all happened because Everton couldn’t pay the rent at Anfield.
My first encounter with Liverpool’s legends came courtesy of the Spanish journalist Guillem Balagué. He got me and Kenny Dalglish—King Kenny—together for an article for The Times newspaper. First, though, I want to talk about a fantastic meal that the former Liverpool player and European Cup winner Michael Robinson organised. He brought together Liverpool players past and present for Informe Robinson—the programme that he directs and presents on Canal Plus television in Spain. The meal took place in a restaurant in the heart of Liverpool: four legends from the Liverpool side of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and three representatives of the current ‘Spanish Liverpool’ team—Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Robinson himself and Sammy Lee, who at that stage wasn’t yet part of the coaching staff, plus Pepe Reina, Álvaro Arbeloa (who has since joined Real Madrid) and myself. Xabi Alonso couldn’t make it on that cold night in February, while Albert Riera hadn’t yet joined the squad.
After we had been introduced to each other, Souness led the conversation. An elegant, charismatic Scotsman, captain of the team that won the European Cup in Rome in 1984, he was a real leader. Halfway through the speech made by a Uefa dignitary after Liverpool had won the 1984 final on penalties, Souness decided he
had heard enough and quickly pulled the cup from his hands to lift it into the sky because Roma’s fans had already started leaving. ‘I wanted them to see us celebrating,’ he said. Sitting there, his character shone through as he talked; you could imagine him as a leader, a captain. But the star was sitting next to him. ‘The fans declared Dalglish the greatest player in the club’s history,’ Souness said. ‘They called him the Dog’s Bollocks—as good as it gets.’
The four of them were very complimentary towards me. Kenny said that I was Liverpool’s best summer signing. Sammy likened me to none other than Ian Rush, the highest goalscorer in the club’s history. I listened carefully to everything they said—men who had won it all.
One of the talking points was Rafa Benítez’s rotation policy. Souness took no prisoners. ‘I’d like to see some of the old Liverpool philosophy. When you have a great group of players, let them express themselves, let them play, let them complement each other,’ he insisted.
‘Rotation is a mystery. No one knows why Liverpool’s best players don’t play every game. I would like them to know they’re the best, to feel it.’—Graeme Souness
‘I don’t think the game is any more demanding than it was when we played, when you take into consideration the fact that players these days look after themselves much better than we did in terms of physical preparation, nutrition, hydration, alcohol…I never felt tired and I played Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday non-stop for fifty weeks a year. It’s psychological. You get tired when you lose. Liverpool have rested their best players too often this season.’
Dalglish agreed. ‘What’s changed is the players’ mentality,’ he said. ‘If you insist on telling a player that he’s tired, he’ll believe you. If you tell him to play, he’ll play. No player ever goes up to the coach and says he’s tired, so just get on with it; get out there and play.’
Dalglish also revealed one of the keys to winning six league titles and three European Cups. ‘We had great people, a strong dressing room. We were down to earth and also ambitious. We felt like we were nothing special but we always attacked; we always faced up to the opposition. We always went for them,’ he said. Dalglish had set it up, now Souness put it away. ‘Every year was fantastic because we always won something,’ he added. ‘If we only won one trophy it was a bad year.’
Over two and a half hours, the three of us listened to stories from the past—Liverpool’s current players hanging on every word uttered by Liverpool’s legends. Robinson told us that the team most people rated as the best in the world trained in dirty kit every day, faithful to a tradition that went back to the 1960s.
By the end of the evening, I couldn’t thank them enough. It’s because of them that we are here today and hopefully one day we’ll be sitting on the other side of the table. Souness’s response, on behalf of them all, really made us feel special: ‘No, thank you for listening to a load of nostalgic old men. And remember: they always made us feel like we weren’t as good as our predecessors. Our three European Cups weren’t as important as the first one the club won.’ And with that he wished us good luck.
My first visit to Melwood came just a few minutes after my presentation as a Liverpool player at Anfield—a first glimpse of my new workplace. I went into the dressing room and was shown my locker. Not that it was mine yet: it still belonged to Robbie Fowler and he hadn’t emptied it out. The lockers are allocated by shirt number. Mine was No. 9 so I was taking over from a Liverpool legend. I literally took his shirt too: a few months later Liverpool played Cardiff, Robbie’s new team, in the Carling Cup and I was told that he wanted to swap shirts with me. I didn’t need asking twice. His shirt is a treasure I’ve kept with pride.
Liverpool’s No. 9 has always been special. There was Fowler, of course, and people also told me about Ian Rush, John Aldridge and Roger Hunt—one of the all-time greats. I remembered Robbie’s goal celebration against Everton, the one that got him into trouble. I was told about Rush at Anfield and Juventus. About John Aldridge, a clone of Ian Rush. Former players are a key part of every club; they are always there to offer advice and they always want the best for the team. I love talking to them now at Liverpool, just as I did with the greats at Atlético Madrid. Teams are a product of their past and it’s important to honour your history. It’s the best way to ensure you’re on the right path for the future. In Madrid, I used to love talking to Adelardo, who played more games for Atlético than anyone else; to Garate, one of the club’s great No. 9s from the 1970s; to Luis Aragonés, a coach and a player for so many years at Atlético; or to Luiz Pereira, the Brazilian defender who’s now president of Reserva Atlético. It was thanks to them that the club became great; they are role-models for the players of the future.
There’s nothing better than listening to the man who fans consider to be the greatest Liverpool player of all time: Kenny Dalglish. As I said, Guillem wanted to do a report on Liverpool’s past and its present. But Kenny and I are not the same: he is the greatest player of all, I was just a new arrival. I had only scored a handful of goals, nowhere near what Kenny had achieved. There was no comparison: I still haven’t done anything to even get close to him and I felt a little embarrassed, but Dalglish immediately put me at ease. ‘You can only ever be a legend in someone’s mind. So long as you never become a legend in your own mind, there’s no problem,’ he said. ‘People want to pigeon-hole you, Fernando; they want to label you, rank you, judge you and compare you to others. But all that really matters is that you are yourself.’
Balagué reminded me that Kenny and I do have things in common: we’re both strikers, we’re both Pisces, we were both Liverpool’s record signing and, he said, we’re both capable of turning the Kop into ‘a frenzied hive of humanity’…more importantly, Liverpool unites us. As Guillem put it: ‘That’s what this club is all about. Players come and go, but the shirt and the continuity remain. Torres plays with Jamie Carragher, who played with Robbie Fowler, who played with John Barnes, who played with Ian Rush, who played with Dalglish. And Dalglish played with Emlyn Hughes, who played with Ian St John, who played with Roger Hunt, who played with Ronnie Moran, who played with…Well, you can keep it going all the way back to Malcolm McVean, the man who scored the first goal in Liverpool’s history in 1892.’
The other thing we have in common is goals. Dalglish told me that we’re the ones who make people’s dreams come true. The fans can’t play, so they live their dreams through us. Then Kenny revealed something that surprised me: ‘I always wanted to go on the Kop, but I never could,’ he said. ‘The only time I have ever been on the Kop is when the stadium has been empty. It’s funny, my son has been there but
