i'm very perturbed by the fact that liverpool players have been blamed for england's exit in the quarter-finals of the world cup. but how many of us would have predicted england to even reach the semi-finals after their less then convincing performances in the group stages? not many...
what exactly did the liverpool players do to cause england's exit in this world cup? i guessed it must be the penalty misses and also the fact that crouch was leading the line for england after rooney got sent off.
from what i saw, crouch did not do anything terribly wrong. he was a lonesome fighter up front just given minimal support by the form of another rookie aaron lennon. crouch personally does not possess the speed of rooney and the fancy footwork of joe cole. all he could do was to hold the ball for support to reach him. most of the times when support does not reach him, he had to bring it up himself. something that he was totally not adapt at doing. don't forget, somebody with the name rooney was playing the lone striker role against ecuador and i could safely say that he wasn't really that effective in the match as well being not match fit yet.
it might not be the most straight forward of red card you will ever see, but had not a certain c.ronaldo of a certain man utd came rushing in, then wayne rooney of a certain man utd would not have been sent off. this was a repeat of 1998 when a young david beckham was also sent off while he then still playing for a certain man utd. but let's not go back that far shall we...
and coming to the penalties. gerrard and carragher stood up for their country, with the courage to take the penalties. i agree that both their penalties were not sweetly struck, but at least they mustered up the courage to stand at the spot for their country. rooney got himself sent off, so he couldn't have been involved in the shoot-out, but where was neville (stand-in captain) and ferdinand of a certain man utd?
easy as we might see it to be, it's never going to be as simple as kicking the ball into the back of the net when the burden of keeping your country in the world cup and the hopes of millions of your fellow countrymen alive rest on your shoulders. and many of us will have the chance of doing that. if you feel that they delibrately missed the penalty to send their own country out, go on, you may continue to berate them with all your curses. but i'll salute them for their courage to take the spotkick for their team and country.
Going back to before this match. England scored 6 goals including an own goal in this World Cup. 3 of them, which is 50% of England's goals, were scored by liverpool players. Gerrard is the top scorer for the english team with 2 goals and Crouch scored the other. if you want to blame liverpool for sending england out of the world cup, i might want to thank liverpool for keeping england till this stage of the world cup.
sound like you're pretty upset. did you get ur pockets burnt?