[lfc-news] Reds must show Carragher character all the time - Guardian

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The Guardian, 29 April 2005
Reds must show Carragher character all the time
A centre-half with England class
By Richard Williams

They got there, they are still there, and they could yet win the thing.
But unless they manage to upset massive odds and carry off the European
Cup in Istanbul on May 25, it will be hard to take this Liverpool team
seriously until they stop losing league matches against lesser
opposition with the kind of passive performance they gave against
Crystal Palace last Saturday, drawing criticism even from inside their
own ranks. What they need to do is adopt the approach of Jamie Carragher
as the baseline of their performance in every match, not merely in
semi-finals of the Champions League.

Carragher was widely acclaimed as the star of the draw they took away
from Stamford Bridge on Wednesday night, his two decisive interventions
in the final phase of the match keeping Liverpool's hopes alive. With 12
minutes of normal time remaining, he cleverly dispossessed Mateja Kezman
at the end of a dribble that looked as though it might produce
something. Five minutes later Kezman was waiting to hit a dropping ball
from point-blank range in the penalty area when Carragher produced a
brilliant intervention that left the Serbian substitute swinging at thin
air.

Given the notably wan form of Steven Gerrard in recent months, Carragher
has become the flavour of the month among those seeking to identify a
local hero among Liverpool's ranks. He has grown in stature and presence
on the pitch, to the point where he provides the emotional reference
point for players coming into the squad, particularly from abroad.

When Rafael Benítez made it clear very quickly last summer that Stéphane
Henchoz would have no place in his plans, Carragher stepped up to
establish a new partnership with Sami Hyypia in central defence. He was
reverting to the position he had played through the ranks of Liverpool's
youth teams until Gérard Houllier reinvented him as a utility player, a
decision copied by Sven-Goran Eriksson.

Now Carragher is being acclaimed as a credible addition to England's
ranks of international-class centre-backs, ready to join Sol Campbell,
Rio Ferdinand, John Terry and Ledley King among the specialists. And if
Campbell is nearing the end of his international career, as seems
likely, then Carragher might find himself challenging Terry for the
Arsenal man's No6 shirt in Eriksson's line-up.

But Carragher's display was not the only one worthy of note from among
the ranks of the club's less starry players on Wednesday. Djimi Traoré,
when he was not complaining about real and imagined injuries, put his
long legs in the way of Joe Cole's dribbling effectively enough to
ensure that the Chelsea man, in confident form, was unable to come up
with the end product. Igor Biscan, deputising for the injured Didi
Hamann, did little wrong and much that was right, in an unobtrusive sort
of way.

Between them Traoré and Biscan provided a reminder that Houllier knew
how to pick players but was not necessarily the best man to coach and
motivate them. Of Liverpool's 11 starting players and seven substitutes
on Wednesday, only three - the Spanish trio of Xabi Alonso, Luis García
and Antonio Núñez - were not brought into the Anfield first-team squad
by the much criticised Frenchman. And now they are a step away from a
European Cup final, the object of Houllier's vanished dreams.

We must hope, however, that Tuesday night's return leg turns out to be a
match of greater distinction, with fewer misplaced passes from both
sides. On Wednesday, even the most reliable distributors -Alonso for
Liverpool and Claude Makelele for Chelsea - were regularly making a
present of the ball to their opponents. It was a contest characterised
by incessant pressing and closing down, and by the phenomenal physical
fitness that allows modern players to maintain maximum effort throughout
the full 90 minutes.

Under the suffocating pressure, moments of high skill revealed
themselves. Makelele, Cole and Frank Lampard occasionally nicked the
ball away from an opponent with astonishing deftness before initiating
one-touch triangular movements at high speed. But the overall impression
was of sheer effort cancelling out invention.

It is hard to imagine either of these teams getting away with such
tactics against Milan in the final, should Carlo Ancelotti's team
exploit their 2-0 lead from the home leg and, as expected, dispose of
PSV Eindhoven in Holland on Wednesday night. Space, possession and
patience are Milan's tools, as Sir Alex Ferguson would attest.
Premiership-style intensity alone is unlikely to prevent them collecting
the trophy for a seventh time.

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