EPL Talk » Steven Gerrard

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.”

Benitez Cannot Buckle Under Pressure

Paul Bestall — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:05:21 +0000

“It is difficult for us to qualify, but not impossible,We have to win our game and see what happens with Fiorentina and Lyon. Then we will approach the last game.” Benitez has certainly fought his corner today after the galling last minute equaliser Liverpool conceded in the Stade Gerland last night. Of course, the nay sayers and doom merchants are already drafting Rafa’s last rites as the promise of last season seems already consigned to the dustbin by mid November.

Even Liverpool’s most feverish critics must be surprised how quickly the wheels have fallen off this season. 5 league defeats, knocked out of the League Cup and facing demotion to the Europa League have seen Benitez under the most pressure he’s ever faced during his tenure at Anfield. With the financial situation at Liverpool as tight as it can be, the key achievement for Liverpool to aim for this season is to finish in the top 4 in the Premier League.

Of course, Lyon may win in Florence in 3 weeks time and Liverpool could win the last two games, making sure they beat Fiorentina by 3 clear goals to finish second, but it’s a straw that is swaying away from Benitez. With Torres still carrying a groin injury, Gerrard injured for who knows how long and Carragher having his ropiest period in a Liverpool shirt, the Reds 3 key players are all suffering in one form or another.

During the summer, all the predictions pointed to that it would be Arsenal who would be the one side in the big four that would be the most nervous about retaining their place at the Premiership’s top table. With Manchester City, Tottenham, Aston Villa and Everton all waiting to pounce, no-one considered that Liverpool would be the one with the most to lose.

Without the stadium revenue that Manchester United and Arsenal can pull and without the billionaire sugar daddies that Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham can call on, the financial rewards that the Champions League has to offer is crucial to Liverpool’s continued success. They NEED to be in Champions League to continue progressing, regardless of reputation, Manchester City have already shown money can attract players above their current station.

Yet Liverpool will not find it any easier and by December 13th they could be staring up at the top four and hoping that they can find a vein of form that has so far eluded them this season. They’ve failed to beat every decent side they’ve played this season, with the exception of Manchester United two weeks ago and that in itself is a worrying trend. With massive matches against Manchester City, Everton, Fiorentina and Arsenal in the next five weeks, something needs to sorted and quickly.

Of course, Benitez has a position of strength in the fact that he signed a 5 year contract in March this year and Liverpool’s finances would tend to support the argument that the club can’t afford to sack him. Liverpool fans tend to support their manager through thick or thin, only Graeme Souness lost the fans in the last 30 years and at the moment the attention for the fans frustration is the owners.

Chelsea sacked Scolari when the club were fourth, 7 points behind Manchester United. Liverpool are currently 6th, 9 points behind and whilst we may assume what Hicks and Gillett do, would it surprised anyone if they pressed the panic button? Unfortunately not. Trouble is, they may call on Jurgen Klinsmann, which shows just how little about club football they actually know.

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!

Why I Love Football Vol. 1 – Last Gasp Goals

Liam Jarvis — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:57:03 +0000

Hi Guys, I’m here with my first post. I’m going to be doing a weekly post on the reasons why I love the beautiful game so much. This week I will be starting, ironically, with last gasp goals.

It doesn’t matter how they are scored, whether it’s a tap in like Aaron Lennon in last seasons dramatic 4-4 in the North London Derby and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer winning the treble at the Camp Nou, or beautifully crafted like Beckham lighting up Old Trafford once again to send England to the 2002 World Cup and Gerrard smashing home against Olympiakos in the 86th minute, giving them the 2-goal lead they needed to progress past the group stage of the 2004 Champion’s League, a competition they would go on to win.

A late goal is what’s beautiful about football, and highlights how quickly a game can change. You just drift away from the real world for that split second and find yourself in a state of ecstacy with no control over your actions. Andy Gray’s commentary during the Gerrard goal illustrates that so beautifully.

There aren’t many moments that give me goosebumps 8 years on after countless times of watching, but Beckham v Greece is one of them. It was almost poetic, and there was only ever one person who was going to carry us through to the World Cup Finals. It was the turning point in his career after the controversy of the 1998 World Cup, and had that goal not gone in, how different could David Beckham’s career have turned out.

So never give up hope, and never leave a game early. No amount of traffic can ruin that perfect moment.

Last gasp goals are why we all love football.

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.