Jamie Carragher's club passion
Jamie Carragher explains his love for Liverpool and why he thinks about winning the Premier League title every single day
Jonathan Northcroft
He’s in the main part of his restaurant, in the city centre, amid the lunch time crowd. Jamie Carragher is not being flash, the opposite applies. Liverpool is different. Flash would entail a private dining room. In few places is football so much part of life, and being seen to be part of the place’s life is important.
“Go on, lad,” smiles Carragher when a customer wants a photograph. A favourite motto comes from the former Anfield chairman Sir John Smith: “We’re a very, very modest club at Liverpool. We don’t talk. We don’t boast. But we’re very professional.” Carragher’s personal translation? “Actions speak louder than words.” Accordingly, his actions characterise him. Extra-time in Istanbul, when he threw a body burning with cramp into tackle after block, tells of the sportsman; paying £1,700 to fly home a supporter who lost his passport attending the Club World Championship in Tokyo tells of the man. But his words are also worth experiencing.
Carragher has just written one of the best player autobiographies you could read, typically a product of honesty and dedication, every chapter redrafted “four or five times”. The Kop dreams of a “team of Carraghers”. Journalists – providing they understand Scouse – wouldn’t mind a game full of them.
The Book of Carragher, Part I: Roots
Carragher sums up England problem
Jamie Carragher: the red centurion
Today will end in Blundellsands, by Crosby Beach, where Carragher, his wife Nicola and their children James and Mia live. It is an exclusive location but not far from Bootle, where he grew up and might still be found on (nowadays rare) nights out. The interview is running on and when his dad calls, Carragher asks if he can walk the kids home from school. There was hardly any media at his book launch, just family and friends. “People say, ‘You don’t forget where you’re from’ but to be honest it’s not a conscious thing. If I preferred something else I’d do that instead, but the way I am I’d rather mix with people I know and in a place I know,” Carragher says. “It’s not done deliberately, for praise.”
Now retired from international football, a controversial revelation in the autobiography was that after missing a World Cup penalty his consolation was thinking at least it wasn’t for Liverpool. “One of the reasons I came out with the stuff about England was . . . in Liverpool we probably see ourselves as an island,” he begins. “It’s hard to explain but we want to fight the world and stuff like that. I know we get criticism for that ‘self-pity’ thing but we’re just a very close community, you fight for your own and families are very important.”
Even when watching England play on television, the Mersey streams in front of his eyes. “I wouldn’t say we like the negative image others give Liverpool but it gives us something to rally against,” he says. “People here have got a bit of life, haven’t they? That’s what I think when I look at the England team. The two best players are Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard. They can put in a tackle and look after themselves but also have the creative spark. People from Liverpool can be . . . in the nicest possible way . . . little f****** and Stevie and Wayne have that devilment.”
Mersey pride is at the heart of a major concern. Carragher and Gerrard, heart and soul of the team, preserve Liverpool’s Scouse personality on the pitch but no lad from the club’s academy has established himself since Gerrard’s emergence a decade ago. Now there are 30 overseas youngsters on Liverpool’s books. “The foreign player issue has to be addressed. At all clubs,” says Carragher.
“Don’t get me wrong, good foreigners are great for the Premiership but what worries me is when we get foreign kids in at 16, 17. There has to be something to stop that, to help clubs keep their identities. I think about when I was that age. If I’d been 18 and Liverpool had brought the Spain Under18 captain into my position it would have been deflating. I always thank my stars I came in just as the foreign invasion was starting. I wasn’t Stevie at 18. I was a very good player and would have always had the mental strength to take my opportunity, but I wonder whether I’d have been given it.
“I don’t know when the next Liverpool lad will break into our first team and I don’t think the academy system is what it should be. The kids don’t have jobs now, don’t play Sunday boys’ football, and those things toughen you up. I don’t see as many little f****** as in my day. There’s a lot of nice lads but football’s not for nice lads.”
He loves local players, one-club men, everywhere. “It’s why I was made up that Stevie stayed,” he says. “He’s the symbol of Liverpool. You think of AC Milan and Maldini; Real Madrid and Raul; Juventus and Del Piero; Scholes and Giggs, who deep down every Liverpool fan respects. Tony Adams – he only played for Arsenal – I love that. For someone to ask, ‘Who did you play for?’ and to be able to answer a single name, ‘Liverpool’, that would be brilliant. I don’t think I’ll ever leave . . . though to be honest I’ve never picked up the Sunday papers and seen, ‘Jamie Carragher is wanted by X’. That’d be nice, you know, just for a little ego boost . . . could it be arranged? I see other players, ‘Real Madrid want so and so’ and you think, ‘He’s f******
! Him?!” The Book of Carragher, Part II: Rafa
Today featured a lecture from the gaffer on a technical point of defending. Though Carragher believes the Liverpool reigns of Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier are underrated, Rafael Benitez is “the biggest influence on my career. Even this morning he took me aside after training. Robbie Keane was saying, ‘Jeez, he talked to you like you’re a YTS player . . .’ You get used to it. Rafa is always on your back. Some players can’t handle that. Me, I don’t like it but I’m the sort of person who responds. You’ve always got that thing in the back of your mind with Rafa, ‘Does he actually think I’m any good?’ You’re always wanting to prove yourself. He hasn’t got much good to say about anyone, Rafa. . . even other managers.”
He and his mentor had a false start. At Euro 2004 Benitez, newly appointed by Liverpool, visited the England camp to meet Carragher, Gerrard and Michael Owen. The trio thought it was nice he would go to such lengths. The ego-stroking they expected did not materialise. Benitez sketched out an XI that, to Carragher’s dismay, had him at right-back and told Gerrard he should stop running about so much “and said to Michael you’ve got to get back to the way you were in 2001!”
In his book, Carragher jokes that Benitez is like a pub bore. “I hope people understood I was being light-hearted,” he says. “I meant that he’s always got to have the last word. Whatever your opinion is, he always has a better one. He’s the person who always thinks he knows best for you – and is usually right. There are times you want to tell him to . . . but later you think, ‘That was good for me’.
“The job he’s done is sometimes overlooked. Don’t forget that within a week of walking in the door he lost Michael [Owen] and had just been given Djibril Cisse. He stayed with the team in Tokyo when his dad had just died, which was an unbelievable gesture towards the players and the club. He’s taken defence to another level. He goes into every detail, tiny little things like body positions, how to react when the opposition use different formations. Basically, he’s trying to copy the AC Milan of Franco Baresi. He can change systems five times in a game. In Robbie’s first match he ended up on the left wing because Rafa noticed something about Lazio which made him want three in the middle – and that was just a friendly.
"To be honest, British players find that [flexibility] more difficult than foreign ones and maybe that’s why some he’s bought did not do so well. But another strength is he recognises his transfer mistakes. Every manager makes them and there’s nothing worse than the manager playing players to justify himself. That’s disrespectful to the rest of the squad. When Rafa picks you, it’s because you’re in the best XI to play that game.” There’s a surprising someone else Carragher admires. “I don’t have heroes outside football and my family,” he says. “If I had to pick a nonLiverpool or nonEverton person . . . to be honest I just love them managers. Alex Ferguson’s brilliant. I know it’s mad because he’s the Man U manager but if you asked who I’d like to spend two hours with, have a meal with and talk about football, it would have to be him. I love the way he tells everyone to f*** off.”
The Book of Carragher, Part III: Realising the dream
Today began with an odd breakfast conversation with James Carragher Jr, aged five. “I’ve been obsessed with football since I was three or four and my son’s getting worryingly like that. He remembers things from the Euros, games, goals. He was talking about last year’s Champions League semi-final, just brought it up, ‘Dad, did John Terry play in the game you lost 3-2?’ And I was thinking, ‘What made you think of that?’”
Carragher says “it’s very likely” he’ll end up a manager but worries that the difficulty he already has in switching off from the game would be exacerbated. He remembers a squad meal after losing a Merseyside derby when Gerrard, from the other end of the table, was texting him to cheer up “because my face was in my bowl of soup”. Liverpool’s comeback at Manchester City stirred every red, except one. “We conceded two goals and even now it’s nagging at the back of my mind.”
This brings Carragher to his biggest obsession. “I think about the title every day, more than once. Easily. To do it with Liverpool would mean so much more, that was my argument with Stevie when Chelsea wanted him.” In the City game, Liverpool looked like contenders. “We scored the winning goal after Martin Skrtel went off and it was 10 v 10. We had no centre-back, it was just me. We could easily have dropped Xabi Alonso back but a few lads – it wasn’t even the manager – said, ‘No, we’ll keep men forward and go for it. We’re aware, now, you’ve got to go for wins in this league. Draws kill you.
“People should stop saying we’ve made a great start, though. I’m thinking, ‘We’ve only played seven games and we’re Liverpool. Shouldn’t we be up there? Am I missing something?’ We’re not Hull. If we’re still up there in March we can talk about it, until then focus on doing our best in every game. Actions speak louder than words.”
Three questions for Carragher
Who is the best player you’ve played against?
‘Thierry Henry. He was probably the best player in the world and I was playing at right-back when I started playing against him. Everyone knows that playing at full-back against Arsenal in those days was tough, what with Robert Pires going inside, Henry coming wide, Ashley Cole bombing on. Henry gave me a few good chasings over the years. Sheer class and pace’
What is your favourite place in the world?
‘Apart from Istanbul? Probably Marsh Lane. It’s where it all started for me. In Bootle. The Brunny [Brunswick] boys’ club, my dad owned the pub along the road, my wife comes from a street just opposite the Brunny.
‘When I see that little road sign I get a real lift inside. When I finish playing I’ll try and do things for the area. There’s the boxing club, my junior school, the boys’ clubs and so many problems going on . . . it’s very important to me’
You say that Liverpool is a ‘village’ and mention its hyperactive rumour mill. There was one going round that you were having elocution lessons. Is that true?
‘Me?! I tell you what lessons I’m getting. I am having computer lessons. I go to the local Apple shop for a couple of hours a week. It might sound a bit shabby but I’ve never really been on the internet, I’ve only just learnt how to download music and put pictures on my computer. You talk the way you talk. Elocution? F*** off’
‘Real Madrid want so and so’ and you think, ‘He’s f****** ! HimAbsolutely Brilliant
