You’ve got it tough, right? You work your ass off, live in a country with little sunshine, narrow streets, congested cities and reportedly (though I’ve never eaten it to know) bad food. All of that rain must be an utter bummer (or is that ‘bum’ to my British brothers and sisters of the Red army?). Anyway, I digress.
I’m not being facetious for the sake of it; I think those of you across the pond are some of the luckiest bastards in the world. Think about the similarities between those of us who follow Liverpool in the States and the core in England. We all plod the same trail in life, with few exceptions. We all went to school, started collecting a family and kept those jobs that would support our growing requirements. Very few of us wake up in the morning thanking our higher power that we get to spend the next 10 hours of our lives with fellow miserable people and office politics. We may be thankful that we have a job, but that doesn’t mean we are thankful for the very job itself. So we need a break, a release, something that will get us through those dreary days. And for thousands of us that thing is Liverpool Football Club.
When Saturday comes our worries and concerns are washed away, even if just temporarily, by the boys in Red. We lose ourselves in that fantasy world, that wonderful place where we don’t have to worry about money or responsibilities and we can sit back, get in touch with are barbaric roots and lose ourselves in the simplicity of being a football fan. It’s a beautiful thing; tainted with the emotion of the glorious wins, nail-biting draws or the heart-breaking losses. It is life’s perfect paradox; it is “just” a game that means nothing in the worst moments of life but yet to us, to the die-hard, it means everything….and, sometimes, more.
Yes, for us American football fans, it is that as well. My overseas brothers and sisters in the Red Army get to transport to the stadium and take the atmosphere in; it is a source of envy for those of us on this side of the big, blue pond. We envy that you can stand in the Kop, that you get to sing the songs or, for those lucky few, you get to pounce down to the advertising boards when Gerrard scorches a Champions League winner from 30 yards against Turkish opposition in the dying moments of a game. Though your American brethren can rarely do that, we do the best we can for game days.
To date this season, Liverpool have played 29 games and, because of the incredible football television coverage here, I have watched all of them live---something I understand is unheard of on British television. It’s a magnificent way to be intimately involved in the season. I can’t sleep well the night before a big game and countless Saturday or Sunday mornings have passed where I’ve risen before the sun to catch the game live. There are numerous Liverpool fan clubs all over this great country; I am a member of one which is two hours away from me in Atlanta, the LFC Redmen & Liverbirds, who I have just found. The group uses the power of the internet to organize meets in downtown Atlanta pub to watch our beloved Reds together and, though I cannot wait to catch up with them, rest-assure I will report the experience here to share with those of you on the other side.
American Reds are just as invested in this club as our overseas brethren. We do everything we can to support our team, both on game-day and monetarily speaking. We are in this with our British Red family; we all have the same objective—to see our beloved Reds be successful as they can be and, hopefully, return to a position of brilliant dominance of British football….oh, and to make the Stupid Drunk Scot sit down and shut the hell up forever. Know this, the American Reds are just as passionate as any Red….6,000 miles of water be damned!
Until we meet again,
The Red Yank
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