Champions' League

Tonight, I watched the Liverpool – Chelsea Champions’ League match. My hope was for an early Liverpool goal to make a game of it, and they didn’t let me down. It was a terrific match with eight goals and more ups and downs than the Barclays share price.

Even without Gerrard, in the first half, Liverpool were all over Chelsea, who looked like a pub team. The second half started with Chelsea coming back – Guus Hiddink must have reminded them about their win bonuses at half time. And then Liverpool just started scoring again. Much talk of Istanbul and a great deal of singing from the away end. But in the end, Not-Fat Frank Lampard put Liverpool out of their misery and put Chelsea into the semi.

But this is the Steam Engine, not one of the thousand other blogs that will tell you how great the match was. Despite all the action, I was completely preoccupied during the action, because I noticed early on that the players’ names on the shirts were somehow different. After a few minutes, I figured it out – they are both using a different font for their European games.

In the Premier League, all teams have to employ the same mandated font to identify their players – it is preset by the league. In itself, this stultifyingly Orwellian rule is no surprise. I presume that Richard Scudamore has a shareholding in the company that provides these particular letters.

In European fixtures, however, the clubs appear free to use any font they like. In response to this freedom, they have reacted like the dazzled children in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and just gone crazy.

Liverpool are using a chunky, cartoony font which makes them look like the Why Don’t You XI, whereas Chelsea have gone for a cheery lower case job. I can’t begin to explain how much this sort of sloppy syntax annoys me, but what I can’t really figure out is why they are bothering.

The first reaction is that this has to be the most cynical marketing ploy of the season. But realistically, who would go out and buy a second shirt, identical in every way save for the font on the back? There might be the odd fan with more money than sense, but you have to give fans a little credit – there can’t be many of them who would fall for this. Certainly not enough to pay Didier Drogba’s wages for a week. Or even didier drogba’s.

The only other reason I can come up with is that they have a secretive sponsorship deal with the font itself. Perhaps the lower case franklin gothic font is secretly channelling funds into Chelsea in a bid to raise its profile and increase its use among Neighbourhood Watch newsletters in the ABC1 socio-economic groups. If anyone has any better ideas, let me know.

Incidentally, ITV’s commentary continues to infuriate and amuse me in equal measure. There were the usual crow-barred stats and strangled metaphors, and if I had a pound for every time the away-goals rule was explained, I would be able to fly to Rome for the final. But when Liverpool had a corner, late in the first half, Clive Tyldesley said of Petr Cech that, “there must be an alarm bell ringing, somewhere beneath that protective helmet.” I don’t care who you support, that is a beautiful image right there.