CL and birthdays...

So, I have less than a week until I turn 21, and I am so not looking forward to it at all. In the slightest. Of course, there's the small miracle that Liverpool play their first leg of the CL against Chelsea the day after, so my birthday won't be ruined. Anyway, just for reference, I'm going to post a rundown of the last however meetings the two teams have had in the CL of late. It's a lot. And it sucks that we have to play them again. Like...change is good people. Try it.

So, the first meeting in the series came back in the 2004/2005 season. The first leg was at Stamford Bridge and finished 0-0. The second leg, played at Anfield, finished 1-0 to Liverpool. Even then, there was much controversy over the 'phantom goal' and there was people questioning whether the whole ball had crossed the whole line. To them, all I have to say is - no goal = penalty for Liverpool, Cech sent off and you playing with 10 men for the rest of the game. It would have been a loss anyway, just a more humiliating one. Deal. And you know, there's no shame in losing to the eventual winners anyway, right?

Then the following year, we drew Chelsea again. This time, we met in the group stages. Both games finished 0-0. Quite frankly, these games were already developing a reputation for being unbearably boring and with very few goals. Still, the likelihood of the two teams playing again any time soon was small right?

Wrong. Next year along and you guessed it - Liverpool vs Chelsea again. Another semi final. It seemed the people in charge hadn't learned their lesson yet, and Chelsea won the first leg at Stamford Bridge. Again, there was only one goal in it, and when Daniel Agger scored the opening goal in the return leg at Anfield, you could just sense it was going to penalties. After 180 minutes of football, with the score tied at 1-1 with no away goals, extra time and penalties beckoned. Liverpool held on during the extra time period and Pepe Reina was the hero on the night, Liverpool scoring 4 of their penalties to Chelsea's 1 and made it to the final where they eventually lost to Milan.

UEFA weren't done yet though. For the fourth year in a row, there was a Liverpool-Chelsea tie in the CL. Again, it was in the semi final. This time, the main difference was that the first leg was at Anfield. Liverpool took the lead through Kuyt and it was heading towards being another bore until Riise put the ball into the back of his own net in the 94th minute of play. The second leg was perhaps the most entertaining game played between these two teams in the CL, but that didn't take much effort. The game finished 1-1 in normal time, and it was decided in extra time, just one goal in it. Had Riise not scored that OG in the dying minutes in the first leg, perhaps we'd have had an entertaining final instead of one that made me want to blow my brains out. Still, no point in looking back now.

And then, we come to this year's CL. Again, there HAD to be a Liverpool-Chelsea tie in there somewhere, I'm convinced the people in charge of the draw don't think the competition is valid unless these two teams bore us to death play each other.