It's A Draw!!!

I'm not a huge football fan, but I do like to watch the big games. So the other night I trooped down to Jelly Baby Cloob to watch the English F.A. Cup Final. Being a chappie of the Northern persuasion, I wanted Liverpool to win. But I freely admit that West Ham were the better team for most of the match. Steven Gerrard scored a wonderful goal in the 90th minute to bring the teams equal at 3-all. So they go into extra time, and nobody can manage another goal. Players are dropping like flies with cramp, exhaustion, whatever.

I think both teams would have been very happy to call it a draw, and split the cup down the middle. But no, these Cup tournaments always have to have a Winner, and so it goes to the dreaded penalty shoot-out. As it happened, Liverpool had the luck, because they wear red (previous post: Red Always Wins).

I hate this. Two teams play their hearts out for 120 minutes, and it turns out that at that place and time, they were 'equal' to each other. So that's a draw, isn't it? The penalties thing, golden goals, play till you die, etc, are all just idiotic devices to produce a 'winner', but in those circumstances, for me, the 'victory' is meaningless. There is zero skill involved in these deciders, only luck.

Brilliant game though.