[lfc-news] Liverpool's centre of culture

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Liverpool's centre of culture
http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1572170,00.html?gusrc=rss
The Finn at the heart of the Reds' defence tells Michael Walker about his
highs and lows at Anfield and of his expectation of more trophies under
Rafael Benítez

Saturday September 17, 2005
The Guardian

Liverpool versus Manchester United: a fixture you can smell. Sami Hyypia
sat back on his wooden chair and inhaled. "United's and our fans hate each
other," he said, "and seeing the Liverpool players who are from Liverpool,
always Man United games are the ones they look for first on the schedule.
I've seen how important it is." So tomorrow, September 18, and January 21
will have been ringed on the Anfield calendar. The squeamish can look away.

Someone like Hyypia plays with his face to the game and is always keen to
look forward. This is the 6ft 4in Finn's seventh season at Liverpool and a
new contract extension means he will be at Anfield until 2008, which, as he
noted, is the year Liverpool becomes the European city of culture. Hyypia
was more comfortable discussing the future than the past, even Liverpool's
recent, glorious past. Thus when we met just a few hours after Liverpool
touched down from Seville, where the Champions League defence proper began
with victory over Real Betis, Hyypia mentioned "a good 2-1 win" and "I'm
knackered" and left it at that. He was already thinking of tomorrow.
Eventually there would be concessions to Istanbul and other pivotal
moments, such as Juventus away in April or the League Cup final of 2001,
but Hyypia, 31, said he had been hardened by his time in England - "I've
seen that English people are very tough" - and his assimilation into
English football culture is such that, without any self-consciousness, when
referring to Gérard Houllier and Rafael Benítez, he said: "I've had two
foreign managers here."

It was Houllier who bought Hyypia, for £2.6m from Willem II in Holland in
July 1999. Under the Frenchman, Hyypia won the Uefa Cup, the FA Cup, two
League Cups, a European Super Cup and a Charity Shield, plus Liverpool
finished second in the Premiership. Put like that, Houllier's record is
impressive yet his dismissal last summer was no surprise.

In came Benítez and within a year Hyypia had added the European Cup to his
collection of achievements. It is some haul and yet the absence of a league
title nags at the Finn the way it does at Liverpool supporters. It is all
part of the Liverpool puzzle, the fact that they could win the European Cup
but finish 37 points adrift of Chelsea and below Everton, as is the notion
that it was essentially Houllier's team, just coached by Benítez. The
Spaniard and Liverpool, indeed, had an odd, great first season together.
Discuss.

"That last season was a little bit strange," Hyypia said. "We had a new
manager and new players and the manager and the players knew more about
European football. The Premiership is a different thing. The new manager
brought new tactics and maybe [in England] they did not work as well as
they should have. The away form was where we struggled, of course. Our home
form was pretty OK. But the way I see it is that the cycle has started
again with Rafael Benítez. He is a very good manager, very disciplined,
very strict. He has the tactics in his mind, how we should move when the
ball is on the left side or whatever - you do exactly what was planned.
That is a good thing, I like discipline a lot, that's a base from which a
team can play together. Tactically he is very strong."

This much we know. But at the moment when he was tested most, half-time in
Istanbul, what was Benítez like then - inspirational as well as tactical?
"He was very positive. Not many believed that we could still win, 3-0 at
half-time to AC Milan, it feels like hopeless. But he was very positive
that we could work harder and if we got one goal back . . . And for the
people who travelled from Liverpool to see the match, he said we had to
give something back to them. Then the tactical changes: Steve Finnan had
some problems so Didi Hamann came into midfield and we went three at the
back. It worked perfectly. He is a very clever man, he knows which strings
to pull in any given situation.

"I have trust in him. When we came back from summer holiday on the first
day he took me into his office and said: 'We are looking for a
centre-half.' I said: 'Fine, competition is good.' Come January, I bet
someone comes in. But I look at it positively. I feel Rafael Benítez brings
good days, a lot of trophies."

Domestically, this season has brought one goal in three games, but also
three clean sheets. After Tottenham last Saturday it also brought an
admission from Jamie Carragher that the 15-year wait for a league title may
soon be 16. "If you are realistic, it is very difficult for us to win the
title," Hyypia agreed. "Chelsea is a great team and for them to be 37
points ahead of us last season, maybe we can't get past them this season.
But we are definitely going to close the gap, and fight. I don't think
Carra meant that we will give up. Of course we have to have the reality
that it might not be possible [to win it]. But maybe Carra wanted to take
some pressure off the team. We haven't given up anything.

"It will take time for the manager to get the squad that he wants. This
season we have Zenden, Crouch, Sissoko and Reina, new faces. We will be
more ready for the task because the manager has four new players he rates
very highly. It's difficult to compare with the past - 2001 was a good
year, we won five trophies. But if you don't have the resources then you
have to improve the team play. That is one strength we had last season,
especially in Europe, all the tactics of the manager worked there. One game
was Juventus away; 2-1 at home was not too good because you know that 1-0
is enough for them. In that away game offensively we did not do much, but
we kept it compact and we worked very hard for the draw. We just had to be
ruthless. There were other games like that where we came together - the final."

Manchester United should reveal how together Liverpool are. Hyypia selected
beating Birmingham in the League Cup in 2001, his first trophy, as the
highlight of his Anfield career to date, while finishing below Everton last
season represents "the biggest disappointment so far". It was even worse,
he said, than being sent off at Old Trafford three Aprils ago four minutes
into a 4-0 defeat. "Van Nistelrooy was going through and maybe I took his
shirt a little bit. The referee thought so. I got a straight red card. They
got a penalty. It was an agony to watch the game in the dressing room. The
only red card of my career. You remember that sort of thing."

It will have to jostle for space in Hyypia's memory bank. He and Liverpool
have crammed in a lot and, as he said, he expects to bank more soon.

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