[lfc-news] Carragher has the presence to recapture the glorious past - Independent

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The Independent on Sunday, 22 May 2005
Carragher has the presence to recapture the glorious past
By Steve Tongue

On the wall of the directors' guest-room at Anfield is a specially
commissioned map of Europe, charting Liverpool's adventures down the
years across the breadth of the continent, from Dundalk to Vladikavkaz.
All the great venues are there, including the finals in Rome (twice),
London, Paris and Brussels, and although Istanbul already features for
an away tie with Galatasaray, the list needs updating. So, the younger
generation feels, does Liverpool's history.

Jamie Carragher was six years old (and an Everton supporter) when the
club last won the European Cup, and only 12 at the time of the last
domestic title, in 1990. Having followed such Merseyside heroes as Ian
Rush, Robbie Fowler and Steve McManaman in completing the metamorphosis
from Blue to Red, he is as keen as any Kopite to write a new legend by
beating Milan on Wednesday.

"At this club, we always hear all the stories of the past, so in 20
years we want to bore all the young people with our stories," he
declared late last week. "This club has been built on European nights at
Anfield and winning European Cups, so if we can bring home the Cup for
the fifth time, we keep the trophy. I think only Real Madrid and Milan
have won it more times than us. When you realise that we haven't won it
for 20 years, it proves how successful we were in the late Seventies and
early Eighties. We want to create our own bit of history for the club."

In this cosmopolitan age of football, it is good that the opportunity to
do so should be granted to a couple of local lads, and there would not
be a more popular victor than "Carra", who has probably superceded
Steven Gerrard in supporters' affections since the latter's dalliance
with Chelsea. When a new manager came in last summer, the Bootle boy was
not even sure of his place, especially once Rafa Benitez's first signing
turned out to be a right-back, Josemi.

Benitez, however, had already earmarked Carragher as the man to bring
some pace to the centre of defence, which suits him perfectly: "The
manager had a bit of belief in me and that gave me confidence, so you go
on the pitch confident in your own ability. You're more involved in the
middle and there's more responsibility than being out wide."

Being close to the supporters, he is particularly aware of a sense of
under-achievement in the Premiership this season, made all the more
acute by Everton having taken fourth position and a place in next
season's Champions' League qualifying round. Whether all the new foreign
recruits understand the importance of that, or have adapted quickly
enough to the rough-and-tumble of English football, is debatable;
Carragher loyally turns a possible criticism into a positive by saying:
"The manager is new to the Premier League, so I'm sure we'll do better
next season. The players we've got, and the players he's brought in,
who've done well in the Champions' League are mostly foreigners. The
fact that the referees will blow for free-kicks that they wouldn't blow
for in the Premier League, little things like that have helped us."

Helped beyond all expectation: "No one actually said at the start of the
season what our target was in the Champions' League, but at the back of
our minds, we thought if we got through the group stage, we'd just see
how we go, a bit of experience for the players and make a few quid for
the club, get in the top four of the League and maybe next year, go even
further in the competition. So to get what we've got this season is a
bonus, but we're now so close to winning the trophy."

Were it not for the performances against Juventus and then Chelsea,
there might well be an inferiority complex among the Liverpool players
that even Carragher hints at when reminded that the great Paolo Maldini
has called him a world-class defender. "Yeah, I read that in the paper,
I'm going to frame that! Just the fact that he knows who I am, to be
honest." He settles for respect rather than inferiority, an attitude
encouraged by Benitez. "In 20 or 30 years' time, people will still be
aspiring to be as good as Maldini," Carragher said. "The fact that he's
playing in his seventh final is fantastic, he's got four or five
winners' medals, which just shows the experience they've got at the
back, and certainly the defenders in our team look up to those kind of
players. I think our manager is a big fan of the way they do things too.
Their team of the late Eighties and early Nineties is something like our
manager wants us to get to eventually."

The Italians have clearly marked down Liverpool as a defensive side in
European games, which naturally causes a, well, defensive reaction from
Carragher: "I think it's a little bit harsh, but we've had to be
slightly defensive because we've only had one striker fit, Milan Baros.
We couldn't even have a striker on the bench, so we've had to play five
in midfield. Now the manager's got the option of playing two strikers,
and we'll see whether we do that or not."

It would seem unlikely. The bonus would be if Djibril Cissé were fit
enough to start in place of Milan Baros, testing the experienced but
ageing Milan defenders with his pace. There is great admiration in the
Anfield dressing-room for the way the Frenchman has returned with such
speed and determination from a broken leg last October at Blackburn -
the ground at which Carragher suffered the same fate two seasons ago.

"I've been through the same myself, but looking at the pictures, his
looked far worse than mine, as bad as any I've seen. It just shows the
mental strength that the lad has got to come back from that in the same
season. He kept telling us he would be back before the end of the
season, but you were thinking, is the physio just telling him that to
keep him going or is he on a different planet?"

That would have been the accusation levelled a few months ago at anyone
predicting Liverpool would be the English side flying out to Turkey
tomorrow. But they are off, and Carragher insists: "We're not going just
as tourists to have a look around Istanbul, we're going there to win.
Who knows when we'll ever get this chance again?" It is time to update
that map.

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