Wednesday, September 03, 2003

LIVERPOOL, England -- It's 3-nil, Liverpool FC, and the clock is winding down at Goodison Park, home of Everton, Liverpool's crosstown rival. Some 38,000 Everton fans are deathly quiet. So, the few thousand Liverpool fans in the visitors' section (of which I am proudly one) decide to liven things up by singing the club's anthem, "You'll Never Walk Alone," again and again, and at breakneck pace.

Forget Rodgers and Hammerstein. Forget Gerry and the Pacemakers. "You'll Never Walk Alone" is no longer a ballad. This sounds like Metallica's cover version, if one existed. The adrenaline and score have seen to that.

Such is life at the 169th Merseyside derby. Imagine the Steelers beating the Cleveland not-really-the-Browns (which happens all the time), then everybody waking up the next day and going to work in the same city. I admit, it would be indescribably horrible if we all woke up in Cleveland.

But wouldn't it be great to verbally stick it to not-really-the-Browns fans face to face until the next time the teams play? Then yinz could just repeat as necessary when the Steelers win again.

In Liverpool, the rivalry between the city's two big-time soccer teams is a way of life. It divides families. It pervades the pubs and clubs. It is something that never goes away. You're either red (Liverpool) or blue (Everton), and there's no straddling the fence.I'm red, so Liverpool's 3-nil win Saturday was as good as it gets. Michael Owen scores the goals -- two, to be precise -- hallelujah!

I don't expect you to love soccer, or whatever it is the Riverhounds play. But, to make this and future soccer columns more palatable, I've come up with some parallels between Liverpool FC and the Pittsburgh sports scene. Saturday, I'll return to more familiar turf by telling you why the Steelers stink.

Like Steelers fans, supporters of Liverpool have a big-time "good old days" fixation. Liverpool has won four European Cups, the Holy Grail of European soccer, but the last one was in 1984. Liverpool has been looking for "one for the thumb" almost as long as the Steelers.

Liverpool assistant manager Phil Thompson is a lot like Bill Cowher. He yells, he gestures, he wears his emotions on his sleeve. And what Cowher is to jaw, Thompson is to nose. Thommo could have been Steve Martin's stand-in during the shooting of "Roxanne." "They said it was big ... but they never said it was BIG!" Thompson captained a very special team, Liverpool's 1981 European Cup winners. Cowher was a special-teams captain when he played. Spooky, huh?

The aforementioned Michael Owen is a pint-sized Jaromir Jagr. He scores a lot and gambles a bit, too. Owen is reputed to have lost about $60,000 on horse racing not long ago. The horses Owen bet on weren't dead, so that at least makes him a better gambler than Jagr, who will hit 13 with a 5 up.

Defender Sami Hyypia should wear No. 58 because he's reminiscent of Jack Lambert. Hyypia is 6 feet 4 and absolutely dominant in the air, which is where the real men compete. He also has eyeteeth that resemble fangs, an important part of the Lambert equation.

Former Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler once responded to rumors that he was using cocaine by pretending to snort the end line after scoring. Thank heavens the right-field foul line at Three Rivers Stadium was painted on. Who knows what Dave Parker might have done?

There's a statue of Art Rooney Sr. outside Heinz Field. There's a statue of Liverpool ex-manager Bill Shankly outside Anfield, Liverpool's home ground. Both were noble, charismatic men who laid the groundwork for a long period of success. Both made a huge effort to stay close to the fans. Both are revered to this day, long after passing from this earth. I think the Chief and Shanks would have liked each other.

Now that you're all die-hard Liverpool supporters like me, let me point out some of the things you don't do that you should do (but you won't do) to be better sports fans.

In Liverpool, all the fans are in their seats when the game starts and 95 percent of them are still there when it ends. In Liverpool, some attendees may have a little buzz, but nobody is falling-down drunk from 15 hours of pregame tailgating (perhaps because there is no pregame tailgating). In Liverpool, they don't start booing the first time a Liverpool player launches a bad pass. It takes a lot to get an English soccer crowd to turn on the home team. I've been to 11 games over there and I haven't seen it happen yet.

Pittsburgh has at least avoided a gambling scandal. Liverpool has not. Former goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar was accused of fixing matches for a gambling syndicate. But Grobbelaar was acquitted, maybe because Liverpool only lost one of the five games Grobbelaar allegedly fixed. Guys who double-cross gamblers usually get killed, so Grobbelaar's innocence seems obvious.

Then again, everybody knows Neil O'Donnell threw Super Bowl XXX.

Mark Madden hosts a sports talk show from 3 to 7 p.m. weekdays on WEAE-AM (1250).

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