Konrad Kay is best known for creating one of the best loved shows on TV: Industry. He’s also a diehard Liverpool fan. For our latest Why I Support he describes the transcendental nature of celebrating a very important goal (Southampton away).
People often ask me why I support Liverpool, given I’m from Wandsworth. Fair question. I suppose being a “London Red” makes me worse than a wool (someone, if you are not familiar with territorial football slang, who harks from the areas surrounding the city.) However, I tend to agree with Neil Atkinson, CEO of The Anfield Wrap, who says the best Liverpudlians “come from outside.” That said: I still sing “Sh*it on the cockneys ,” when I’m at Anfield, which always makes me feel faintly stupid. Although, strictly speaking, I am not actually a Cockney.
So, why do I follow Liverpool, then - and sing songs that defile the city I was born in? Because one day a sports coach said to a seven-year-old me: “you should support Liverpool.” So I did. It was a good piece of advice, especially given their unexpected recent Premier League glory at the first time of asking post Klopp.
The logical reason we support a football team isn't really all that interesting, at least not in my case. What’s interesting is trying to capture the feeling or trying to describe what keeps me coming back. I first stood on the Kop in 1996. We beat Spurs. I can still see Collymore’s winner in my mind’s eye. I remember going to Turin in 2005 for my first European away game, too green to know about the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster and the dangers of warring fans. We were ferried in by bus, our escort getting the loudest roar of the night when he unveiled a burgundy Torino kit under his police jacket. A few weeks later, I would wear a half and half Liverpool-Juventus scarf (I know, what a wool!) around my neck the day after the famous Champions League final victory against AC Milan in Istanbul to sit my History AS-Level. Some of those details have no doubt been warped and embellished, developing a rich patina over time, but the point is: I remember.
I guess a slightly more nuanced answer as to why I support Liverpool comes in the form of two words: “Southampton.” “Away.” To me these are now two of the most romantic words in the English language. Liverpool were hunting the title in April of 2019 and were losing 1-0 at Southampton. A Friday night game. A well- saturated crowd. We were playing like dogs (negative). Then — somehow - we equalized. We now had just ten minutes to find a winner. Draws had become useless currency against a relentless, financially-doped City.
Salah picked up the ball on halfway. In my memory, he just runs. And he’s running directly towards my friend and I, a vision in ultra-bright purple, like we are pulling him towards us with the strength of our will alone, – and he’s getting closer and closer and I’m screaming at him to pass, just “PASS, PASS, PASS YOU IDIOT, PASS” and my mate is holding my shoulder saying, “He’s not gonna pass mate – he’s not gonna pass, he shouldn’t pass,” and my mate’s last “pass,” is merging already into a kind of pre-emptive growl of “YES,” because Salah is on top of us and he’s just now shot and somehow there is this split second of perfect, suspended, timeless silence, like you get between the first flash of lightning and the first low rumble of thunder – and the ball hits the inside side netting. GOAL. GOAL.
Goal.
And it’s bedlam. Or pandemonium. No word can do it justice. This is a sort of once in a lifetime kind of celebration of a goal where you think you might genuinely get hurt, but that doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. Grown men are falling over themselves. A teenager has inverted, vertically, so his toxic green 110s are where his head should be. A bald-headed forty-year-old has appeared in the footwell where your fee once were, staring up at you — a baby marvelling at the stars.
And then you turn and you get to see your mate’s face in a state that is also hard to describe with earthly language. You then realise: you’ve got his head in your hands. It’s a face of unadulterated joy, an almost a priori, instinctive expression of happiness, free of the armour, the pretence that shields adults from the world. For a moment of crazy abandon, it’s also quietly intimate. His eyes are wet and glowing like he’s seeing through you to the lights of Valhalla — and he’s screaming at you, and he’s simultaneously in his own body and utterly free of it. It’s living in the present moment and transcending it, all at once.
Salah. Salah fronting the crowd up. Salah eyeing the rapture. What’s better than being in it? — causing it.
Then you and your mate gather yourselves and kiss each other and a few strangers and you embrace and try and find the players again and where they’re celebrating and you’re all roaring at the night sky because you’re extremely, inexplicably alive and you look up and you thank God for them and you thank God for Klopp and you thank God for your friend. I guess this is what it boils down to for me: I am a disciple of the moment, a junkie of joy.
