In my first semester of college, I spent nearly every morning before class with a cup of coffee, watching The Office on Netflix. I’ve forgotten most of it, but I do remember the last episode quite clearly. In his final talking-head scene, Andy Bernard says something quite profound: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”
Of course, reality is messy and complex, and the good old days are never quite as good as we remember them to be. And, nice as Andy’s line sounds, there are absolutely certain times when we know that we’re in the good old days. When this happens, to me at least, it feels like I’m both experiencing joy and recording that joy onto tape for later.
That’s what happened yesterday morning, when at 11:30 I turned on the Liverpool vs. Manchester United match.
It feels silly to write an analysis—even my amateurish kind—about this kind of performance, this kind of drubbing, this kind of made-for-DVD miracle of a match. At halftime, with Liverpool up 1-0 on the strength of a Cody Gakpo finish, the match already felt like a special one. After the second half kicked off with a brilliant Darwin Núñez header for 2-0, the match felt like the highlight of the season so far. Such is the nature of Liverpool v. Manchester United; a 2-0 victory against Erik ten Hag’s side is much more of a triumph than Liverpool’s 9-0 rout against Bournemouth in August.
The scoreline, though, just kept on ticking. 3-0. 4-0. 5-0. It was surreal—not in the way people use the word to mean “happy” or “unbelievable,” but in the way Dalí was surreal: clocks drooping like uncooked pizzas, camels rising hundreds of feet from the desert sand, faces made of cloth supported by thin tent poles.
By 6-0, in the 83rd minute, every Liverpool forward in the game had his brace. Salah had set the record for most Premier League goals by a Liverpool player, 129, one more than Robbie Fowler. Gakpo, the opening scorer, had added a chip-shot which he guided in despite having absolutely no angle on the goal. (Figure skaters talk about degree of difficulty—this was a quadruple axel.) Núñez had scored two gorgeous headers that brought his season total in the Premier League to 8 goals in 19 matches.
As Salah received a yellow card for removing his shirt in the 6-0 celebrations, Liverpool had seemingly done it all. They had already dominated the midfield, counter-pressing like it was 2019, and winning an absurd number of duels. They had been clinical in their finishing. The back line, which had been left fairly untested, had stepped up in the moments when United threatened to make marks on the clean sheet. But there was one more thing to do—by no means necessary, but important nonetheless, if only morally. In the 79th minute, Roberto Firmino had come on the pitch, replacing Cody Gakpo in the false-nine role. Firmino is leaving Liverpool come summer, as James Pearce reported last week, and an immediate, loud, and emotional rendition of Bobby’s chant (“Si Señor”) poured forth from Anfield when the Brazilian ran out onto the pitch. Now, if he could get a goal, it would be the perfect finishing touch.
Then, in the 88th minute, he did. It was vintage Bobby—something from nothing, his back to goal, the ball stuck to his foot like it had been superglued there. He turned and fired it through David de Gea’s legs like he had seen the five-hole through the back of his beautiful, artificially colored hair. 7-0 to Liverpool. As he ran away to celebrate, it felt like my living room had been smiled on by something near divinity. To misquote a Pope: all the unimportant gods, the football gods are most important.
I have to take issue with NBC’s title on the above video—Bobby Firmino did not join Liverpool’s party this Sunday. He simply arrived fashionably late to his own event. In a season where Liverpool have been mediocre at times, disheartened at others, and always visibly burned-out, this performance felt like a beautiful way to begin to say goodbye to Roberto Firmino, about whose 8 years at the club too much can never be said.
After the match, I went to play in my Sunday futsal league. The match was our one and only playoff game. While warming up, one of my teammates looked it up: this 7-0 win was the largest margin between Liverpool and Manchester United ever, the largest victory for either team since Liverpool beat United 7-1 in 1895, when both teams were playing in the Second Division of the Football League. Of course, we lost the futsal. 12-8, if you were wondering. Dalí’s clocks righted themselves; camels returned to their normal height; strange faces dissolved back into cloth. It was still a victorious drive home.