Sideline Cut: Even if Liverpool do somehow conspire to make a last stand against all conventional football rationale and the new commercial realities as represented by Chelsea, the best they can do is halt the domination of the new order by a year or two. But that alone would represent an achievement worthy of the Anfield teams of yesteryear.
As Roman Abramovich and the backroom moguls at Chelsea demonstrated last year, if success cannot be instantly attained, they simply fire the director and set about making a brand new movie. So fast are the revolutions in big-time soccer now personalities have to survive for five years at least before they can make any sort of impression. Hence, there is hardly ever a mention of Jose Mourinho's predecessor at Stamford Bridge, Claudio Ranieri, whose uncertain pronouncements in heavily accented English charmed the hard-bitten soccer establishment of Fleet Street. It is all but forgotten that this time last year, the Italian was regarded as a kind of martyr. With smiling loyalty and no complaints, he laid the foundations for the Chelsea team that would sweep this year's league knowing the gods behind the shaded windows of the boardroom had already grown tired of him.
In an environment not easily given to embarrassment, many commentators saw in the Italian's dignity and quiet grace qualities that made so much about the English game seem loud and gaudy and faithless in comparison. Such was Jose Mourinho's personality and the robust and sensational way in which the loose if talented bunch of players at Chelsea took to his auteur brand of football management the departure of Ranieri was easily absorbed. Football is, after all, about Saturday afternoon entertainment. The ethics of Chelsea's reinvention as a bona fide heavyweight were quickly forgotten in the heat of the contest.
The fact was Arjen Robben and Damien Duff were fun to watch and Mourinho flourished in the role of extrovert impresario. Chelsea will surely close in on a second league title today or on Monday evening and Mourinho will be around the Bridge for a couple of seasons more at least. In a strange way, though, the anticipated rejoicing for what has been a formidable and shining league season will be overshadowed by the curious timing of their Champions League semi-final and the impressive resistance of Liverpool.
A lot of tough football men old enough to know better have found themselves admitting this week they had a curious and nagging instinct Liverpool were destined to win this year's Champions League, a prize that has looked light years beyond them for close on two decades.
From the night of their unlikely heroics against Bayer Leverkusen, the past masters of European heroics have negotiated a path to this point as though fated, as though guided by a greater voice. Cumbersome and often mired by the humdrum demands of the league as they have been, their unlikely combination of bread-and-butter defenders and delicate creators has played with boldness in the elite competition. Mourinho has cut his cloth as a no-nonsense rationalist and a born winner with no patience for the old courtesies or traditions of English football. But he has visited Anfield in the league and cannot but be aware of the near-religious observance paid to the memory of long-dead football men and 30-year-old football matches.
He was the personification of calm during Wednesday night's tense and absorbing deadlock at Stamford Bridge but perhaps his mind had already turned to the second act. It is unusual, to the point of being spooky, that Liverpool, above all the other English teams, should stand between Chelsea's ultimate coronation on European football's definitive and most glittering stage.
Very early in the season, Mourinho carefully declared that winning the league was first on his agenda this year and he has delivered that with almost dismissive nonchalance. But despite that, his braggadocio has come to sound somewhat hollow and on the very eve of Chelsea's first title in 50 years, the manager finds himself under a colder scrutiny than he has been subjected to all season. His revelations that his regular first-team players had been competing in recent weeks through advanced states of exhaustion were intended as a criticism of the system but led to inevitable musings about why he did not rotate his enviable squad more regularly.
And the high anxiety over the availability of Duff and Robben for Tuesday's all-or-nothing glory night at Anfield does not suggest Mourinho has a limitless supply of blueprints for victory. Some elements of Mourinho's behaviour in recent months have left a bad taste in the mouth and it is hard not to interpret a degree of arrogance and superiority in Chelsea's behaviour on the field of play as well. Mourinho's influence on John Terry and Frank Lampard, in particular, has been the stuff of the Svengali.
But there was an incident on Wednesday night when Terry, at the very least, allowed his boot to land heavily on the prone Luis Garcia and as he walked away unblinking, you wondered. Garcia is no Roy Keane in terms of his appetite for bruising encounters but anyone would cringe after getting stomped on by the big England centre half. And whether Eidur Gudjohnsen laughed after drawing Liverpool's Xabi Alonso into the 87th-minute yellow-card foul that rules him out of the return leg only he knows. He certainly didn't look too perturbed and Alonso's prolonged though restrained communication with the referee told its own story. It was a tough moment for the elegant Spaniard, half of whose season was ruined when he had his ankle broken after a tackle by Lampard that was at best clumsy. If Gudjohnsen did gloat after spoiling Alonso's late revival, then it is bad karma. It is the kind of incident in sport that comes back to haunt you. Alonso was reportedly inconsolable in the Liverpool dressingroom afterwards, so much so that even the addled figure that Steven Gerrard has become vowed publicly to win it for his stricken team-mate. And yet the abiding memory of the Spaniard as he left the pitch was that he made sure of shaking the hand of the referee before walking towards the full realisation of his disappointment.
That gesture of good manners was in keeping with the type of decorum Rafa Benitez has conducted himself with through thick and thin with Liverpool this season.
Of course, decorum does not win titles and if Mourinho steers his team to another victory on Tuesday night and then closes in what would be a personal European double, then he deserves to take his bows as grandiosely as he pleases.
But you cannot help feel for all his impudence and impatience, Mourinho will be puzzled and even a little unnerved by the thought of entering Anfield alight with fervour and keening for old glory. It is one thing to plan against the limitations of an uneven Liverpool team, it is another to conquer the intense sentiment aroused on these nights by shades of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley and Kenny Dalglish. Mourinho might know where he is when faced with a game of chess but sitting down in front of an ouija board is a different matter.
