It got me thinking about pace and footballers in general. It's been something of a buzzword in English football recently - famously, Steve McLaren dropped Beckham after the World Cup because he wasn't fast enough (despite inexplicably sticking the well-meaning plodder Stewart Downing on the left, a man who seems to have gained a reputation for pace without once breaking into a jog). Arsenal are always described as "pacy" or "quick on the counter;" likewise United. Grizzled ex-pros on Talksport and 606 describe pace as "the hardest thing to defend against".
I don't deny for a second that pace is a wonderful asset for a footballer. But in the scramble to buy players who can do the 100m in eleven seconds, I wonder if occasionally people forget that it is only an asset; you still need to be a footballer. I remember the hapless Ade Akinbiyi's endless travails at Leicester; a man who could probably have outrun Red Rum, but equally (let us be honest) wasn't much better than Red Rum at controlling a football - which, given that the horse had been dead for six years, is not a ringing endorsement. It took him sixteen games to score for the club, a horrible second-attempt shinned effort against Sunderland which had the poor lad in such convulsions of joy that he hurtled the length of the pitch with his top off. A proper striker would have buried the memory of that goal at midnight in an unmarked grave and never spoken of it again; but for a sprinter in a football shirt, like Ade, it was manna from heaven.
Liverpool have in recent years had mixed fortunes with pacy players. I think the problem started when we found a good one. Michael Owen was - and hopefully will be again - a genuinely effective player who also happened to be extremely quick, especially over the vital first few yards. The trouble was that Houllier - and to an extent Benitez - saw that he was quick and thought that was the whole point. Hence players like Cisse, Baros and, last season, Bellamy.
All of which might make it sound as though I'm nervous about Babel's signing. To an extent I am - he's young, unproven outside the footballers' paddling-pool that is the Eredivisie, and not exactly cheap - but early signs are good. There was one moment against Toulouse that made me sigh with relief: picking the ball up mid-way into their half on the left, Babel was facing up to a defender with the area in front of him crowded with blue-and-white shirts. Bringing the ball casually forward, he suddenly cut in, dropped the shoulder and, with excellent close control, beat his man and ghosted through a narrow gap past the second to buy himself a moment in space. Brilliant, I thought; he's not Cisse, who would have "controlled" it on the point of his knee and forlornly watched it trickle through to the keeper (perhaps shattering all the bones in his leg on impact for good measure).
What Babel did next was equally revelatory. Having won himself that instant of time, he looked up, saw Gerrard making a stealthy run to his right, and laid a simple, unhurried square ball into his captain's path. Brilliant, I thought; he's not Baros, who would have kept staring fixedly at his own toes, tried to beat another four men, lost the ball and then impotently waved his arms in the air with his mouth hanging slightly open like he's trying to catch plankton.
Of course, that particular vignette ended with Gerrard shanking an inviting half-chance over the stands from twenty yards, but we can't blame Ryan for that. The boy clearly has promise. Of course, we've only ruled out him being either Baros Mk II or Cisse Mk II; there's still the chance that he could turn out to be a Bellamy. The only way we'll be able to see whether that's true is to watch him closely for the next few months, but as long as he a) remembers to score a goal now and again and b) manages to refrain from laying about his team-mates with a Titleist seven-iron, I for one will start to relax.