Liverpool FC Forum

[Ciggy]

Jonathan Northcroft meets a Bootle boy who hasn’t forgotten his roots
Sunday Times, April 17th, 2005

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2093-1572384_1,00.html

Carragher’s Guide to Liverpool

Part 1: You Never Walk Alone

“Just this morning, driving in to work, people were beeping their horns. For the next couple of days, everywhere you go, you’ll get people you don’t even know giving you the thumbs-up. I was in the shop buying the papers and this woman came in and you could tell how happy she was. She was made up talking about the game.”

Today is another day, but this one is all about the night before. We’re at Melwood on Thursday and it’s 11.30am, only eight hours since touching down in the plane that brought the Liverpool squad and some journalists home from Turin. Knackered? “Knackered,” Jamie Carragher nods. “The kids woke me at 7.30.” He’s smiling, though.

Sustained by residual adrenaline after eliminating Juventus in a Champions League quarter-final, Carragher has already been out and done the light training session that Rafael Benitez prescribes on the mornings after midweek games. Despite his four hours’ sleep, he is radiant. The rest of the day is his (“I’m definitely having a kip this afternoon”) and he can savour Liverpool’s feat in the Stadio Delle Alpi.

“It was right up there with anything I’ve ever been involved in,” he says, beaming. “We did well in Europe under Gerard Houllier and didn’t concede away to Barcelona and Roma, but Juventus were better than those teams and that was three years into Houllier’s reign. This is the manager’s (Benitez’s) first season. It’s incredible.”

Carragher’s accent is as sludgy as the Mersey and he is as straight-talking as an early Beatles song. If you want to know what besting Juventus meant to ordinary people on the red half of Merseyside, speak to him. Yet although Carragher is often labelled a typical Scouser, he is not: Liverpool would rule the world if that were so. Rather, with his diamond-cutter sharpness, indomitable nature and determinedly applied talent, this 27-year-old represents what can be best about people from his too-often-maligned city. Liverpool’s bold and clever performance in Turin was less about Carragher being their epitome than the team making itself more like him.

They are through to face the might of Chelsea. “If you look at our qualifying group, we were capable of getting through,” he says. “Then we faced Leverkusen, fifth in their league, similar to us. We should have beaten them — I mean, we’re Liverpool. Juventus was our first real test, and if you can beat Juventus, you should be confident against anybody.”

Chelsea’s vast points superiority in the Premiership makes them significant favourites, but like others at Melwood, Carragher nurses a certain restrained confidence about the tie, based on how close Liverpool have run Chelsea in their three meetings this season. They were injury-hit in every one. Now Liverpool have the magnificent Xabi Alonso fit and it’s Chelsea who are afflicted with crocks.

Carragher is pondering one thing. Will the two games be European or Premiership in style? “I was thinking about that last night. I’ve read a few histories of the club and it’s going to be like when Liverpool played Nottingham Forest in the European Cup in 1978. Liverpool went out because they treated it too much like league football. In the first game they were getting beaten 1-0 away, which is not too bad a result in Europe, but they went in search of an equaliser like you would in the league, and lost a late second. We need to bear in mind we’re in a two-legged tie.”

He is aware that “a lot of neutral people will be for us because they like to see underdogs do well”. Chelsea’s money and pursuit of success will draw support for Liverpool from around England, but nowhere is disquiet with the London club greater than among Liverpool’s own fans. They are already angered by Jose Mourinho’s shushing gesture during the Carling Cup final, and the continual stories linking Steven Gerrard with Stamford Bridge have kept them at boiling point. Some have expressed the almost blasphemous thought that they would rather see Manchester United win the Premiership than Chelsea. Carragher mutters something that sounds awfully like: “I would.” Does he understand anti-Chelsea feeling? “Yeah. They’ve taken a lot of plaudits this season, but also a lot of criticism, and maybe that’s not because of their players but other people at the club. But that’s the way they do things, and they ’re successful, so good luck to them. Frank Lampard’s been the best midfielder in England and I voted for John Terry as Player of the Year. I was delighted to realise the second leg’s at Anfield. If we still have a chance of going through, the atmosphere will be unbelievable there.”

It’s hard to imagine Benitez shushing anyone, although he is a quiet sort. He was as animated as Carragher has ever seen him at full-time in Turin, shaking hands, all smiles with his players on the pitch. By Mourinho’s standards, however, it was an introverted celebration. And before Benitez could enjoy victory, he had to barrel his way over to Carragher to have a word, accompanied by several stern-looking gestures. Could he possibly have been admonishing the player? “He was telling me I had to be careful about (Zlatan) Ibrahimovic coming off me and getting in behind. It was as if the game hadn’t finished! That’s the way he is. I’ve never had a conversation with the manager about anything other than football. We love him for that. It’s what sets top managers apart. There’s got to be something different about them, something special. Benitez has got football on his brain constantly.”

Now Carragher begins to chuckle. “You know what the manager did when we got on the plane? He told us off for not keeping the ball well enough: we hadn’t had the bottle to pass it and were just belting it long. That was the first thing he said. Everyone was delighted to be in the semi-final of the Champions League. And he was saying we basically bottled it in the second half . . .”

Part 2: Never Forget Where You’re From

“It was great growing up there. It was football non-stop. On one side of Marsh Lane there was the Brunswick Boys’ Club. That’s where I learnt football. The school was on the other side of the road. You’d play football at school, and when it was finished, cross the street to the Brunny and play again. That was your life.”

LIKE sinew through a limb, Marsh Lane winds through Bootle, running from Aintree Road down to the docks. It is big and wide and offers a collage of the whole area, from the fat steel drums of the gasworks at the top to the red-brick warehouses at the bottom. A railway and canal criss- cross it. Along the way are schools, terraced houses and shops. There’s the Solly, the pub that Carragher’s dad, Philly, used to run. Here’s his primary school, St James RC, and the Brunny across the road.

Carragher had been in the Liverpool first team for four years before he finally moved out of “Carra’s Lodge”, the house he’d lived in with Paula, his mother, and Paul, his brother. He grew up on Knowsley Road, another main thoroughfare running parallel to Marsh Lane, but with more shops and less industry. “A little bit posher,” he smiles. He lives in Blundellsands now, where the streets are quiet and tree-lined, with views across to north Wales. It is only five minutes from Bootle, however.

“I go home all the time,” he says. “I was there the other day seeing my mum and a few of the lads. No pubs, though. Professional athlete and all that. Bootle’s where my memories are. It was one of the most deprived areas of the country in the 1970s and 1980s. The kids never had much, though you could always scrape a few quid together to get a ball. I think people learnt to get on with things and do it with a sense of humour. There’s a sense of humour, a little bit of character about people from Liverpool. Places like Glasgow are similar — working-class areas where people make the best of what they’ve got and do so smiling.”

Carragher can certainly be comedic. He is getting married on July 1 to his partner, Nicola, at a country house in Shropshire. His Liverpool colleagues will be invited, including Benitez, not least because it’s the first week of pre-season training “and it means he’ll have to give me the day off”. Otherwise, it will be a non-celebrity event, not like David Beckham’s nuptials. “Nah. I’ve sold my wedding pictures to The Kop magazine for a pound.”

Here’s a serious point, though. “People think every footballer’s like Beckham, going to big parties and that, but we (Carragher and Nicola) lead a normal life. I’m not having a go at Beckham, but that lifestyle gets you in the press a lot, and something similar is happening to Wayne Rooney. People look at the money certain players spend on cars and jewellery and think everyone’s the same, but there’s only a handful like that.”

Carragher is genuinely down-to-earth. James, his two-year-old son, has already been told that when he’s old enough, he’ll be playing for Merton Villa, Carragher’s old boys’ side on Marsh Lane. Bootle schools and football teams are forever benefiting from Carragher’s visits and donated signed shirts. “I haven’t forgotten my roots or whatever. I see myself and the fans on the same level. I don’t see myself on a pedestal,” he says.

“People call me a ‘classic scally’, and I take that as a compliment. I mean, that’s what I am. I’m an ordinary lad who’s been fortunate and done well at football. I am a bit of a scally, like. A bit of a laugh. A bit rough around the edges.

“I went to Lilleshall (the former FA school of excellence) and there were 32 of us together, living in dorms. You can imagine what we got up to; it was brilliant. There was another lad from Liverpool, Jamie Cassidy, and we used to wind up the other lads. The sharp Scouse tongue and all that . . .

“I still see Jamie. We were in the same FA Youth Cup-winning team (with Liverpool in 1996) and he played for England Under-18s. He never made it because he broke his leg and then got a really bad cruciate ligament injury. What happened to him just shows how lucky I’ve been.”

Part 3: A Working-Class Hero Is Something To Be

“I’m getting more praise than Beckham at the moment, aren’t I? It’s nice, good for your confidence. But the main thing’s always the team.”

SOME heroes are manufactured, some spring, ready-made, from the box. The few still achieve heroic status the old way, through hard work, assembling their reputation painstakingly, piece by piece. It has taken the Kop nine seasons, since his debut as an 18-year-old, to celebrate Carragher properly.

He played in central midfield that day, against Middlesbrough in the League Cup, and went on to fill a variety of roles. Houllier moved him to full-back to accommodate the arrivals of Stephane Henchoz and Sami Hyypia. It took Benitez to return Carragher, full-time, to centre-half, the position he played at 16.

Already Merseyside Sports Personality of the Year (the proudest moment of his career, he says), he has barely put a size nine wrong this season, but it’s not just the reliability of his clearances and interceptions that has made him invaluable. Playing alongside alternating partners, Hyypia and Mauricio Pellegrino, both of diminishing pace, Carragher has read the game beautifully, always putting himself in position to stop his sidekick from being exposed. He has become an arch anticipator of attacks and organiser in defence. Without wishing to denigrate Steven Gerrard, you sometimes have to remind yourself that the captain’s armband is worn by Liverpool’s No 8, not their No 23.

“I’ve maybe always been classed as an ‘unsung hero’, but with other English players leaving Anfield, there’s only me and Stevie left, and I was always going to be looked at more. I think the journalists like to butter us up because we’re the only two they can interview in the right language afterwards . . .

“Being in the middle’s better because you can influence the team more and you don’t get as exposed as you do out wide. There’s nothing worse than a quick winger. But I’d say playing in different positions earlier in my career helped me learn the game. Being a utility man has maybe only hindered me at international level.”

He adds that he is playing with more confidence than ever because of Benitez. He loves talking tactics with his technocrat manager. “I like thinking about the game. Even as a kid, I bought all the magazines, Shoot and Match. Now it’s World Soccer and 4-4-2. Sky Sports News is on in our house all day.”

He grew up supporting Everton. “Marsh Lane is very Catholic and very Evertonian. I was probably an Everton fan until I was 16. I didn’t really like Liverpool as a kid, but three or four of us from Bootle Boys got the chance to join them, and, aged nine, you don’t turn that down. I actually left and went to Everton for a year, but it was a case of the heart ruling the head. I realised I’d made a big mistake and that Liverpool at that time was the better place for a youngster, so I phoned and asked, ‘Can I come back?’ ” When he did, he was introduced to a tiny but already sensational schoolboy, Michael Owen. Each the other’s best mate in football, they always seem an odd couple. “We’re more similar than people think. His public image is such that he doesn’t give much away. He plays everything with a straight bat, like Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker. It must be something to do with the agent they’ve got. (Carragher deadpans this: he is with the same management company as Owen.) I tell Michael he’s got to appeal more to the man in the street. He’s a bit too good to be true sometimes. He needs a bit of scandal in his life. I speak to him probably twice a week and he texted me after Juve. He’s delighted for Liverpool.”

Can’t Carragher lure Owen back to Anfield? “I tell him to come back every week! Seriously, he’s been a bit frustrated at times this season, but I think he feels right now that he might be about to get a run in the team. He scored against Barcelona and the manager dropped Figo to let him play. He’s banging in goals for the biggest club in the world, so at the moment he’s happy.”

Banging in goals . . . a scorer in his third game for the club, Carragher’s next strike for Liverpool came three years later. Since January 19, 1999, more than six years have elapsed since the No 23 put a ball in the net. “My career total should be three, mind. There was a game against Middlesbrough where I scored but had to give it to Michael. As it was going in, he went to kick it and he claimed he got the slightest touch. He ended the season joint top league goalscorer alongside Dion Dublin and Chris Sutton because of that . . .”

Part 4: Don’t Try To Be Someone You’re Not

Ever done anything flash to earn a ribbing from the boys back in Bootle? “I remember I got a wallet once and got slaughtered for that.”

You mean a fancy Gucci number, with special Premiership-footballer, super-expensive leather? “Nah, just a normal wallet. Where I’m from, you carry money in your pockets, and I got slaughtered by my mates. I’d never had a wallet before and they thought I was trying to be someone I’m not. I got rid of it. Never had one since.”

Part 5: Why Leave?

We all dream of a team of Carraghers.” (To the tune of Yellow Submarine, a supporters’ song.)

OWEN departed. Gerrard is considering Chelsea. If the “Rafa Revolution” proves false, it would only be natural for Liverpool’s other home-grown hero to quit Anfield. “I’d never do that,” says Carragher. “I think it’s very important to stay here. Winning the league is what we’re building for. That’s our manager’s aim. I don’t think we’re capable of winning the league next year, though we’ ll try, but I’m sure that by the manager’s third season we’ll be challenging. If you offered me now the chance, just once, to win the league with Liverpool before the end of my career, I’d bite your hands off. If you win the league here once, that’s probably worth winning it three or four times at another club.”

Gerrard take note. Carragher’s neighbour in Blundellsands is considering putting the house on the market because of the lure of silverware at Stamford Bridge. It is argued that getting in the Champions League final might be one way of making Gerrard stay. But, says Carragher: “We’re not trying to win so we can keep Stevie Gerrard. We’re chasing success for ourselves and for the fans. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all hopeful Stevie stays. We showed against Juventus we can live without him, but he’s our best player.”

Whatever Gerrard decides, Carragher expects significant transfer action at Anfield this summer. Benitez is betraying increasing frustration at Liverpool’s inability to play in the Premiership like they do in the Champions League, something Carragher believes is down to foreign players not yet adjusting to English football’s physical demands. “We should be doing a lot better in the league. I think whatever happens in Europe, the manager’s going to want to change things because he came from Valencia, where he was used to consistency every week. Even if we won the Champions League, I could see four or five new players coming in.”

I mention a campaign on a Liverpool website, in recognition of his marvels, to come up with a new Carragher song. Two he laughs about are: “He’s Scouse, he’s sound, he’ll tw.at yer with a pound, Carragher!” (which he knew about) and “He’s Scouse, he’s sound, he can’t get in the ground, Carra’s dad!” (which he did not). The latter song refers to a temporary ban on attending matches imposed on Carragher Sr after he was arrested for being disorderly at England v Holland in February. The former is about an incident three years ago when a coin was chucked at Carragher at Highbury and he threw it back into the crowd.

“I’ve moved on from the scallywag I once was and matured a little bit,” he says. “I think I had children at a good age. Now I enjoy spending time with them, young James and Mia, probably more than with the lads.”

A perfect day in the life of Jamie Carragher? “Today wasn’t too bad. But a perfect day would be getting a decent lie-in, a bit of training, nothing too difficult. Maybe score a goal in a practice game . . . go home, put the kids to bed and watch a bit of football on the telly.”

It’d be pretty simple, then? “Yeah. Nothing too flash.”

[Ciggy]

rafa's a case on the tellin him about about Ibrahimovic as if they where still playing , and rafa on the plane on the way back, i mean you can just imagine carra laughin his head off tellin sayin that .
And he likes the song from the kop
What a gem i love our jamie  

[LFC #1]

class interview,

he's ****** brill is our JC. 

[Lando_Griffin]

Top man. Still funny that he threw that quid back at the goons!

[115-1073096938]

If you win the league here once, that's probably worth winning it three or four times at another club."

That is why he is a already in my eyes a legend and player i'll always use an example. 

Unreal.

He clearly loves this club and for that reason alone he's well above critisism.

I honestly think Warnock could go down the same route... Imagine that, having two players like that.

[JBG]

Yes, like Stu I like Warnock. Great attitude. There's a possibility that if Warnock gets a decent break (and after all his previous bad "breaks"...no pun intended, he's due one) he could nail down a place in the team and go on to become one of the better players in the Premiership.

I think attitude is half the battle and Carragher and Warnock's attitude are spot on.

[L-type]

You think anything got lost in translation from carraghers mouth, to the pad of paper the reporter had