5/26/2023
Expect Nothing. Receive Everything.
Who do you turn to when your favorite thing sucks?
Sometimes you don’t have a choice but to be positive, to turn the event of a baby ceaselessly crying on a plane into an opportunity to revisit your favorite noise rock album, or to look at a flaming pile of shit and pretend it is anything but. This was my choice an hour ahead of kickoff at Goodison Park. The Frank Lampard spell on Merseyside was simply nonsensical. One of the most confused, poorly-constructed, unremarkable, and ill-fated Everton sides to ever grace the Premier League was being led by a calm and handsome (and not fat) league and international legend who had won nearly everything as a player. While the Carlo Ancelotti era at Everton feels like a long-lost fantasy, the Lampard one is a painful comedy that I am reminded of every time his current disastrous Chelsea squad bumble to defeat. On this occasion in mid-March, it was a rematch with Newcastle who Everton had been thumped by five weeks prior in Lampard’s first league match at the helm. I was blessed with the misfortune of being in attendance that night at St. James’ Park as well.
Away at St. James’ Park
For Lampard, there were signs of tumult from the moment he signed the dotted line with Everton. It appeared that I had also gotten myself into a rotten deal when I set out on the five-hour train journey from Edinburgh. Soon after arriving in Liverpool, I was greeted with the team sheet: a center-back pairing of Mason Holgate and Michael Keane with Ben Godfrey to the left of them and Asmir Begović behind them instead of Jordan Pickford. This was nearly enough to cause me to skip the match altogether, and talisman Dominic Calvert-Lewin was still not fit enough to start either. A collective groan swirled outside The Winslow an hour before kickoff when this lineup, a notably weaker side than the ones that had just been defeated handily by both Tottenham and Wolverhampton, was announced.
It is nearly impossible to say what I am about to say without a hint of disrespect, but I truly do not intend any. Each of these players have brought me moments of jubilation, but this was mine and 40,000 Evertonians’ flaming pile of shit, and we spent the sixty minutes before kickoff preparing to confront it, arming ourselves with thick coats of San Miguel and Madri. Unless you support Manchester City, every football fan has experienced the moment when their eyes hit the team sheet and a gas of fear and dread forms in the stomach. I combat this feeling with a practice that I have developed over the twelve years that I have supported Everton in which I pick one or two players, almost at random and entirely based on premonition, that I believe could make a positive difference in the match (score a goal, make a few saves, thwart one of the opposition’s best players). I briefly envision these events occurring, not lingering on any scene too long as not to jinx a tapped player. In the case of this particular match, it was a mercurial Alex Iwobi who I imagined slicing through the Toon Army’s defense. As I shared a pint and laments about the lineup under the shadow of the stadium with the Toffee who had sold me the ticket over Twitter, I left him with my parting optimism that Iwobi would be a standout on our way to a result.
I found my seat high up in the Main Stand just before kickoff, surrounded by families and close enough to the Gwladys Street End that I could feel their serenades shake the ground beneath my feet. On display in the first half was a brand of unspectacular football that I had become all too accustomed to. I was not disappointed, for it had been expected, and I think most in the stadium were relieved when the halftime whistle came, and we were still level at 0-0. I was happy to give my ears a break from the relentless “supporter” behind me who figured he’d give the kids in our section a lesson in swearing. Yet, any family with season tickets would be well adjusted to the language used at Goodison when the Toffees are reeling. There was little belief around the park as the second half began, but after five more minutes of forgettable play, something miraculous happened. A pale student with thick specs in a bright orange “Just Stop Oil” t-shirt slipped through the Gwladys Street End and onto the pitch, deftly zip-tying his neck to the right up-right of Everton’s goal as Newcastle attacked that end. I experienced a paralysis so strong that not even the fear of relegation could stir a burp. We had come to see a shocking football match, and we were getting a whole spectacle. The protestor’s name is Louis McKechnie, and I think if most Everton supporters met him today, they’d want to shake his hand.
As someone who has studied the effects that fossil fuels are having on our planet, I have a lot of time for those like Louis who are courageous enough to use the most public arenas to make their voices heard. Louis has probably grown accustomed to handcuffs and the criticism that comes with these sorts of protests. With that being said, his actions on the night served a much greater and different purpose to me and thousands of Evertonians. In five minutes of hilarity that felt like thirty, Louis managed to do what the Everton players had failed to do for the first fifty minutes of the match; he broke up Newcastle’s play. He also provided Everton supporters an outlet to direct all of their pent up frustrations. While Louis has become somewhat of a revisionist’s mythical legend, for those five minutes he was tied to the goalpost, he received the worst abuse I’d ever heard on a football pitch. He was nearly mugged by another supporter who had also decided to climb the barrier. He took it all with a stoic expression on his pale and puffy face; a martyr for a cause he knew nothing about. Half a dozen stewards, a small knife, and the largest pair of pliers you’ve seen in your life later, Louis was detached from the post and escorted from the pitch.
As play resumed, the humid spring air felt lighter, and the match had a different hue. Players who were struggling at the start of the half found new spirit, and so did Goodison. This lasted for another half an hour until Allan, Everton’s number 6, was sent off for a challenge on Newcastle’s Allan Saint-Maximin, a roadrunner of a winger who had terrorized Everton’s defense many times before. The 10 men in blue could only hope to hold on for a draw for the remaining seven minutes of regular time and fourteen minutes of stoppage time. Yet, in the ninth minute of extra time, the strangest match ever played proved to have one final twist. Seamus Coleman put in a quintessential challenge in the middle of the pitch and played the ball to a streaking Alex Iwobi who glided past one Magpie, played a pass into substitute Dominic Calvert-Lewin, received the delicious back-heeled return pass in full stride on the edge of the box, and coolly steered the ball past a stunned Martin Dúbravka and into the bottom corner of the net. To this day, I have no idea who the lad was sitting next to me, but I know that we hugged each other tighter than we’d probably like to admit and tighter than we had ever hugged anyone before as Goodison made a noise that could not be described in decibels. It was as if every person in the stadium had been holding onto that roar for years.
Messages after the match with the gentleman who sold me the ticket
In football, you never know where the inspiration, the goals, the disappointment, and the joy might come from, and seasons can change as quickly as the matches do. With Iwobi’s late winner, Louis McKechnie went from scapegoat to hero. With Newcastle’s successful Saudi-backed takeover, our fixture a few weeks ago against them, one eerily similar to last year’s unprecedented miracle, a must-win, midweek match in the midst of a relegation battle under the Goodison lights, proved to be far too difficult. But who knew that a visit to a top-seven bound, in-form Brighton side would be just what the doctor ordered before our final run-in? Who knew that Yerry Mina would return to the starting eleven and two matches later score a 99th minute equalizer at the Molineux or that our hopes of remaining in the Premier League would be pinned to a match on the final day where our injury-riddled squad will face Bournemouth, a team who has already handed us two shocking defeats this year. It takes all types to slither out of a relegation battle, all types of goals, all types of assists, all types of defeats and tackles and clean sheets, and it is often all lost amongst the chaos. Few remember Michael Keane’s divine left footed-flick that found the top corner and opened the floodgates in the famous comeback against Crystal Palace, and even fewer might remember Seamus Coleman’s most certainly intentional winning-goal against Leeds this season that might make all the difference in this relegation battle. My fellow American sports fans may not understand, but there is something truly magical about pouring everything into your team when they reek of losses and disappointment. Manchester City fans, Golden State Warriors fans, New England Patriots fans, they all cheer out of affection. When the Cleveland Browns or my New York Jets (yes I know) can do nothing but embarrass, fans show up with paper bags over their heads for laughs or to have a few beers and watch a promising young talent. When you’re fighting relegation until the final whistle, you rumble out of necessity. If you listen closely to the crowds this weekend at Elland Road, the King Power, and Goodison, you will hear a sound that you might not hear anywhere else in sports. This noise of desperation cannot be narrated; I will let you turn on your screen, put the volume all the way up, and listen for yourself. Nor can I predict what or who will make the difference on Sunday. However, I know I’ll be looking at the team sheet an hour before kickoff, questioning if I have the stomach for it, picking my difference makers, swallowing the knot at the top of my throat, and gluing my eyes to the television when the first ball is kicked.
..