Liverpool full back Andy Robertson doesn’t care if you think the Carabao Cup is more prestigious than the FIFA Club World Cup – the Scotland international has called the trophy “a big deal” and “huge” for the players.
And that’s the main thing right there – the players seem to be in agreement with many Reds supporters who put the Club World Cup on a pedestal ahead of England’s second rate knockout tournament.
In England, the tournament isn’t really viewed as important, but around the world it is a major honour to even be invited to compete it in. I mean, the European candidate has to win the Champions League!
But Robbo insists that it doesn’t matter to the players that their colleagues in Premier League may not see it for the achievement that it is. “We’ve already written a small part of history winning the Champions League but now we have added a trophy which has never been won before.” he’s quoted as saying by the Belfast Telegraph.
“We saw a whole nation was behind Flamengo and there were probably not many people in England who knew this game was going on. For us it was so important, we knew how much it meant to us and how much it meant to the fans.
“We know it’s a big deal, we’ll have a gold badge on our strip and we added another trophy to the cabinet so that’s incredibly huge.”
To be fair – I think Liverpool are the last team that would get the whole of England behind them to win a trophy, with so many rival fans joking asking the mega-rich Manchester City to ‘save’ football last season by beating us to the Premier League title.
It’s a shame that it’s this way in England, but that’s just the way it is. Football fans here do not have the same national pride that you find around the world, and that’s especially the case on Merseyside.