Potato Tots 1, Chelsea 4

Strangest game I’ve seen. Very good home team, previously unbeaten, blown out by pitiful archrival. Minute 33, home team surrenders player (straight red card). Minute 55, surrenders second player (two yellow cards). Home team better than archrival, all game long; nearly rescues draw after 90-minute mark; ultimately, loses by three goals. All game long, home team, unafraid of archrival, maintains brazenly high defensive line. Archrival unable to beat high defensive line. Archrival pitiful. Archrival’s main striker pitiful. Plays abysmally. Scores three goals. Blowers-out, trash; blown-out, bosses. Highly paradoxical. In context, utterly logical. Strangest game I’ve seen.

The breaking of the fellowship

It has come to pass. 😢

These were (most of) Brighton & Hove Albion’s South American players during the 2022–2023 season:

Left to right:

Moisés Caicedo (Ecuador).

Jeremy Sarmiento (Ecuador).

Julio Enciso (Paraguay).

Alexis Mac Allister (Argentina).

Pervis Estupiñán (Ecuador).

This season, Sarmiento was lent out to West Brom; Mac Allister moved to Liverpool; and, yesterday, Caicedo signed an eight-year contract with Chelsea. His transfer fee is said to be £100–115 million; the British record is £106 million.

I’m proud of and happy for Caicedo, I guess, but I really liked seeing all these guys play together at Brighton.

An ode to Brighton

Hardly anyone read my latest movie review. I can only infer that the opus in question, Dalziel & Pascoe, series 1, episode 3, “An Autumn Shroud,” already is so well known that my commentary on it is superfluous.

Karin vomited many times today and stayed home from the office.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

One of the luckiest things for me this last year was that Brighton & Hove Albion F.C. employed three Ecuadorians, spurring me to watch most of Brighton’s games and affording me a view of what surely has been one of the most breathtaking teams in the history of sport: a team all the more remarkable for bossing games while languishing mid-table.

Brighton’s manager, Graham Potter, was poached by Chelsea several games into the campaign. But then his successor, Roberto De Zerbi, actually made Brighton better. (There is a YouTube cottage industry about this.) Chelsea ended up sacking Potter.

All game long – in game after game – the broadcasters would sing Brighton’s praises. But the roster isn’t deep enough to lift the club very high up the table. Mind, I say this after a game in which key starters were rested and their substitutes propelled Brighton to a 6–0 victory.

The roster, such as it is, might well be gutted before the next season, as the clubs with deep pockets come swooping down.

How about this season, then? There have been high hopes, but things look bleak. Brighton will play six of the final seven matches against the league’s top four and bottom two clubs. The top four will be tough because they’re good. The bottom two will be tough since they’ll be fighting to avoid relegation.

The good times might already be over.

I like seeing Moisés Caicedo and Pervis Estupiñán on the field together, featuring for a team that plays how Ecuadorians like to play. I don’t want them to be snatched up by bigger clubs next year. But that’ll probably happen. The most enjoyable club season of my life will have been a flash in the pan.

The sports

We watch the White Sox’s starting pitcher give up his first hit against the Twins, after 8 2/3 innings. He looks like his dog just died.

We tried, he says. But they got us.

Yeah, if by “they got us” he means they spoiled his no-hitter but still lost thirteen to zero and ran out of pitchers. (Two of their position players had to take the mound. What’s wrong with that guy’s wind-up? What’s wrong with his hair? Since when do pitchers look like that?, I wondered before I realized what was going on.)

Still, I bet the Twins are drinking champagne and dancing a conga back in the clubhouse. Back in Minneapolis, even. Because the Sox didn’t get a no-hitter against them.

Well, maybe they are doing those things. What do I know. Baseball culture is so bizarre to me.

Why is that player spitting so much?, Karin asks.

They always spit.

You know what I miss from playing tee-ball and softball? she says. When we’d line up and tell each other “Good game.”

Then:

Who is that ancient guy in the Medicare commercial?

I squint at the TV. It’s late. My contact lenses are drying up inside my eyelids.

Joe Namath.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Were I a loyal South Bender, I’d watch Notre Dame get beaten by Ohio State. But I must not be one, because no matter what I do with the antennae and the remote control, I can’t get ABC to come in on the TV.

I really do want to watch, honest. I really do want to see the Irish lose. How the years have changed me.

This game is all they were talking about at work today, Karin says.

Is it being played here, or in Columbus?, I ask. (Don’t shake your head at me. I really don’t know. I seldom leave the house.)

Traffic hasn’t been all that bad, says Karin.

So the game must be in Columbus.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

For several years, I’ve been watching video highlights of Erling Haaland without ever seeing him in real time. Until today, that is, when he suits up for his new club, Manchester City, against Aston Villa.

Some stats from the TV:

In his first half-dozen English Premier League matches, Haaland has scored ten goals; only one other person has done that.

During the season’s first five matches, Haaland scored one goal for every fifteen touches of the ball. One goal per twenty-five touches is supposed to be a world-class scoring rate. (The announcers don’t explain what they mean by “world class,” but I assume it’s something good.)

In six games, Haaland has scored more goals from within the six-yard box than any other EPL player has scored – except for one other (unnamed) player – since the beginning of last season. That is, he leads virtually everyone in that category even though he’s been eligible during 30–40 fewer games.

Scoring so many goals from inside the six-yard box means this. The player has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. And the defenders know this about him, and they still lose track of him.

In other words, he’s very, very smart.

Haaland gets today’s goal from inside the six-yard box; indeed, he scores it with his very first touch from inside the penalty box. He’s been marked so carefully that it’s taken him until the second half to get that touch. (It isn’t as if his positioning has been bad. His runs into open spaces have been impeccable all day long, although the passes to him haven’t been.)

But what most impresses me is his hold-up and linking play. Even with defenders climbing up his back or wrenching him to the ground, he controls waist-high passes and lays the ball off, smoothly and with perfect timing, to onrunning teammates. I’d start him on my team even if he never scored any goals. Teams have won with non-scoring strikers who did superb hold-up work. Haaland does that, and he’ll probably end up scoring more goals than anybody else.

Poor Liverpool

… tore through the English Premier League this season in pursuit of some amazing feats. Would they join 2003–2004 Arsenal as EPL “invincibles”? Would they repeat as European champions?

They would not.

In the EPL, they lost to Watford.

Then, Atlético de Madrid eliminated them from the Champions League.

Liverpool could have surpassed Manchester City’s EPL points record. But City thumped them as soon as they clinched the title; and today, needing a draw to be able to accumulate 100 points, as City had done two seasons before, Liverpool suffered a lackluster defeat to Arsenal.

I watched on Peacock TV, NBC’s new streaming site, as Liverpool became also-rans in comparison to other champions. The futility was palpable. Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool’s manager, seethed.

This acclaimed team is, ultimately, a less memorable one than the 2015–2016 Leicester team that accumulated just 81 points.