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To the best fans in the world
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
I Mersey Reds
II Why I am an Atlético
III My debut
IV My life in Madrid
V The cathedral: Anfield
VI The men who made Liverpool great:
VII The captain’s armband
VIII Living in Liverpool
IX A day of football
X ‘Spanish’ Liverpool
XI A bitter taste
XII Adiós, Atlético
XIII Rafa's way
XIV Through the lens
XV First Act: Chelsea at Anfield
XVI The best league in the world
XVII My Champions League bom
XVIII Metting in Madrid
XIX Fortress Melwood
XX A Helping hand
XXI Suffering in Silence
XXII Champions in Vienna
XXIII On the podium in Zurich
XXIV Switching off
XXV I’ll never walk alone
Copyright
About the Publisher
I Mersey Reds
It happened in San Sebastián, in northern Spain, when I was playing for Atlético Madrid against Real Sociedad. I was battling with a defender, and the captain’s armband I was wearing came loose and fell open. As it hung from my arm, you could see the message written on the inside, in English.
We’ll never Walk Alone.
It wasn’t what I had intended but right there and then I became identified with Liverpool. I hadn’t planned for it, and a future at Anfield hadn’t even crossed my mind, but that moment of chance, that accident, came to symbolise the next big step in my career: my captaincy at Atlético gave way to the words that define Liverpool.
All of my best friends have the words tattooed on their arms. We were eating together once and they suggested that I do the same. I told them I couldn’t. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ is a phrase so intimately linked to one of Europe’s biggest clubs, so clearly associated with Liverpool, that I didn’t think it was a good idea. I was an Atlético player and a rojiblanco through and through. They decided to give me a new captain’s armband for my birthday with the phrase on the inside so that, even if I wouldn’t get it tattooed on my arm, the phrase would accompany me. My friends would accompany me; we would never walk alone. I gave the armband to the Atlético kit man, who kept it with the team’s shirts. When it slipped down that day against Sociedad, an eagle eyed photographer snapped the picture and I was immediately linked to Liverpool.
Maybe that was the day I took my first step towards Anfield, or maybe it was because I already shared things with Liverpool. I identify with the values that define the club: hard work, struggle, humility, sacrifice, effort, tenacity, commitment, togetherness, unity, faith, the permanent desire to improve, to overcome all obstacles…Once a week Liverpool fans feel like the most important people on earth and make the players feel like it too. They give everything and they ask for nothing in return. Liverpool FC is a club that despite being used to winning never succumbs to the temptation to start cruising. If you play well the fans enjoy it, and if you play badly they help you get over it. The Liverpool family have helped me off the pitch too. It’s as if you live in a neighbourhood where everyone knows you and everyone joins forces for the same cause: the team. Good people, honourable people, who have always got back on their feet however many times destiny has knocked them down. The harder things have been, the more united they have become.
I never imagined I would play for Liverpool. The first rumours about my future started just after I’d played in the Nike Cup in Italy at the age of fifteen. That was May 1999 and the newspaper Marca started to link me to Arsenal. The only thing I was worried about then was passing my exams and enjoying my summer holiday in Galicia. But the Premier League bug did bite. A couple of years later, just after I had made my debut for the Atlético first team, there was talk about Manchester United. Back then, Liverpool wasn’t an option at all but other clubs were. A scout from Arsenal even contacted me and gave me his card in case I wanted to have a trial with the Gunners.
My interest in the Premier League grew. In Spain, most people only ever talked about La Liga. At the time there was little coverage of foreign leagues and few Spanish players were playing their club football outside the country. That was the time, in the late 1990s, when Arsenal built a great side with Dennis Bergkamp, Ian Wright, David Seaman, Tony Adams, Nicolas Anelka and a very young Thierry Henry, with ArsÈne Wenger as coach. They were wonderful to watch. So much so that I used to choose Arsenal when I played chapas—the Spanish equivalent of table football played with bottle tops. You would play against friends with metal bottle tops that you painted in the colours of your favourite team; I’d painted mine Arsenal colours with the players’ names on. We would challenge each other to games at school and in the parks in Fuenlabrada, the town just outside Madrid where I lived. When José Antonio Reyes signed for them, I followed with interest: I kept a close eye on his progress, his team-mates, and his new club.
I had always been interested in foreign leagues as a kid. I followed the Italian league as much as possible because I loved the way that the Argentinians Gabriel Batistuta and Abel Balbo played. I also liked a kid that was coming through by the name of Francesco Totti. Before that I remember Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan, van Basten in particular, and later I followed Juventus with Alessandro Del Piero, Gianluca Vialli and Fabrizio Ravanelli. Then there was George Weah at Milan, a phenomenal player. My favourite in Italy was always Batistuta. He had everything. But my idol at home was Kiko Narváez—one of the heroes of the league and cup double that Atlético won in 1996.
In the summer of 2006 after the World Cup in Germany, Bahía Internacional, the company that have looked after me since I was fifteen, told me that there had been discussions with Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson had been involved in the negotiations but in the end nothing happened: maybe neither of us really pushed hard enough.
I also found out that some other English clubs, like Newcastle and Tottenham, had made offers which Atlético rejected—just as they did to offers from Olympique Lyon and Inter Milan. I also felt that it wasn’t the time to leave and none of the offers entirely convinced me. My desire to succeed with Atlético stopped me thinking about a change.
When Liverpool’s offer arrived a year later, I took a long time thinking about it and in the end I decided it was time for a change. I felt that I was stagnating in Spain and that my development was grinding to a halt. The Premier League is the strongest in Europe. A few years ago, La Liga was the best but the huge influx of foreign players has allowed the English league to improve and the football is more attractive now—it’s faster and more intense, there are more goal scoring chances and the players respect the rules of the game better. In England, players don’t dive. They try to help the referees, they don’t try to take advantage of every situation and the game isn’t constantly stopping. There’s a level of respect that lets you really enjoy the game. Of course there are tough tackles, but they are honest attempts to win the ball and players who do get fouled get up straight away, even if it hurts, instead of rolling round the turf to try to get the crowd going and put pressure on the referee. As a spectator, I really enjoy watching Premier League games. Even before I signed, my Spanish team-mates—people like Xabi Alonso and Pepe Reina—told me that I would enjoy playing in England even more than I had enjoyed playing in Spain.
I always thought that I would play at Anfield as a visitor, never as part of the home team. I would compare the old Highbury to Anfield; I would have loved to have played there. That respect for history and tradition is something that should be applauded. Reyes and Cesc Fabregas told me about the reverence shown during the final few games at Arsenal’s old ground. It’s like Anfield, a cathedral to the game. You want to be able to tell your friends: ‘I’ve been there, where so many glorious pages of footballing history were written.’
Destiny seemed to have decided that if I ever left Atlético Madrid it would be for Liverpool. Having turned down various proposals, Rafa Benítez’s call made me reflect and start to have doubts for the first time. I decided that it was the right moment to leave and I asked Miguel-Ángel Gil Marín, Atlético’s owner, to listen to Liverpool’s offer.
I didn’t know that Liverpool was the most successful club in England. Since Rafa went to Anfield and took Spanish players with him, I had got to know Liverpool better but I didn’t realise that. I remember the 2001 Uefa Cup final against Alavés but I thought they were some way behind the teams that I assumed dominated English football: Manchester United and Arsenal. I was surprised when I found out just how incredible their history was and how many titles they had won.
Istanbul revealed Liverpool’s true spirit. The Spanish television channel Canal Plus broadcast a report about the history of the club after they had won their fifth European Cup in Turkey—about the tragedies at Heysel and Hillsborough, the connection between players and fans, the struggle against adversity. The commitment to overcome difficulties and stand tall, the ability to face up to every situation and beat it, is reserved for true giants. Liverpool FC is a special and complete club, one that plays and fights, that gives everything for the people who follow it.
I had heard the names that are most associated with Liverpool: Dalglish, Rush, Souness, Keegan, Owen, Fowler, McManaman, Hamann…As someone who has always followed those players who come through the ranks at their clubs, I was especially interested in a young lad from the youth team called Steven Gerrard. In the 1980s Liverpool were practically invincible. I was told that the European ban they suffered after Heysel made them stronger domestically, even though they had an important handicap with less of a presence on the international club stage. You still find Liverpool fans all over the world though and I think the club needs to keep growing by encouraging that and making sure they continue to be known worldwide. Until I signed for Liverpool, I never knew they were so big. And I felt like they didn’t have much of a presence beyond
Merseyside either; attention was focused on London and Manchester. But then, suddenly, Liverpool were back in the spotlight. A lot of that is down to Rafa Benítez, who has changed things at the club and revived some of the old Liverpool philosophy, giving the club a global presence again.
Liverpool’s two Champions League finals remain fresh in my mind. In Istanbul and Athens the values that embody the club shone through. I turned off the television at half time in the 2005 final. It seemed to be all over. Everything pointed to the second half being a waste of time, just an exercise in running down the clock. But when I got to the restaurant where I’d arranged to meet with friends, I asked them to put the television on and I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know where they found the strength and character to take that game into extra-time and penalties. When Liverpool got to the final in Greece two years later, I watched the whole game at home. After what had happened the first time, I wasn’t going to miss a minute. I wanted Liverpool to win because I had friends in the team. Once again, things looked bleak but when Dirk Kuyt scored I thought that another comeback was possible. In fact, I’m convinced that if the referee hadn’t cut the game short by a few seconds, the Reds would have taken things into extra-time again. The equaliser was possible and a victory likely.
Watching those two nights unfold on television taught me my first lesson about the club I would later join: at Liverpool, no one gives up and everything’s possible.
II Why I am an Atlético
It was a cold winter afternoon, just after Christmas. We had eaten in Dehesa de la Villa, the neighbourhood in Madrid where my grandparents lived, and during the meal someone asked: ‘Can we go and see Atlético play?’
They were playing at home against Compostela. It was the perfect game for us, a combination of our commitment to the red and white of Atlético and the pull of home—my father is from a small village near Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, up in the northwest of Spain. My grandfather Eulalio and my father started talking about it, and before I knew it I was sitting in the back of the family car, seat belt across my chest, heading for the banks of the Manzanares river—to the neighbourhood of La Arganzuela where the Vicente Calderón stadium stands.
It wasn’t just another day for me. It was the first time I had been to see Atlético Madrid live. Together with my grandfather—my inspiration when it came to supporting Atlético—and my father, we bought three tickets to see a side that was anything but consistent. It all started at 5pm on 15 January 1995 and ended 1-1. Abadía opened the scoring for Compostela and ‘The Train’ Valencia, our Colombian centre-forward, equalised. I remember watching Caminero, Simeone, Solozábal and López…players who would go on to win an historic double the following season.
I wasn’t hooked when I left the stadium. It was cold, there wasn’t much excitement and the flat atmosphere in the stands didn’t help. The draw meant I left as I had arrived, without really catching the bug.
And yet with every passing day I felt happier that I had chosen Atlético. I was fast becoming an Atlético like my grandfather. I felt it. And, just as I saw my first game at the age often, a few months later, in July 1995, I had my first trial to play for them, having previously played for a team called Rayo 13 in Fuenlabrada. After signing up and being selected for the trial, I went along with my father and my brother Isra. The trial was held on the gravel pitches in Parque de las Cruces in the neighbourhood of Las Águilas in the south of the city. It was a summer afternoon, a Saturday at 3pm. My father had driven down there earlier in the day to check it out and make sure we didn’t get lost en route but we still managed to turn up a couple of hours early.
The trial consisted of eleven-a-side games split into two twenty-minute halves. There were a lot of kids and not much time. It wasn’t exactly an ideal way to prove yourself but things went well for me. I scored a lot of goals and I was very happy with the way I played. Amongst those choosing which kids would be selected were some of the club’s legends, men I would later spend years training with like Víctor Peligros and Manolo Briñas. At the end of the trial they told us that the kids who were chosen would be on a list they’d post at the Calderón in mid-August. It wasn’t something that obsessed me, far from it. At that age I don’t think failure is something that scares you. If I didn’t get chosen I would have just gone back to playing football in my neighbourhood, happy as I had ever been.
Time went by and the family holiday in Galicia meant that we couldn’t drop by the Calderón to see if I had been chosen. My father decided to phone the club to find out. He was the one that gave me the good news, but you would never have thought it.
‘You’ve been selected,’ he said, deadpan. ‘They’ve picked six kids and you’re one of them. You have to go to Colegio Amorós in the first week of September for another trial to confirm everything.’
It was there, on a pitch very near to where we’d undergone the first trial, that I came across ‘professor’ Briñas for the second time. He would later play a big role in my development. I did well in the second trial too and at the age of eleven I formally signed up for Atlético Madrid’s youth team at what’s known in Spain as the akevín level—Under-12s. My first coach was a man by the name of Manolo Rangel.
In September 1995 I made a huge leap: from playing football in my local neighbourhood of Fuenlabrada for Rayo 13 to travelling to Belgium for an international tournament with Atlético Madrid. I was nervous just going with my mum to buy a wash bag for the trip to Brussels. I was used to leaving the training pitch covered in mud and going home to shower. At Atlético things were much more organised. Everything had changed. Going to that tournament was my first-ever game away from home. I’d never travelled anywhere without my parents before and I’d never been abroad either. Yet here I was catching a plane, taking days off from school and playing football against Anderlecht, Feyenoord and Borussia
Dortmund. When we got back, three weeks’ training awaited us on the pitches at Orcasitas in southern Madrid, in the neighbourhood of Usera, and soon there were matches every Saturday. I was living a dream.
Well before joining Atlético Madrid, even before that cold afternoon at the Calderón, I had already decided that red and white were my colours. When you’re a kid you tend to follow your parents; you go to games with them and have an affinity for their team. Or you get dragged along by the family’s footballing faith. If your parents don’t have a team, choosing can be hard—unless you find an idol to help you make up your mind, a star player to follow. Until I was seven, I wasn’t sure who my team should be. At school, almost everyone was a Real Madrid fan and that was the thing that my grandfather Eulalio most complained about. He explained to me, patiently and simply, what being an Atlético was all about. He told me about the special feeling that surrounds the club. He didn’t tell me about players; what he told me about was what it means to wear the Atlético Madrid badge on your chest, with the bear and the strawberry tree emblem that symbolises the city. He told me about the values the club represents and always had done over 100 years of history: hard-work, humility, sacrifice, and overcoming adversity; about resistance to Real Madrid, the city’s football giants…
Atlético are a big club too—but for different reasons. Atlético Madrid represent a permanent battle against the odds; being an Atlético means never giving in, always fighting to the last. Atlético Madrid are on their own, fighting against the establishment, doing it the hard way. It is the people against the power. That’s why my grandfather will always be an Atlético. That’s why I will be too.
We Atlético fans are aware that there is a huge difference between the two big clubs in Madrid. Real Madrid have been named the twentieth century’s best club and living in the shadow of them is extremely hard. But I am proud of supporting Atlético. It’s hard because you don’t have constant success to cheer but that’s the path I’ve chosen. I have never been struck by doubts. I’ve always been committed. Our successes are ours and ours alone; we have done it all on our own. That makes them more real.
I didn’t care about being surrounded by Real Madrid fans at school. Back then, two of us bucked the trend: it was me and one Espanyolfan up against 28 Madridistas. If we lost, so what? There’d be another game along soon and we’d win that one. It wasn’t only Real Madrid: I also ignored the influence of my father and turned my back on Deportivo de La Coruña. Those were the years of SuperDepor, when Deportivo were the most important team in Galicia and a real sensation in Spain, with Arsenio Iglesias as coach and players like the Brazilians Bebeto and Mauro Silva, plus Liaño, Fran, Manjarín, Aldana, and Djukic. I was given a Deportivo kit when I was nine but I already knew my destiny was red and white, not blue and white.
My first year at the club was wonderful. Not only did the Atlético akevín team that I was playing in enjoy a lot of success, the first team did too. Under Radomir Antik, they achieved an historic double: they won the Copa del Rey, the Spanish equivalent of the FA Cup, by defeating Barcelona and then they won the league after beating Albacete in the Calderón on the final day of the season. All of the club’s youth team players had been given a ticket for the match and sat together in the stadium. My father parked the car about twenty minutes away—as anyone who’s been there knows, getting any closer to the Calderón by car is impossible—and the walk to the ground was emotional. Everyone was so excited. There was such hope in the air as you passed stalls selling scarves and shirts, drinks and nuts, sweets and crisps. You could feel that it was going to be special.
It’s not easy to make the first team. Of those kids who started out with me at Atlético only Manu del Moral, now at Getafe; Molinaro, who plays for Mallorca, and Sporting Gijón’s Raúl Cámara are playing in the first division. As time goes by, you realise how important it is to have a coach who really trusts in the young players coming through and has the nerve to call on them if you are going to have any
chance of making it. It helps to have the media on your side too, ready to support you when you’re first starting out and you don’t immediately get the benefit of the doubt like a big name player would. The pressure that surrounds a club means that it is very hard for youth team players to be given the time to play and settle in. The best thing for clubs to do is sign key players for the first team and use the kids coming through to help make up the squad. The truth is, though, that clubs tend to turn to home grown talents in times of need and pressure, when things are going badly. It would be better to turn to youth team players when things are going well and give them the chance to settle in but that is rare. If things are going well, there is little need to call up a youth teamer. If Atlético Madrid hadn’t been in the second division, I am sure it would have taken longer for me to get a chance.
There are some very talented kids coming through in England, although I think they would be more successful with a strong reserve league. At Liverpool we have two perfect examples: Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher have progressed all the way through the club and played for the English national side. There are others too: Wayne Rooney, who started at Everton, Giggs and Beckham at Manchester United and John Terry at Chelsea. The biggest clubs are investing more and more in their academies because they know that there is one thing money can’t buy: the spirit and commitment of those players who have been at the club ever since they were kids.
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