Dreams and songs to sing

It ends and you don’t know it. Well, you know it but you’re angry, you’re worried, you’re hoping for something to stop, something to bring it back the way it was. Hoping for glory, as you had before. You’re hoping for it to be the same. To rest tired legs, to heal tired souls. But they won’t heal that way. It ends, and there’s nothing more to do but to be emotional and be thankful and say it.

We had dreams and songs to sing of the glory round the fields of Anfield Road.

That’s my favourite Liverpool song. I didn’t see Steve Heighway play, nor Kenny, and least of all Shankly manage. They’re in my heart though. I’ll keep singing their song and I wouldn’t let it fade away.

But I was born in 1993, the year between 1992 when Mohamed was born in Egypt and 1994 when Andy was born in Scotland. And Mo said it better than I can: “we lived our youth here, sharing everything from the beginning to the end”.

They did, of course, share everything. But we, as a collective, shared all that we could. We weren’t just spectators watching an exciting, growing, powerful, hungry team that played beautiful football, different from the teams we watched before. We felt a part of it, we knew -even at a distance- that whatever match was going to start would be exciting, no matter the competition or stage of the season, and we were going to be called to share in that excitement.

Name it hunger, drive, flair, magic, tactics, we knew what we were in for. We knew what they stood for, what they’d try, and even then they would surprise us: running across the whole field to press a ball, scoring through four or five Everton or City or Watford defenders. Laughing, being tough, Never Giving Up, ruffling some hair, breaking Martinez’s hip. We had certainty. And as Bill Callahan said:

True love is not magic,

it’s certainty

And what comes after certainty?

I really don’t know. And I feel right now, just as they’re leaving, that I don’t want to know. That it could end like this: abeautiful dream in which we live where they won’t play for other teams. Where that certainty remains. Of course, where they won’t retire and we won’t grow old. Where the freshness of this memory won’t fade, and the way we feel now will be the way we’ll feel: thankful, happy, together.

But we know them, we really do, and they’d say otherwise. We even sing what they would say when we sing their song — our song -

We’ve conquered all of Europe, we’re never gonna stop…

We won’t. We can’t. They’re leaving their youths just as we’re leaving ours. And we lived it fully, as best as we could, the Liverpool way. And in part thanks to them, we won’t leave it empty-handed, but with dreams and songs to sing.

So thank you Mo, thank you Andy, YNWA.