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The Independent, 20 Nov 2004
Hamann keeps fire burning as Anfield waits for Gerrard recovery
Liverpool's inspirational midfielder is ready to return, but credit must
first be given to the German who has proved he has a northern soul.
By Tim Rich
Bucks Park, Telford, could barely cope with the crush. Telford Town had not
drawn a crowd of 6,200 before, not even for last season's fourth-round FA
Cup tie with Millwall, and on Monday night they were not playing.
The majority had come to see one man, Steven Gerrard, returning to action
with Liverpool Reserves, two months after he limped off at Old Trafford
with a broken bone in his foot. On Merseyside he is regarded as unbearably
precious. It was his threat to leave Anfield that helped to trigger the
demise of Gérard Houllier's regime; it was his decision to stay that
legitimised the new one, managed by Rafael Benitez.
Liverpool coped without their captain because Liverpool always do. In one
of the great statistical wonders of the age, they win more matches without
him than with him and this season the pattern has been repeated. Seven
points from five games with Gerrard, 13 from seven without him. There seems
to be no footballing explanation for it.
Nevertheless, this time Liverpool were better able to deal with his
absence. Benitez had added beef to Liverpool's midfield in the Spanish
shapes of Xabi Alonso, a man whose talents Sir Alex Ferguson had long
coveted, and Luis Garcia. There was also Dietmar Hamann, who in five years
had earned himself a reputation as the steel in Liverpool's centre, but who
was expected to return to the Bundesliga at the end of the season.
At his best, such as in his fiercely competitive display at Newcastle in
December, Houllier, likened Hamann to Franz Beckenbauer. "On days like
these, we call him the Kaiser [Beckenbauer's nickname] and you can see
why," Houllier grinned in the press room at St James' Park after Hamann had
nursed Liverpool to a rather fortuitous 1-1 draw. Benitez, too, appears
increasingly convinced of Hamann's value, intimating he would like him to
remain beyond the summer.
If there was a time and a place at which things began to turn for Benitez,
it was around 4pm on 16 October at Fulham. Liverpool were two down; they
had recently lost to Chelsea and Olympiakos and a third straight defeat
loomed. "Nobody really understood what was going on," said Hamann,
reflecting on the mood in the away dressing-room. "We had been beaten two
or three times away from home without playing well and yet with a bit more
luck we could have got a draw in all of them. Here we were at Fulham,
playing an open game and were 2-0 down. The air was full of frustration;
the feeling of not knowing why this was happening. Then, in the first bit
of good luck we had all season, Milan Baros's shot took a wicked deflection
to make it 2-1 and then, all of a sudden, the whole game changed. Even
Josemi's sending-off did not interrupt our rhythm. At Fulham we had three
shots on target and scored four goals. You need some luck."
This afternoon Hamann finds himself at the scene of another turning point;
Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium, the ground where Houllier's rule began
to fail. His rebuilding of the club was gradual; in 2001 they won their
three cups, the following year they were second and in November 2002 they
came to Teesside having gone remorselessly clear at the top of the
Premiership. The match that followed was a crossroads. Liverpool lost to a
Gareth Southgate goal and for the next two months they kept on losing. By
the time they recovered to beat Manchester United in the League Cup final,
their moment had come and gone.
"We are still far away," Hamann reflected. "We finished 30 points behind
Arsenal last season. You can't make that up in one year but we have to be
closer to the top three this season. What the future will bring we will see
but we are going in the right direction now. Two years ago we seemed close
but Arsenal pulled away and we stagnated. If one team goes 49 games without
losing and your club struggles, then you get gaps of 20-30 points. It's too
much for a club of Liverpool's standards."
He does not quite accept Michael Owen's summation of Houllier - that he was
a fine man-manager but a poor tactician, unable to adapt to the changing
circumstances of a match. "He did a lot for the club. When he took over,
Liverpool were on the edge of mediocrity. They were really struggling. He
changed things round, won a few trophies but didn't win the League [in
2003] and then things drifted. Afterwards, we did not perform as expected
but if you look at Gérard Houllier as a whole over his six years at
Liverpool, he did a good job."
I suggest that Houllier chose the wrong club. Had he gone to Newcastle, the
club Hamann joined from Bayern Munich, and won two League Cups, a Uefa Cup
and an FA Cup, there would be a statue to him on the Gallowgate. "Yes,"
Hamann smiled. "But I was not entirely surprised when Gérard Houllier went.
The signs had been there for weeks and there was a lot of talk straight
after the season that he would not be back. We were preparing for the Euros
in a training camp in the Black Forest when I heard Benitez was coming and
I was not entirely surprised by that either."
Hamann has been slightly surprised by how long he has remained in England:
it is more than six years since he exchanged Munich for Newcastle. "When
you first leave home, you always think: 'Well, I'll do a couple of years
and if I don't like it I can always come back.' I had a little daughter,
Chiara, by then she was six months old. I didn't have to worry about school
so in a sense I was free, I could go where I wanted. Now Chiara is six and
Luna is five and when they're at school, you don't want to move every year.
"Chiara's bilingual and when you ask her what she speaks better she says
English. We talk German at home but she is struggling a bit with her
reading and spelling in German because we've only just started to teach her
those aspects. It is probably easier to learn English well; the grammar's
not quite so hard."
It was in the wake of the 1998 World Cup that Hamann was enticed to St
James' Park, part of a raft of signings, including Gary Speed and Nolberto
Solano that might have given stability to Kenny Dalglish's brief reign on
Tyneside. Instead, two games into the season Dalglish was fired. Hamann,
like so many of Dalglish's squad, saw their relationship with his
successor, Ruud Gullit, break into pieces. At half-time in the FA Cup final
with Manchester United, Hamann told Gullit he was injured and could not
carry on. Later that summer he issued a statement: "I am coming back from
holiday, I will go and collect my things at Newcastle and I will not set
foot in the place again."
He had enjoyed his time in the North-east, visited Durham Cathedral and
Hadrian's Wall and fitted in well. He said he did not mind when his
team-mates gave him a copy of Mein Kampf as a "humorous" Christmas present.
A week before we met, the German ambassador had given a speech claiming
that English attitudes to Germany were still imprisoned by the Second World
War. By chance, I came across a copy of The Sun which described their
footballers as "The Jackboot Boys". As stereotypes go it is as if Germany's
leading tabloid, Bild, suggesting the Beckhams stopped for afternoon tea
and croquet before David took Brooklyn for Latin prep.
"You don't get many opinions about the war because you don't really talk
about it. A lot has been done in the papers about the funny side of the war
because the English have a black humour and sometimes the Germans can't
really deal with it. I'm resistant to it; there may be a few jokes made but
I consider that part of English life."
When Hamann was growing up in Bavaria it was under the spell of football.
He was born in 1973, the year before Munich staged the World Cup final, the
year after it hosted the Olympics. He was eight and 12 when West Germany
reached the World Cup finals of 1982 and 1986; 16 when Beckenbauer's side
won the trophy. He was 29 when playing in the 2002 World Cup final and will
be 33 when the tournament is again staged in Germany in 2006. That is the
context in which Hamann and players like him are judged. If you imagine the
English tabloid press puts pressure on their own national team, you haven't
read Bild.
"Expectations are already high for the World Cup. German teams have not had
the best results in Europe on a national or a club basis but anything less
than the semi-finals will be a disappointment for the German people. Every
time the tournament comes around, they expect us to win it and right now
there are a few better teams than Germany.
"England is not too different to Germany in terms of media expectations.
Even though you probably haven't achieved as much as the Germans the
expectations in England are only slightly less than the ones in Germany.
You go to a World Cup, people expect you to win it. Unfortunately for us
they only supply one trophy."
Even reaching the World Cup final in Yokohama and losing to Brazil, the
tournament's outstanding team, did not buy Rudi Völler much time. "When we
came back to Frankfurt, the reception was really fantastic. But it faded
and, no, I don't think we got the credit we should have. We may not have
lifted the World Cup but we came closer than many teams."
Given the German reputation for doing nothing without relentless testing,
the choice of both Völler and now Jürgen Klinsmann to lead the national
side appears strange. Neither had managed a club before, although Hamann,
who has not made Klinsmann's squads, pointed out that he was not first
choice. "They tried to get four or five managers, foreigners and Germans
such as Otto Rehhagel, Ottmar Hitzfeld, Guus Hiddink; all sorts of people.
For whatever reason they didn't want to do it. That left Jürgen who's lived
in America and been out of the mainstream game for a long time. He's
strict, tougher than you would think. He's always had his own ideas and has
taken a few from other sports. His attitude is that he will do it his way."
Sebastian Deisler should be a central character in Klinsmann's teams. When
he first appeared in international football at the age of 19, he was known
simply as Der Supertalent, until he succumbed to depression. With your
every move analysed by 40,000 spectators, with your performances shredded
on witless radio phone-ins, it is surprising that more footballers do not
fall victim to the inner ghosts that claimed Deisler and Stan Collymore.
"When you have the chance to make your hobby your profession and you get
paid good money, there is always a downside," Hamann said. "You can't go
into town because people know you; you can't do things unnoticed - but when
you sign a contract, you know that. Nobody has to sign a contract with
Liverpool or Arsenal; if you want to reach the highest level you have to do
it. I haven't seen Sebastian for years but they say it is an illness, that
it has nothing to do with the pressure of playing football."
Hamann reckons he has "three or four years" of this pressure left, although
he doubts he will remain in the game. "I have always been interested in
business and economics, still follow it and took what is the equivalent of
the A-Level in Germany. Now, I study the stock market, follow everything to
do with business. My father was very different, he used to work for the
police and was my coach for five to six years, giving me that special
treatment fathers give their sons. Now he's working with computers and
software. He started 20 years ago and he always said to me: you have got to
start learning about computers, they are the future. One day, I will take
his advice."
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