylor Navas’s scorpion kick and a brotherly shove at Forest Green feature in this week’s Classic YouTube.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.
