'What The Fuck's The Difference?' – The Sports Quote That's A Guide For Life

A column about football: Some Liverpool fans need to learn what's important – Goodison's sure to be packed next season? – Uefa's pecking order at finals

SPORT PROVIDES MANY important lessons for life. One of my favourite stories, one that I apply in almost every area of existence, is the tale of Cliff Branch at Super Bowl XV.

The Oakland Raiders wide receiver missed the plane to New Orleans, where his team were playing the Philadelphia Eagles. America was scandalised.

The Raiders gloried in their hard-living, controversial image and Branch’s excuse was, frankly, preposterous. “My alarm didn’t go off,” he said. The popular view was that this was beyond the pale even at the NFL’s rogue franchise.

Branch eventually turned up in the Big Easy and on Super Bowl Sunday caught two touchdowns as Oakland overturned the favoured Eagles 27-10. After the game, Al Davis, the Raiders owner, was asked what he was going to do to discipline Branch. Davis looked at the reporter as if the newspaperman was an idiot.

Davis’s voice dripped with astonishment and contempt. “What the fuck’s the difference?” he asked.

Apply that phrase to any situation you face, any problem that annoys or worries you. Unless there’s a compelling answer, move on, put your energy and thoughts into more important actions that will make a difference.

In sport, it’s even easier. For example, it’s a question worth asking the Liverpool supporters who’re complaining that Arne Slot’s side have only taken one point from three games since securing the Premier League title last month. What the fuck’s the difference. Does this ‘poor’ spell of form change anything? Is the title unwon?

I get that part of being a fan is wanting to see your team win every game but it feels sometimes that there’s a certain type of supporter who is forever looking for negatives – and that’s football-wide.

There are no negatives for Liverpool. Not at the moment. There will be a time for players and head coach to knuckle down again and focus, but it’s not now. Have fun in Ibiza, Dubai, on the pitch and, for fans, in the stands. The time to get serious comes around again too soon.

This is nothing, anyway. In 1982-83, Liverpool were so far ahead in the table in early April that they didn’t win in the last seven games and only picked up two points in that entire run. The title was confirmed on the day of a 2-0 defeat by Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane because Manchester United only drew. Did anyone care? No. Do any of us who were around at the time think of that appalling run? Nope, we just remember winning the league. And being drunk.

This season ended when Liverpool beat Tottenham 5-1 last month. Enjoy this long summer. They don’t come along very often.

The joy of Archie Leitch’s trusses

It’s great that Everton’s women’s side will play at Goodison next season. All those who were locked outside the ground for the last Premier League game at the stadium will get another chance to go and pay homage to Archibald Leitch’s magnificent trusses. I’m pleased to have the opportunity to go to Goodison again.

The clock is ticking, though. Obviously, this is a holding pattern while the club look for planning permission and funding for redevelopment.

Given the outburst of emotion around the men’s team’s last game, it will be interesting to see how much of an upsurge Everton’s Women’s Super League attendances receive for home games. Presumably it’ll be significant. To judge by last weekend, they’ll be the best supported side in the league.

Surely they’ll turn out in their masses at the Old Lady to watch the young ladies? You’d think so, wouldn’t you?

Fans come last for Uefa – and clubs are down the pecking order

There are very few cities that can comfortably host European finals when clubs with huge bodies of support reach the big game. Bilbao is not equipped to handle the influx of United and Spurs fans.

These days we just accept that tens of thousands will show up in a foreign city with the intention of joining in the party but with no hope of getting a ticket. Yet this is a relatively new phenomenon.

The invasion of Seville by Celtic supporters for their Uefa Cup final against Porto in 2003 came as a shock to European football’s ruling body. More than 80,000 Celtic fans travelled – the headlines said it was the biggest mass movement of people since the second world war.

Uefa never learnt from it.

You could, in theory, move a final but the football authorities will point to the nightmare of Paris three years ago when the game was switched from Saint Petersburg at shortish notice because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The subsequent chaos was, arguably, more of a structural failure of policing and organisation in the French capital. Other cities would likely have made a better job of it. The truth is, Uefa doesn’t want to change its methods.

As soon as the venues for finals are selected – a couple of years in advance – Uefa ringfence the best hotels in the host city. If Celtic’s mass takeover of Seville was a harbinger of a new age of travelling support, the Champions League final in Athens four years later introduced a new phase of corporatisation in the game.

When Liverpool played Milan in Istanbul 20 years ago, the clubs were offered first choice of hotels. Two years later when the teams met again in Athens, officials at Anfield and Casa Milan were shocked to find that their parties had slipped down the pecking order. Uefa retained the most desirable hotels for ruling body bigwigs and sponsors. The corporate trips are locked in long before the identity of the finalists is decided.

And who cares about the discomfort of supporters? Not Uefa. It takes – literally – a war or a natural disaster for them to consider moving a final.

Unless Liverpool are involved, of course. The ruling body explored moving the Europa League final from the Aviva Stadium to the Allianz Arena in Munich in the event of Jurgen Klopp’s team reaching Dublin.

So it can be done. Uefa just don’t want to move their showpiece games. As long as life is easy for them, they don’t care how hard it is for supporters.