Ask the Liverpool Offside: Did Mario Balotelli Play for Liverpool

Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

In an effort to cope with there being no football, we’re going to answer some of your questions. It’ll probably get a little weird.

People find their way to TLO using all kinds of search terms. Some of them can seem a little strange, unusual, or just in need of an answer. Others seem to have nothing at all to do with Liverpool. Occasionally they’re borderline workplace-appropriate.

Now, with the football on hold indefinitely due to that whole global pandemic thing that’s going on, we thought it would be a good time to try to give some of those searches a proper answer. As a source of interest, amusement, or just to help fill the space and pass the time.

And further to that end, if you’ve ever had questions you’ve wanted to ask The Liverpool Offside—be it about football or fitness or fashion or food or fencing—drop them in the comments or hit us up on Twitter and in the coming weeks we’ll add yours to the mix.

why should you support liverpool

I mean, I suppose I could rattle off trophies and talk about history, or focus in on Jürgen Klopp and the current squad filled with hard-working, talented, and likeable characters. At the end of the day, though, supporting a club is about more than a checklist. Or it can be about less.

Maybe you feel a connection to that history, of the club and city both, Eurocentric and left-leaning, at times overlooked and beaten down. And of course Jürgen Klopp in many ways seems the perfect manifestation and representation of that history, the perfect manager for Liverpool FC. In the larger football landscape it’s possible perhaps to pick Liverpool based on the history, the politics, the intangibles.

But fandom and, eventually, being a supporter—something more, in some way, than a person who just tunes in to watch a match now and then—can work the other way around. It can be about enjoying watching a player for no particularly good reason, because of their look or a few highlight reel moments, and slowly picking up the rest.

Of course it’s the right thing to do. The right choice to make. Supporting Liverpool. And picking any other club is both wrong-headed and the height of foolishness. But I can’t give you the one specific reason why you should. You’ll have to sort that out yourself. I trust you’ll get to the right answer in the end.

mo salah nice acts

Every time he smiles.

naby keita injury today

Did he just get injured doing the toilet paper challenge? He probably just got injured doing the toilet paper challenge.

liverpool chad

Well, Stacy, in Liverpool terms chad is CHAD and was a term in semi-common usage amongst Reds fans close to a decade ago now. It was one part Andy Carroll, one part Jordan Henderson, one part Charlie Adam, and one part Stewart Downing. And it wasn’t a good thing.

In retrospect, it’s been clear that we collectively got it wrong lumping Jordan Henderson in with three of the biggest transfer mistakes in the club’s history—and a trio who probably did more than anyone to shorten Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli’s tenure at the club as manager and sporting director—but even if Henderson has really come into his own under Jürgen Klopp and could end up one of the most successful captains in the club’s history, it’s fair to say his start at Anfield was not auspicious.

Most will remember the time when Brendan Rodgers arrived and tried to pawn him off on Fulham, offering both the player and cash in an effort to sign the perpetually unpleasant Clint Dempsey only for Henderson himself to block the move, determined as he was to make it at Liverpool. Before that, though, his high—for the time at least—transfer fee and that Dalglish had plugged him in on the right, forcing out fan favourite Dirk Kuyt in the process, probably did more than anything to make fans skeptical.

As for the rest of CHAD, well, there’s no redemption there. Just an unfortunate past for everyone involved, and a past that thankfully Liverpool have put well behind them.

did mario balotelli play for liverpool

Define “play.”

22 bull dolphin

The problem with pitting 22 bulls against 22 dolphins is one of environment. I mean, at first glance you have to assume the 22 bulls would have a major advantage give they’re far more aggressive creatures and have horns and all that. But then dolphins would probably lose to 22 house cats on land given all the house cats would have to do is lie around in the sun and wait for them to expire. Conversely, drop 22 bulls into the ocean and sooner or later they’re going to drown. That’s just science.

Now, you could maybe have them fight in four or five feet of water. Then it gets a little more interesting and you start asking, I mean, how much speed can a bull pick up in that setting and could they effectively keep momentum while lowering their heads into the water to try to gore the… wait I’m being told a 22 bull dolphin is a boat of some variety never mind.