EPL Talk » Fernando Torres

Finally, a Little Honesty from Captain Steven Gerrard

Alex Caulfield — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:23:27 +0000

Former teammates; Alonso and Gerrard

I really can’t wait to read the December installment of FourFourTwo Magazine. In this issue Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard finally states what we all know: the departure of Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid has undeniably damaged the Merseyside club. I would personally like to thank Stevie for a poignant piece of honesty. While fans and pundits pick over the decaying carcass of Liverpool Football Club, a team that has lost six of its last eight matches and is all but eliminated from the Champions League, Gerrard sites the initial catalyst for all the misery.

The captain states, “I was devastated, yeah. Devastated. But there was nothing I could do about it. Xabi said a long time ago that he wanted another chapter in his career and finally he got it and his teammates and the coaches couldn’t stand in his way. We just had to say thanks and move forward without him.”

Pressure has mounted on Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez over his side’s slumping form over the past month, with a sole victory over Manchester United keeping the club hanging from a thread. Yet to anyone who follows this team closely, Alonso’s departure signaled the beginning of an era of doubt an instability. As Gerrard wisely points out, Alonso is, “one of the best players in the world.” His diligent play over four successful seasons helped to propel Liverpool to Champions League glory, an FA cup triumph, and a stunning finish last season that saw the Anfield club nearly pip United to the Premier League title. Last year’s second place position is the closest Benitez will get to his most coveted prize, as Liverpool currently sit in sixth place in the Premier League table and are nine points adrift of first-place Chelsea.

Alonso’s deft passing ability, unrivaled vision, and sound work ethic made him the ultimate deep-lying playmaker for Benitez’s Liverpool. The Spaniard provided the perfect link between defense and attack, allowing Javier Mascherano to roam the final third and protect Liverpool’s back four. Similarly, Alonso enabled Gerrard to become the renowned attacking midfielder that we know him as today, slotting brilliantly weighted through balls to the Scouser’s feet in front of goal. Now it is Kaka and Christiano Ronaldo receiving this service, and Liverpool’s once metronomic rhythm has been disrupted.

Gerrard and Carragher have fallen upon troubled times

Lucas will never be a Premier League-caliber midfielder, and Alberto Aquilani is not Alonso’s natural replacement. That is not to say that Aquilani will not become a fine player for Liverpool, but Alonso’s skill set was incredibly rare, and replacing him in midfield is near impossible. Meanwhile Mascherano is having to overcompensate for this loss, throwing the usually tenacious holding midfielder off of his game.

With both Gerrard and star striker Fernando Torres injured and awaiting surgery, the future will not provide any respite for the once proud Merseyside club. Liverpool is in free fall, and as Gerrard intelligently points out, this trend began before his side kicked off the season, “It was always going to be different when you lose one of the best players in the world – and people are finally realizing that’s what he [Alonso] is, on the back of his form for Real Madrid and the difference in us from last year.”

Despite Criticism, Carragher Continues to Battle for Liverpool

Alex Caulfield — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:46:31 +0000

With Liverpool preparing to play Fulham at Craven Cottage in a matter of hours, injury problems continue to plague the the Anfield club. Captain and perennial talisman Steven Gerrard will not play due to his nagging groin injury, while fullback Glen Johnson will miss action because of a thigh strain. Additionally, new signing Alberto Aquilani will not be able to build upon his mid-week Carling Cup debut against Arsenal due to illness. Fortunately for Liverpool the £20 million summer signing has not contracted swine flu, but this fact does not improve matters for a club that has been hit hard by injuries and absences.

Despite Liverpool’s massive 2-0 victory over Manchester United one week ago, the Merseyside club continues to battle tumult and adversity in this early Premier League campaign. The Reds have lost five of their last six matches, including Wednesday’s 2-1 exit from the Carling Cup at the hands of Arsenal’s young Gunners. Embattled manager Raphael Benitez continues to put on a brave face, but that task must be becoming increasingly difficult for a man who longs for the league title and is six points adrift of first-place Chelsea. The club’s boardroom struggles are well documented, and the financial noose has been tight ever since George Gillette and Tom Hicks took control at Anfield.

Even with all of these revolving problems, one player has continued to embody the the emotion and core values of Liverpool Football Club: Jamie Carragher. The 31 year-old Bootle native has come under media fire in the last two years, as the defensive stalwart has become a scapegoat for everything from Benitez’s tactics to the lack of progress on the Stanley Park stadium project. Carragher is often his own worst critic when it comes to his form, but his performance against the reining Premier League champions last weekend was nothing short of stunning. To many this notion will seem delayed, but I felt it necessary to point out the obvious because so few are giving credit where credit is due.

His youth may have passed him by and other players certainly posses greater tactical ability, but Carragher is in no short supply of effort and grit. His bone-jarring tackle on Michael Carrick last Sunday underlined this point, as Carra sent the former Tottenham midfielder face-first into the Anfield turf with a clean challenge in the area. Pundits were quick to point out Fernando Torres’ efforts on the day (rightfully so), and the deft touches of Yossi Benayoun. David Pleat certainly chimed in on the Sky broadcast when Carragher proved his metal, but the defender literally threw his body into boot and ball in the dying stages of the match to ensure Liverpool’s emphatic victory.

Carra: never afraid of a tackle

Carragher has been accused of suffering a dip in form over the last two campaigns, but make no mistake – he is the beating heart of Liverpool. Gerrard and Torres may provide the offensive threat, but Carragher’s steady play on the backline alongside Martin Skrtel is the spine of this club. Many fans will argue that Carra has become too inconsistent, citing the opening match of this season against Spurs as evidence of the centerback’s fall from grace. All premier players suffer poor runs of form, just look at Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic. While Carragher undeniably has more playing days behind him than in front at this stage in his career, he is still more than handy in the final third. It will take this continued presence to give Liverpool three vital points against Fulham today, and if the Reds are to truly get their title challenge on track number 23 will play a large role.

Behind the Scenes at Fox Soccer Channel

Eric Altshule — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:00:43 +0000

Miles and Barton in the Studio

As Fox Soccer Channel’s Nick Webster told me, “Americans have more access to soccer from around the world than in any other country on earth.” That is undoubtedly true. On any given weekend, you can flip around the dial and find the EPL, Serie A, La Liga, the MLS, the Bundesliga, the Mexican leagues, French Ligue 1 and an odd assortment of other broadcasts from around the world, not to mention the weekday Champions league games.

Much of that bounty is provided by Fox Soccer Channel, which has become the most valuable kitchen to feed America’s expanding soccer diet. This last Saturday, they were nice enough to let me be a fly on the wall to see how their Saturday EPL package is put together. Working out of a fairly non-descript office building in West LA, FSC employs a mere couple hundred people (compare that to the names the scroll by for the credits of any single NFL broadcast) who put out a variety of original programs and broadcast feeds coming in from all over the world.

For their Saturday broadcasts, the process starts earlier in the week putting together the clips and animation for their Saturday preview show. Fox will request from Sky in England tapes of the managers’ weekly press conferences, game highlights and other recordings, and cut and animate that footage for the commentators to discuss.

For the Saturday pre-game show, those commentators are Christian Miles and Warren Barton. One of the “pleasures” of the having FSC headquartered in Los Angeles is that they are eight time zones away from England, which means their pre-game show begins at 6:30 am. Call time for Miles, Barton and the crew is 4:30 am. If that sounds a wee bit early, consider the relief that the crew must have felt when ESPN picked up the lunchtime EPL game on Saturdays. When FSC had that game, the crew had to be in their seats and ready to go at 3:30 in the morning.

From 4:30 until 6:30, producer Jaime Trujillo, Miles, Barton and the rest of the broadcast team analyze their video packages, discuss and refine their commentary and rehearse their on-air banter. These rehearsals are as valuable to Jamie and his team in the control room as they are to the on-air talent. They plan when to roll their video and animation, time the commentary to make sure their commercials fit, and properly teleprompt the commercials that Miles reads live.

The FSC Control Room

The studio is a surprisingly small room, made smaller by the set of Super Sunday Plus, which is pushed up against a side wall. It is kept cold to prevent the commentators from sweating under the hot TV lights, and has several big screen TVs dotted around the room so that the commentators can see the video and animation that they need to talk over. The control room down the hall is also small, and is right across from the new control room that will be activated in January when FSC begins broadcasting in high-def.

For this week, FSC’s game was Sunderland v Liverpool, so that meant lots of “Rafa on the brink” discussion as they talked about how Gerrard and Torres were missing and the team’s poor run of form on the 6:30 pre-game show. Aston Villa’s upset of Chelsea was completed just before broadcast so Miles and Barton had to quickly plan their comments on that game right before going on the air.

Of course, the one thing they cannot rehearse or pre-animate is the teams’ starting lineups, which becomes available about five minutes into the broadcast. For the production team, the line-ups drive a sense of concentrated urgency. Once the production team gets the lineups off the internet, one graphic producer has to quickly and accurately put all the names and positions onto an animation piece, and he finished his work with just seconds to spare. Miles and Barton are seeing the lineups for the first time at the same moment we at home are – and have to provide their insights (Liverpool started Jay Spearing?!) on the fly.

The pre-game show ends with Miles providing his last comments as the teams come out of the tunnel and the tense no-nonsense mood becomes suddenly jovial. Some of the production team meanders into an adjoining room where a bank of TVs is broadcasting all the games from England and staffers are taking notes on the timing of the important plays and goals so the clips can be retrieved for later use. Miles and Barton are watching the Sunderland v Liverpool game so they can provide their comments at halftime, and Darren Bent’s goal off the balloon becomes the obvious talking point.

FSC Crew Keeping Track of the EPL Games

Meanwhile, down the hall, in one of a half dozen little phone-booth like rooms, two commentators are huddled in front of a television calling the Sunderland v Liverpool game in Spanish for the FOX Sports en Español broadcast. During the mid-week Champions League broadcast, all the booths are being used to tape the broadcasts in Spanish for either live broadcasts or replays of the games in Spanish. Those are the same booths that Christian Miles ducks into to provide commentary for games from Spain, Italy, Germany and other non-English speaking countries.

Play by Play Booth for Calling Games for US Audience

The halftime commentary is trickier to produce than the pre-game show. There are no rehearsals and because of the more frequent commercials, the time for commentary is far more compressed. Timing is everything. In the NFL, the referee is not allowed to blow the whistle to start the second half until the TV people give him permission. There is no such luxury for the folks at FSC. If the commentary runs over for just a few seconds, they can’t cut the commercials and are liable to rejoin the game just after the kickoff or run the game with a few seconds delay – neither choice is really all that great for a crew that prides itself on its production technique. That is exactly what happened on Saturday, and just as he was about to organize the delay, producer Jaime Trujillo caught a lucky break – Sunderland started the second half with a substitution which delayed the kickoff just enough for them to broadcast everything in real time.

After the final whistle blows in Sunderland, Miles provides a voice over for the result and Barton heads off for a quick taping for the foxscoccer.com website. As busy as this all seems, this is actually an easier day because the normal wrap-up show has been pre-empted by a Serie A game.

Throughout the day, one thing becomes clear: all the FSC employees seem to have a real passion for soccer. As Trujillo emphasized, he takes pride in the way his production team “respect the game.” I asked several different people at FSC about the new investment ESPN is making in the EPL, and while they admire ESPN’s technical ability, the FSC team takes pride in their ability to authoritatively deliver soccer in a focused way that ESPN never will.

Respect the Game!

Lucas Leiva: Good Enough for Liverpool?

Alex Caulfield — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:43:05 +0000

If you believe Liverpool manager Raphael Benitez there are few midfielders more suited for the Premier League than Lucas Leiva. After all, Benitez has spent much of his 2009-2010 campaign lobbying on behalf of the twenty-two year old Brazilian. Benitez praises Levia’s work rate and dedication to the team, all the while ignoring his glaring deficiencies. Liverpool supporters from Merseyside to Mumbai have been lamenting Leiva’s inclusion in Benitez’s first team since the departure of Xavi Alonso. Replacing Alonso was always going to be a challenge, but after Sunday’s dismal performance against Chelsea it is concretely clear that Leiva is never going to be the man for that task.

This is a player that is simply not good enough for the daily rigors of the English Premier League. Yes, at times he looks like a fluid player that is capable of stringing together a few passes. However, against the likes of Chelsea, Aston Villa, and Spurs he has looked entirely out of his depth this season. The Chelsea match was particularly striking. Leiva appeared tactically naive and physically inferior as Chelsea’s midfield bossed the game and easily pushed the Brazilian off the ball. Benitez has exhausted the English media by plugging Leiva’s ability to give his all, but after Sunday’s 2-0 defeat it is obvious the midfielder brings little more than useless energy to the side.

Moreover, this is not a new problem for Liverpool. Benitez has been attempting to integrate Leiva into the first team for the better part of two years. So I put the question to you, the readers of EPL Talk: is Lucas Leiva good enough for Liverpool Football Club? Is his style of play strong enough for the English Premier League? If nothing else English football is associated with pace and physicality, two qualities that Leiva clearly lacks. At times the midfielder forlornly wanders the middle of the park, giving balls away while simultaneously disrupting Liverpool’s offensive output.

This behavior has deeply effected Steven Gerrard’s play in 2009. Against Chelsea the Liverpool skipper was forced to drop deeper in an effort to link midfield with attack, disrupting his offensive rhythm with Fernando Torres. Gerrard is renowned for his forward runs and box-to-box capacity, but on Sunday fans saw little of this as Chelsea ran riot in the second half.

Of course Liverpool’s misfortunes are not the sole responsibility of one player. Jamie Carragher has looked his age thus far and Dirk Kuyt has been incredibly ineffective on the right during this young season. Liverpool’s internal struggles are also well documented, as owners George Gillette and Tom Hicks continue to drag the club’s reputation through the mud.

Nevertheless, Leiva’s lack of creativity in midfield is the most pressing matter for the Reds on the pitch. Summer signing Alberto Aquilani is returning to health and is predicted to make his first start for Liverpool in the Carling Cup at the end of October. Even if Aquilani usurps Leiva’s place in Benitez’s midfield, Liverpool will still need to call on the Brazilian down the stretch. Most pundits cite Liverpool’s lack of depth as the primary reason that the Merseysiders will not end their twenty-year title drought in 2010. The fixture congestion created by playing in four competitions will certainly test this theory, and Lucas Leiva does little to ease these concerns.

The First Title Clash: Chelsea vs. Liverpool

Adam Mikhail — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:08:24 +0000

On Sunday at 11:00 AM, the Premier League will be treated to its first significant title clash when Liverpool take on Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Indulge me while I set the scene for the match. Chelsea and Liverpool have met 4 times or more for the past five years and until quite recently, the matches have been as dull as a Pompey shooting session. They will meet at Stamford Bridge where Liverpool ended Chelsea’s historic unbeaten run in the same fixture last season. The match will be just months after Chelsea emphatically eliminated Liverpool from the Champions League. There will be plenty of revenge for both teams and it has the potential to be make-or-break for both Ancelotti’s Chelsea and Benitez’s Liverpool.

Some of the readers will immediately bring up that I’m ignoring the United-Arsenal match as a title clash. No disrespect to Arsenal(who I now have a soft spot for after Adebayor proved to be a childish, hypocritical, drama-queen) but most of us never thought Arsenal had a chance of winning the Premier League. Not to say they are out of it – I’m sure an Arsenal fan will quickly note they have just as many losses as Liverpool – but it’s just my opinion. You may say I’m simply alienating Arsenal so I can create a post with the title, “The First Title Clash,” and I would tell you: you’re right.

Chelsea sit second in the table with Manchester United on top only by goal difference. Liverpool, in third place, top the mini-league of 15 pointers with their impressive goal difference. A Liverpool victory would see last season’s table take shape as they would leap-frog Chelsea. You know, my inner Chelsea fan is always optimistic that when we play Liverpool we’ll win and it will be exciting. In the Premier League, I’ve been disappointed on both fronts. Going through last few years it’s hard to remember a genuinely exciting match between the two. None were more boring than the 0-0 at Stamford Bridge in 2008, perhaps in the history of football. That’s okay though because they made up for it in the Champions League. My optimism for a Chelsea victory would be much greater had last week not occurred. Not only did Chelsea lose to Wigan, Liverpool proved to me that they are the best offense in the league, without a doubt. It should also be noted that Chelsea have failed to beat Liverpool in the Premier League since 2006.

It’s really a strange thing though. Chelsea-Liverpool matches have been the cagiest affairs of all big-four match-ups but still Chelsea and Liverpool fans really hold some sort of false hope that, “this time will be different.” It’s like Spurs thinking they’re going to make the top four every year. We all know how that one ends. Some small hope I can look to is the possibility that Liverpool lost their ability to kill entertainment when they sold Alonso. Surely Lucas cannot complement Mascherano as well as Alonso did. The Mascherano-Alonso tag team could commit 20 fouls a game and not see a card between them. Lucas is far too sloppy and obtuse to perform that feat with the grace of Alonso. If they try, one of the two will probably be sent off. That’s just wishful thinking, however. Knowing the Premier League, Lampard will himself be fouled and receive a red card(not a reference from last year, nope).

My humble prediction is a 1-1 with a great atmosphere and three games worth of crunching tackles. Torres will probably score, he always does against Chelsea. It was all downhill after he turned that buffoon Ben-Haim inside out a couple seasons ago.