Sports Writing at Its Finest

I am making myself stop writing now, because to be honest, this is getting out of hand. I'm at 7,567 words.
Since I left you, Olga has met the first team (it was actually pretty funny in my opinion but I'm going to use another excerpt), met Sam the receptionist at Melwood as well as Tim O'Shea's girlfriend, who tells her how sexist everyone is there. This doesn't bode well for Olga.
But the biggest thing to happen (I think that my book is moving too fast) was the Champions League quarter final against Juventus at Anfield. Read on:


In the eighty-fifth minute, we all thought it was over. Robin van Egeraat, the star striker who always comes through in the clutch, hobbled off the field after a particularly dirty tackle from that asshole Bruce Barton who, despite being English, plays in Serie A because he is too disgraced to play domestically. The stadium booed because he only got a yellow card, because they were frustrated, because they needed van Egeraat to get one of his signature header goals, and because they were terrified. Champions League exits are always heartbreaking, without fail. And don’t think that they were yelling “Bruuuucceeee” and it sounded like booing. It was distinctly booing. According to the original Bruce, Bruce ‘The Boss’ Springsteen, you can tell the difference.
I’m not even sure why this happened. I think about it every night. Why did The Boss (and no, not Bruce Springsteen this time) put Fernando in to replace the injured striker? Why not a more experienced player? Was this really the time for Fernando’s debut? It didn’t make sense then, and it still doesn’t really make sense to me still.
But he did it, he sent Fernando out there, much to the confusion of roughly forty-five thousand people. I heard various shouts of “Who the fuck is that?” and “Pinturicchio’s fucking lost it, ain’t he?” from all around me. Somehow, it seemed like everyone in Anfield was gossiping like schoolgirls in the cafeteria, wondering how the hell The Boss had found the balls to sub in some kid that no one knew. I wanted to shout back at them, “That’s Fernando Torres! He’s going to be the best striker in the world one day, you watch!” But I didn’t. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the pitch, where Fernando was experiencing what was the biggest moment of his life up to that point, and years later, after more Champions League matches and Cup finals, he would still think it was the biggest moment of his life.
If I thought that I was nervous before, I was being a wimp. This is what nervous feels like. Somehow the sound was drained out of the stadium, and nothing around me seemed to be moving anymore. I could feel my heart beating loudly in my chest. Not like a drum anymore, none of this “loud, constant and steady” bullshit; it was more like a jackhammer. It’s likely that I was in fact experiencing tachycardia. My hands covered my face almost instinctively in horror, but I quickly removed them because they were so covered in sweat.
What’s ironic about it is that Fernando just didn’t seem that nervous. He was running around just like he always had in all of those games I saw him play in with my Liverpool e-season ticket. He was as cool as a cucumber, while I was as uncool as a…unicorn? What the fuck am I talking about now? Olga, you suck.
We were in injury time, maybe the ninety-first or ninety-second minute. The entire stadium was standing, almost motionless, silently praying to the football gods for a miracle. Anything. The ball went to Fernando just outside the penalty box. It was his first touch of the game. He touched the ball lightly to get it around a defender whose name I will never know, then shot.
We must have been moving at close to the speed of light, because time slowed. Mass wasn’t just mass anymore, but it was continuous with energy. The distance between Fernando and I seemed to contract. I study too much.
And then it hit the netting in the top left corner with a ‘swoosh’ that I am convinced was heard around the world. Goal.
I have never heard anything louder than Anfield at that moment; someone in the immediate vicinity probably thought that a bomb had gone off. The stadium certainly erupted like one. Almost everyone in the stadium (save for the stunned Juventus section) was screaming at the top of their lungs. Everything started to shake, because thousands of people were jumping for joy. It literally was an explosion.
Fernando stood still on the spot, too shocked to move. This didn’t last for long, however, as he was soon tackled by Sergio Ramos and became the centre of a six-man pile-up. In that instant, Fernando became a hero. Liverpool won the game and the series.