Ten years on from Liverpool’s epic Champions League win over Milan in Istanbul, Jamie Carragher talks about how it felt to play through the pain barrier against the best team in Europe.
He’s great on another historic final – the UEFA Cup win over Alaves, and why Liverpool couldn’t celebrate it. If you want to know more about the myth of ‘continental’ management and what Jamie thinks of recruitment at Liverpool over the last 10 years, then I think you’re going to enjoy this.
I chose Gordon Strachan for the second of our ‘Big Interview’ podcasts because he was the Andrés Iniesta of my era. If you aren’t of an age to have seen Gordon play at his best then, boy, you missed something.
He was one of the most skilful, inventive, creative, brave players Britain has ever produced. Ever. Not identical to Iniesta, but cut from the same cloth. Great spatial awareness and technique so that, often, players who tried to close him down were ‘spun’ and left looking stupid.
That’s a habit Gordon has carried on into his managerial career. He’s intelligent, witty, really quick minded – sometimes even quicker tongued. Journalists can be left looking stupid too.
Two things stood out to me – this is a man who cares passionately about the game played the way that excites and interests me and who is both intelligent and practical enough to so something about it. Secondly, he’s very funny.
The fact that he can be a bit prickly when he’s asked foolish or rude questions means that he’s gained something of a reputation and I think it’s one which does no justice to a clever, curious, interesting mind … and so we sat down to talk.
Unsurprisingly, he’s brilliant on Iniesta … but what took me a little by surprise was his strong contention, and explanation, about this being the all-time golden age of football. No rose-tinted specs about the past with Gordon.
When he talks about being driven by anger, when he describes Shunsuke Nakamura’s unusual training regime, when he talks about Eric Cantona and why it was right for him and Leeds to do the deal which changed Manchester United’s history – during all of this Gordon is fascinating.
I deliberately chose not to raise Sir Alex Ferguson because I knew, I just knew, that if the chat was going well then Fergie would be brought up by my guest. So it proved. What he says about the former Aberdeen and Manchester United manager is remarkable. If not for Fergie then Strachan would have been a legend at Real Madrid.
There’s punch-ups in Aussie Rules football, weeping football psychologists, alcohol bans and then the daddy of them all – what Gordon does for half an hour in his garage when he’s frustrated about the state of our skill deficit in UK football. What comes out strongly is the power of his voice. He speaks like a leader, like a thinker, like someone used to communicating his message.
We don’t speak about it in this interview but I know that Gordon is devoting loads of personal time to helping kids who have fallen away from football and lost their path in life to find discipline, education, improved diet, a second sporting chance and, in some instances, financial support to study for a career. I wish there were more people like him in our society and in the sport we all love.
Little wonder, knowing him, that he won 18 major trophies, numerous personal awards and achieved that rare feat of winning the FA Cup and league title in both England and Scotland; plus he became part of a small band of men, numbering just 10, to start in two UEFA trophy winning sides as part of a Scottish club side.
There’s something specific in there for fans of Barcelona, Aberdeen, Manchester United, Celtic, Southampton, Scotland, Leeds – and Aussie Rules team Melbourne FC. But if you are a fan of football in any shape or form you’ll lap this one up.
Tune in. Enjoy.
Thanks
G
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FC Barcelona press conferences can get crazy. But only now and then does the camera huddle suggest that Scarlett Johansson, Barack Obama or even Paul Weller just entered the room.
This, from about an hour ago, was one of those times. Fingers on the buzzer, and only buzz when you’re sure you know who it is…
Before I tell you about Gary Neville, how fervently and interestingly he speaks in this podcast, the first, of what I hope to be a series of substantial interviews, I think it’s important to explain why you and I are here together.
His views on everyone from Leo Messi via Gareth Barry, Pep Guardiola, Richie Benaud, Alan Hansen, Eric Harrison are coming right up. But I’m writing this blog entry and you are reading it because of BackPage Press – my publishers for my books on FC Barcelona and Spain.
What I mean by that is that Neil and Martin, who formed the company, wanted to know, specifically, what it had taken to produce the brand of football which FC Barcelona played between 2008 and 2012. The Pep era. They wanted details.
The chain of events was: they had the bright idea, they, literally, badgered me into writing Barça – the Making of the Greatest Team in the World and it turned out that they were right.
Such was the reception for the books that they added the idea of the podcast that we are launching today. Set-piece interviews with people I admire, like, find funny or find inspirational. And we started with Gary for obvious reasons. In terms of his unrelenting demand to know not what happened, but why and how, he’s cut from the same cloth as these guys.
What Neville does now is, in my opinion, easily amongst the most spell-binding, most riveting, most thought-provoking analysis of sport I’ve ever heard. Radio, television, in person. Anywhere. He’s both forensic and able to communicate an electrifying degree of ‘THIS MATTERS!‘
It would be easy for him to achieve one, but not the other. In fact many lesser talents would find the two concepts mutually incompatible.
For years and years football in the UK was described only in terms of win/lose, happy/sad, personality, declarations, ball in the net/ball not in the net.
Sky, over the years, has first tried to address that analytical deficit and then to completely rip up the form book. And in Gary Neville, the excellent Jamie Carragher and also their shrewd orchestra leader Ed Chamberlin, Monday Night Football has taken that quality of analysis to an entirely new level.
In this interview Gary is particularly interesting on: when and why he stopped enjoying watching FC Barcelona playing football; Alan Hansen’s broadcasting career; how disinterested he is in goals (normally the staple diet of a football co-commentator or analyst); Luis Suárez; Paul Parker; Denis Irwin; the intelligence deficit in English football; the ultimate sin which Kevin Miralles committed and whether he believes Bayern Munich will be European champions.
Pep Guardiola features … so does Jupp Heynckes, Richie Benaud and, naturally enough Leo Messi. Buried in there, too, is just about the single best and most practical suggestion for the betterment of English football I think I’ve ever heard.
Listen to it. Enjoy it. See whether you feel, like I do, that this is one of the great football brains which the UK has at its disposal.
If you like it, if you think we’re giving you value, then please take a minute to leave a short review on iTunes here.
Thank you!
G
Ahh, Bobby Moore. You hear about the legend, you see the grainy pictures.
You grow up playing ‘World Cup’ on your front lawn, round the corner at your pal’s house; on the concrete school playground when you’ve not got the dosh for a football, a tennis ball has to do, and the goals are the poles which hold up the bike shed [No kissing or smoking behind at this age]. When you score you shout ‘PELÉEEEEEEEEEEE!’ in a style you didn’t know was David Coleman and which would give you even greater pleasure when mocked and mimicked on Spitting Image in years to come.
Pelé. Nowadays the angst over that name is: ‘Could he, possibly, have been as good as Messi?’ Then it was: ‘How can I save enough pocket money to get to Santos [later New York] to meet the Black Pearl and show him some tennis ball skills? Put him in his place.’
Growing up in Scotland in the 1960s and 70s, there was only one team – England. As far as the TV execs were concerned at least. If I saw those Bobby Moore tackles on Pelé, Jair and Tostão once I saw them a thousand times. And, aw, cute, they hug at the end. 1970. Them were’t days.
Except what was special about 1970 for me was the Scottish Cup final. Martin Buchan, the youngest-ever Scottish Cup-winning captain, King Joey, Bumper Graham, Cup-Tie MacKay.
European Cup finalists Celtic well and truly beaten.
And then along came Willie Miller. Twice the tackler, more ferocious, better reader of the game, better captain. Bobby Moore? Bobby who?
So, for an Aberdeen-supporting, Willie Miller-reverential git like me, the Bobby Moore fund’s ‘Football Shirt Friday’ is the greatest thing old ‘Mooro’ has ever done. Not 1970, especially not 1966. Mighty footballer that he was, his name lives on in more than one way.
Support the cause – help his name tackle Bowel Cancer. Wear your jersey on Football Shirt Friday and give £2, or what you can, to the Bobby Moore Fund.
But Willie Miller? Greatest defender Britain ever produced. Official.
