Liverpool-Flamengo the stuff of legends

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This article was published 06/12/2019 (2490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They attacked straight from the opening whistle — Nunes kicking off to Zico, who whacked the ball to Tita on the right. Three seconds later, Zico had already played a delicate lay-off and a return pass, allowing the return of the return to glide over his shoulder for Tita, who had been left behind after his initial touch as his teammates bolted forward. But Flamengo wouldn’t be denied for long.

In the 12th minute, their white shirts flashing like so many surges of lightning, Zico accepted Mozer’s short pass across the halfway line, paused to sight his assault and then launched an arcing flight of a ball that whizzed beyond Liverpool captain Phil Thompson before landing perfectly for Nunes, who poked it past the onrushing Bruce Grobbelaar.

The South American champions spent the next 20 minutes or so spreading the ball amongst themselves, tiring out their European opponents and probing for a second goal, which Adilio provided with a bundled finish after Grobbelaar spilled a Zico free kick. In the 41st minute, the match was over as a contest when Zico sliced through the Reds’ midfield, defence and Intercontinental Cup aspirations with a piercing ball for Nunes, who held off Mark Lawrenson and shot across Grobbelaar to the far corner.

Liverpool midfielder Graeme Souness would later recall that he hadn’t even been able to get close to Zico over the 90 minutes. At the peak of his extraordinary powers, the then-28-year-old Brazilian was the best player in the world and remains, nearly four decades later, arguably the most extraordinary artist in the history of the sport. His paintbrush of a right foot stroked Liverpool out of the 1981 Intercontinental Cup and, after losing subsequent finals to Independiente and Sao Paulo, the English giants are still without a world championship.

It’s a drought they’ll look to end, a trophy they’ll finally look to add, over the next couple of weeks at the 2019 FIFA Club World Cup (which starts on Wednesday), where they’re likely to face Flamengo for the first time since that 3-0 defeat in Japan — and they won’t have Zico, or a player anywhere near the legend’s calibre, blocking their way in Qatar.

Having won the Champions League last spring, and seemingly romping to the Premier League title this season, Liverpool is the prohibitive tournament favourite. Liverpool wasn’t the favourite — even if it and much of Europe thought it was 38 years ago — when many of South America’s best players were still earning salaries comparable to their counterparts across the Atlantic.

Zico, like Maradona, Socrates and Passarella, still played on his home continent in 1981, at which time the Copa Libertadores winners had 11 Intercontinental Cups to Europe’s eight.

Besides, on the home front, Liverpool was struggling. Despite being able to field one of the greatest lineups in English football history, the Reds had drawn barely 11,000 fans to their last home game before flying to Tokyo. This was Thatcher’s Britain, and the working classes were getting trampled on, the labour movement smashed. “Champions for sale!” read one headline, as manager Bob Paisley’s squad jetted off. The Reds needed money and the Intercontinental Cup — a match they had previously eschewed — could provide it.

It’s certainly not money that Liverpool is after this time around. The club has plenty of that. The team’s current kit sponsorship pays it one-eighth of what Flamengo is worth as a club — annually. Liverpool also had six players in the top 20 of this week’s Ballon d’Or voting, two of whom are South Americans. No, if anything, the Club World Cup is a hassle for the Reds, what with Premier League matches against Burnley and Watford and a League Cup tie at Aston Villa before a Dec. 18 semifinal against one of Monterrey, Hieghene Sport and Al-Sadd.

Liverpool, like any other modern Champions League winner, participates in this tournament because it has to. It behooves them to contest the very, very top of the football pyramid — an organizational structure integral to the sport in which even Winnipeg outfit Valour FC have a pathway to the top. Of course, it’s also in Liverpool’s interest, and Europe’s interest, to prove that the continent’s champion, no doubt a prestigious club boasting numerous high-profile players, is the world champion by default, and that the Champions League that produced it is the world’s pre-eminent club competition.

What makes the Club World Cup so compelling is that it’s up to the other continental champions, and especially the South Americans, to prove that it isn’t so.

That the paradigm has shifted so decisively to the big-money owners, the television numbers and the glittering metropolises of Europe makes it extra special when it shifts back, however briefly, when Fernandao, Malbernat and Zico lift the trophy and Carles Puyol, Bobby Charlton and Phil Thompson are left in disbelief.

This is what Flamengo will hope to achieve in Qatar, assuming it overcomes one of Al-Hilal and Esperance de Tunis in its own semifinal.

Starting with the June appointment of former Benfica and Sporting Lisbon manager Jorge Jesus, they went on to sign ex-Bayern Munich right-back Rafinha, the out-of-contract Atletico Madrid left-back Filipe Luis, one-time Wolfsburg forward Bruno Henrique and AS Roma midfielder Gerson, adding to the group the mercurial striker Gabriel Barbosa, on loan from Inter Milan.

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It is a team designed with a single, ambitious purpose — to win a historic treble. And with the Brazilian league and Copa Libertadores already under wraps, there is only one title left to claim.

Needless to say, it will be the most difficult and, unlike 1981, Flamengo won’t have the luxury of fielding an all-time great such as Zico. The team’s challenge now is far greater than it was back then. By the same token, a victory over Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane would be even sweeter.

Flamengo-Liverpool is a dream international final. The first one remains the stuff of legend, and the second could go down in football lore as well — one way or another.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Twitter: @JerradPeters