NBC football gabbler Jon Champion said it early in Liverpool's crowning achievement on Sunday: "Tottenham is in many ways the ideal opponent for this occasion." Even though it wasn't a stretch to realize that, he nailed it, for it was the sentence that served both as an upraised finger to celebrate the Reds' Premier League championship nearly two hours before it was made official, and a thumb straight in the eye of a Tottenham side that fully laid down to insure the title celebration.
In cavalierly pounding Spurs 5-1, Liverpool coated the day and the town in a red shroud which reminded those in doubt that nobody has traditions quite like the 'Pool at Anfield, even if it hadn't celebrated a championship before a full stadium in three decades. Rather than back into the title, Liverpool crushed an already supine Spurs side with such ferocity that even the possibility of Tottenham winning the Europa League seems like a cheap consolation prize, even if it buys Spurs passage to the same Champions League competition Liverpool earned by stomping the field.
Sunday's game was a comprehensive battering that almost did more damage to Spurs' self-esteem than it elevated Liverpool's. Tottenham has been a mudslide of underachievement made worse by the firm belief that only six teams can ever achieve big things in England, and Tottenham is considered one of the six, even though it hasn't actually won anything in decades. This failure may cost manager Ange Postecoglou the job he had come to hate as much as Tottenham supporters had come to hate him in it, and forces the team to reconsider all of its self-regard. It's almost as if the Minnesota Vikings turned into the New York Jets.
But on this day, Tottenham played the tomato-can role brilliantly, first by scoring 12 minutes in through Dominic Solanke and then spending the rest of the game offering a steady flow of failure. They seemed to recognize that the scenes in and around Anfield demanded a Liverpool rout to allow for a full cinematic appreciation to build, and they spectacularly obliged. They needed to be hammered flat to simultaneously achieve their own deserved destiny.
In that way, Liverpool at Spurs delivered: Liverpool to talk all the smack its tongue could spit forth, and Tottenham to absorb all the abuse it merited. Everyone got what they wanted, in quintuplicate. History, and that drunk two stools down, will decide how to fully regard Liverpool and its place in English football history, but Tottenham fans already know everything they need to about catharsis.
