by Sabre » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:18 pm
First I want to congratulate Manhattan for yet another cracking post and a good topic starter.
Second, I'll translate John Toshack's article in today's San Sebastian local newspaper:
I plan to be in Anfield Road today, which was my home for 8 years. Good old times that!!! The best of my life!!! Often a footballer thinks that when his career ends, the life ends, but the truth is that life starts in that precise moment.
It's true aswell the years I've been a manager, 30 years already, are interesting aswell, and I cannot complain, but there's nothing like to be playing in the pitch to be honest.
Well, today we have a cup game between Rafa Benitez's team and Cardiff city. Cardiff, as you already know, is the capital of Wales, my land, and I started to play in that team when I was 16. 4 seasons later I signed up for the Reds. I remember what Shankly told me once I signed, "Congratulations John, you've made it from the nursery school to the university". I signed up when I was 20 and at the time I thought I was an important footballer, 110K pounds was the transfer fee, a record in that yeats.
So I started very motivated and excited. What a bath of reality was awaiting me!! (it's like saying how little I knew). At the beginning I was as lost as a fish out of the water.
In that times we always ended up the training sessions with a 6 against 6 mini matches. The winners had to choose what was the worst player of the other team, and the worst player had to wear a yellow top the rest of the day. He had to wear the yellow top in the bus trip from the training ground, to Anfield Road, the place in which we ate, had a shower, and we said goodbye to the day.
Well, in my first months I was fed up of wearing the yellow top, and I felt a lof of shame. My pride told me it couldn't be that way. Every spare minute I had, I spent it in the famous "sweating box", it was some sort of boards in the middle of the training ground, in which I was improving my touch.
After 6 months trying I hadn't to wear the yellow top again.
When the anthem sounds, I'll have my hair electrified, again, it's so a emotive game for me, as I started in Cardiff as a children, and I ended up in Liverpool as a man.
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Toshack always tells us stories like this. Of course the yellow top story is meant to criticise a quality yet a bit soft player of my local team, but he always tells us stories about Liverpool. The 6 against 6 matches and the yellow top story catched my attention, so I translated it to you.
Last edited by
Sabre on Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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