Harbinger Of Glory

The box was exactly what it always is before a corner, bodies pressing into bodies, hands grabbing at shirts, elbows finding ribs, and the referee’s job becoming less about football and more about crowd control.

Amos planted himself on his line and pushed Nunez back with both hands on his shoulders.

”Get off my line,” he said, but the latter pushed back and said something back in Spanish that Amos didn’t catch and didn’t need to.

Van Dijk was behind him now, his hand finding the back of Amos’s shirt, but Ben Amos was too accustomed to it and wasn’t going to let it fly.

He turned back towards the Liverpool skipper and then shoved him with an elbow that was technically inside the unwritten rules of football but was outside the rules too.

Virgil Van Dijk didn’t let up and instantly shoved Amos back, though there wasn’t much malice in it as opposed to him retaliating.

Not wanting it to escalate, the match official quickly arrived and pushed between them, separating the two groups that looked ready to throw hands.

”Enough,” he said, to the general area before pointing towards Van Dijk and Ben Amos, who each had the most innocent expressions one could find on a man, their hands raised as if to signal that they hadn’t been trying to fight each other a second ago.

”Both of you. Enough,” he said with a warning gaze and a pointed hand before walking off.

After that, Van Dijk seemed to move away from underneath Amos’s nose, but Nunez still stayed there.

Away from all that, Trent stood at the corner flag with his arm raised, waiting for the box to settle, and when the referee stepped back out, he swung it in.

Leo, keenly watching the whole charade, had tracked Nunez to the near post, following the striker’s movement and reading his run.

When he felt the moment the ball was going to arrive, Leo immediately sought out the space behind Nunez and began to give pressure, but just as it seemed like Nunez would get a head to it, the Uruguayan just dropped a fraction at the last second.

And Leo, who had been mirroring his movements, could only watch as the ball skipped over his head and kept moving toward the far post.

The rest of the DW watched it curl before dipping a bit more as Van Dijk rose to meet it.

And there was no question or doubt about the situation as he got above everyone and then sent his head hammering through the ball.

The header, sent downward, was so powerful that Amos got a hand to it, but it didn’t matter because the power behind it was more than one hand could hold, and in the next instant, the net snapped back and from there, the away end went from quiet to vertical in the same second.

”OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH! VIRGIL VAN DIJK,” Tyler said.

”THE SKIPPER PULLS THROUGH WITH A HEADER AMOS HAD NO CHANCE GETTING TO! LIFE SUDDENLY IN THIS GAME AND LIVERPOOL ARE BACK IN THIS.”

On the pitch, Van Dijk jogged toward the halfway line with the ball under his arm and high-fived his teammates as they came toward him.

A dangerous player when in his own box or the opponent’s box, but it seemed that Wigan, still high off their goals, had ignored his threat and were now made to pay for it.

As he jogged back toward his half, the Liverpool supporters found their voices again.

The singing came from their corner in waves, growing louder as more joined in.

The away end now sounded nothing like it had ten minutes earlier, while the home end, on the other hand, took on the silence that the away end had been a while ago.

Down the pitch, Jurgen Klopp took to the touchline immediately after the restart, more animated than he had been all game.

Despite the goal, he sought more from his players, telling them not to relax, and he was glad seconds later when Liverpool pressed right after the restart, looking to use the momentum off the back of their goal to force Wigan to make mistakes.

But it was hard to do so with Leo settling right in the thick of Wigan’s midfield.

Leo received the ball from O’Shea as the game went on and held it as the Liverpool press closed around him.

He waited until the pressure was close, then slipped a simple pass sideways to Whatmough before setting off into space.

Two Liverpool players followed him, opening room elsewhere and using that, Whatmough moved it on as Wigan shifted the ball across the back line, keeping it away from Liverpool.

Nothing came of their press despite them doing it again and again, and that was because each time they did it, Leo took the ball, drew pressure, released it and moved.

Liverpool found themselves chasing the ball like headless chickens still banking on their momentum, but it broke down one way or another whenever they won the ball back.

Sometimes a sudden foul interrupted the sequence or a throw-in, resulting in more time wasting as the game kept losing seconds without ever appearing to stop.

Klopp saw exactly what Wigan were doing. He turned toward the fourth official and called something across, clearly unhappy with the way the match was being managed.

The official listened, nodded politely and left it there because there was nothing much else he could do.

Gradually the momentum that Liverpool had ridden from Van Dijk’s header ran into the sand, and after that, Wigan had more of the ball and a better shape while Liverpool had less of both.

Seventy minutes were gone when both benches began to move.

Wigan made the first change, with Max Power coming on for Tiehi.

Liverpool responded with Harvey Elliott replacing Mac Allister, and a few minutes later, Gakpo came on for Díaz.

There wasn’t much time left, and neither side was willing to leave things as they were.