Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrates after scoring his side's sixth goal against Manchester United at Anfield.Peter Byrne/The Associated Press
In sport, there are good losses, bad losses and terrible losses. Manchester United’s loss to Liverpool on Sunday was of an even lower order – a loss no one will ever forget.
Years may pass, empires rise and fall, but no one who was there will forget the time Liverpool beat United 7-0 at Liverpool.
There are some pejoratives you prefer to hold back in a sporting context. Few setbacks are actual disasters and few efforts, however feeble, can be described as a disgrace.
This was disgraceful. In this context, with these two teams, seven-nothing might as well be 700-0. United could not have looked worse if it had folded the franchise 10 minutes before time expired (which would have at least made it 5-0).
How bad was it? Near the end, United’s Bruno Fernandes full-on body checked a player at midfield. Then he picked up the ball and flung it at a Liverpool player. Then, after a linesman seemed to suggest that was not the sort of thing he ought to be doing, Fernandes swung out petulantly and connected with him. It was only a love tap, but you don’t do that sort of thing.
What was Fernandes’s penalty? Nothing. Everyone knew he was already suffering enough. He spent the final minutes staggering around the field, mouth agape, flushed as though he might burst into tears at any moment.
As the seventh goal was scored, United defender Diogo Dalot was standing in his own net. Not at the goal line or near the mouth of the net, but fully inside it. If you’re going to stand inside the net, you might as well sit in the stands – that’s how useful you are. Maybe he was hiding. If so, who could blame him?
Three-nothing is a shellacking. Five-nothing is a statement result. But seven-nothing against a historic enemy? That’s the sort of game that can swing a season.
At kickoff, Liverpool was yesterday’s man. Sure, it had been the sexiest non-Spanish club in the world for running on five years. Fun guys doing fun things with a fun coach. But not any more.
This year it shifted from funny-ha-ha to funny-why-are-you-so-old? Two weeks ago, it went up 2-0 on Real Madrid in a Champions League match and lost 5-2. It was the end of an admittedly short era. Time to start thinking about where to attach the depth charges in advance of demolition. People began seriously debating whether Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp – the agreed-upon best field boss in the world a few months ago – should be fired.
And then this happens.
“We need to stay humble,” Liverpool’s Mo Salah said afterward.
Liverpool is headed out of the Champions League. It has already been bounced from the FA Cup. It sits fifth in the Premier League standing. You’d think humility would not be an issue. But 7-0 can do incredible things for your self-esteem.
On the opposite end, there’s United.
In the 10 years since Alex Ferguson retired as manager, it has been in varying stages of disarray. The club did still win the occasional trophy, but it used to win regular trophies. It has cycled through managers and players, writing off hundreds of millions of dollars in bad investments.
At kickoff, United was on the way back up. It had finally got its manager search right. Erik ten Hag’s signature accomplishment so far – firing Cristiano Ronaldo, thereby severing the umbilical cord that connected the team back to its most recent glory days in the aughties. Ronaldo was the whiny past. Ten Hag is the stone-faced future.
United won the EFL Cup last weekend, its first trophy in a while. Ten Hag, who usually comes off more serious than Batman at a funeral, danced on the field with his players afterward. The new glory days weren’t here yet, but you could see them off in the near distance.
And then this happens.
There’s still a lot of season left, but it’s likely this match will define the campaigns of both clubs. For United, it will be taken as proof of how much work there is left to do. It’s the sort of humiliation that can be the making of a young roster, if it has mental resilience. It may have the salutary effect of convincing the (relative) cheapskates in charge to invest even more in order to become a winner.
For Liverpool, it shows there is kick left in this thoroughbred. No need to talk about controlled burns yet. Since he just laid a beating on the most fashionable brain in the English game, Klopp is returned to the status of genius. That may have the salutary effect of convincing the (relative) cheapskates in charge to invest even more in order to stay a winner.
So it’s a victory for everyone, but especially for the value of a regular season.
In North America, the regular season stopped mattering a long time ago. Those six months of the year have almost nothing to do with who wins what, how dynasties are created or who gets talked about. Post-seasons matter. Everything else is a flurry of games that are largely meaningless as individual contests.
You lost 10-0? Embarrassing. The great news is that you play the next night or the night after that. Win three in a row and everyone forgets you ever lost at all.
A million games piled up on top of each other to decide which two-thirds of the league gets into the playoffs is great for bottom lines, but not so much for drama. Unless something truly wild happens – a middle-aged Zamboni driver wins the game in net, say – no one will remember any single one of them.
But a regular-season game you can never forget is still possible in European soccer. That on a random Sunday, given just the right amount of occasion and luck, you can turn the story so far around that having arrived nearing your end, you emerge resplendent and renewed.