Men in White Suits

by Simon Hughes

  Yet Berger owed his emergence to something that was completely beyond his control. He was sixteen years old when, in 1989, Communism collapsed in the old Czechoslovakia. He considers it fortunate that he was afforded opportunities that were not there for previous generations.

  ‘The world opened up,’ he explains, with a brooding gaze that surely could melt flesh. ‘The future was exciting. I knew I was living in a free country, a place where I was able to make choices. I was part of the first wave able to have fun. Perhaps that made me seem more rebellious. But surely it’s a natural reaction for a person used to being told what to do.’

  Berger was born in 1973 and raised in District 8 of the Czechoslovakian capital, Prague. It was a standardized existence. He lived in a featureless apartment block. Most people had similar furniture, clothes and aspirations. Like other families, the Bergers were consigned to a waiting list for a Trabant car. There was limited access to music and goods from abroad. In school, Berger was taught that the Soviets had saved his country from the tyranny of the West. Housing, jobs and healthcare were provided. But only if you accepted the system.

  Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the government’s emphasis on obedience, conformity and the preservation of the status quo was often challenged by individuals and organized groups seeking greater autonomy. Although only a few of their activities would have been deemed political by Western standards, the state viewed any independent action, no matter how innocuous, as defiance of the party’s control over all aspects of Czechoslovak life. Those who did not comply were not only intimidated and put under surveillance but also subject to house searches, during which the Secret Police invaded citizens’ privacy while searching for illegal literature. Bribes abounded; the presence of listening devices in homes prevented open speech; there were long lines at the shops; people were imprisoned for filing complaints or signing petitions. If a citizen defected, the family left behind was severely punished. Any person that met with a dissident was interrogated.

  Despite the harsh realities, Berger does not look back on his childhood as a struggle.

  ‘When you are young, you do not understand what it really means to live in a Communist state, because you are not really conscious of anything different,’ he says. ‘My parents tried to protect me so I didn’t see the bad stuff. I had friends, we played out on the street. I had everything I needed. I remember only a happy time. My parents gave me the very best they could give. We had holidays but only in Czechoslovakia. Some families went to Bulgaria or Poland – states that other Europeans did not want to visit. We did not have much choice. But we still had holidays. I did not know of a different way. Maybe that was comforting.’

  Berger wondered why he was not able to travel extensively, why he was not able to learn any foreign language other than Russian and, indeed, why he was only able to hear whispers about the achievements of football teams from other countries but never watch them on state television. At the time, though, this all seemed normal. His father would return home each day from his nine-to-five shift as a lorry driver for the local brewery, Prazan, while his mother worked hard teaching infants at a nearby primary school.

  ‘When people ask me what it was like growing up behind the Iron Curtain, most expect to hear stories about bread queues and the police raiding homes. They are usually disappointed when I explain the mundane daily routine.’

  Berger appreciates that older members of his family would speak less positively about the era than he does, having dealt with the privations for much longer.

  ‘The thing was, pretty much everybody had the same. There was not really a gap between rich people and poor people. The families were equal. I was happy. We were not poor; we were not rich. We had food on the table every day. It was ordinary. I cannot complain. I also appreciate that my parents might think differently because they had lived under tough conditions for their entire adult life.’

  His mother and father were children when, in the 1950s, Joseph Stalin directed the Czechoslovak Communists to carry out purges and the nation held the largest show trials in Eastern Europe. Over a five-year period, from 1949 to 1954, the victims included military leaders, Catholics, Jews, democratic politicians, those with wartime connections with the West, as well as high-ranking Communists. It spawned a society based on paranoia. Five years before Berger’s birth, an uprising had led to a brief period when the government of Czechoslovakia, led by Alexander Dubček, wanted to democratize and lessen the stranglehold Moscow had on the nation’s affairs. The Prague Spring ended with a Soviet invasion, the removal of Dubček as party leader and an end to reform within Czechoslovakia. It would be another twenty years before the Czechs had their independence.

  Berger remembers the euphoria of the Velvet Revolution. He remembers the masses of protesters huddled in Wenceslas Square, demanding change before being brutally dispersed. Hundreds were arrested. Thousands came back. Within four days, eight hundred thousand people were gathered in Prague’s city centre. Remarkably, an anti-government rally was screened on state television. Six months later, free elections took place for the first time since 1948. It all happened in a period when Berger’s football career was accelerating. He recognizes that history could not have unfolded more conveniently.

  ‘I grew up thinking that life began and ended in Czechoslovakia. Footballers were not allowed to play abroad unless they were thirty-three years old and had more than fifty international caps. For that achievement you were granted the privilege of movement. Yet few top European teams wanted to sign Czech players when their careers were almost over. They’d end up in countries like Switzerland or Austria, or the German second division. But because there was limited information about football in Germany or England, I did not think of any other place. I was not brought up on the legends of Beckenbauer or Dalglish, so my dream was to play in the Czech First League. That was it.’

  His ambitions broadened after travelling with Czechoslovakia’s under-16 side to the European Championships in the summer of 1990. Berger scored in the final: a 3–2 victory over Yugoslavia. The experience was an ‘awakening’.

  ‘The tournament was held in East Germany and, although the way of life there was very similar to home, it opened my eyes. For the first time, I was playing against teams from other countries: West Germany, France, Scotland and Portugal. The voices, the style of football was sometimes faster, sometimes slower. It was exciting.’

  Berger’s uncle Jan had followed a similar path: winning gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympics before being named Czechoslovak footballer of the year in 1984. In a different life, his performances in the centre of Sparta Prague’s midfield would probably have been enough to attract attention from more significant European clubs. Instead, aged thirty-one, he signed for FC Zürich.

  ‘Although he enjoyed his career, his story taught me to seize opportunities,’ Berger says. It goes some way to explaining why upon returning to Prague and finding his exploits would not automatically result in a promotion to the first team of his club Sparta, whose youth sides he’d represented since the age of six, drastic action was taken.

  ‘There were no contracts in Czechoslovakia under Communist rule,’ he explains. ‘When it collapsed, everything was changing and suddenly the clubs had to offer players professional deals under the new capitalist system. People were free to sign for whoever they wanted.

  ‘I was training with the first team but only being selected for the B team. It was very frustrating, so I did not sign the contract. My father went to the manager and asked him what his plans were for me. He saw me as a squad player amongst twenty-two others. There was no immediate commitment. I was desperate to play.’

  Slavia Prague were aware of his situation.

  ‘The manager, Vlastimil Petržela, came to my father and told him that he’d give me a chance straight away. He thought I was good enough. That gave me a lot of confidence, so I decided to go there. It was a big deal in the Czech Republic, because the Berger name carried a lot of weight and it was as
sociated with Sparta through my uncle. He was a big star. Everybody expected me to succeed him in midfield. I grew up supporting Sparta and all I wanted to do was play for them. But I got the impression they weren’t quite so keen. That made my decision.’

  Sparta had dominated the Czechoslovakian First League in the 1980s, winning six titles. Slavia had not recorded that feat since 1947. Although the league’s second most decorated club, even the city’s two other clubs, Dukla and Bohemians, had achieved greater domestic success in the years before Berger’s move.

  ‘I spent four years there and the run continued,’ he says ruefully. ‘We did not win a thing. Sparta were always ahead of us. But I don’t look on that as bad. Personally, I could have stayed at Sparta during that time and been a part of it all, celebrating in the background. I wanted to be playing. That’s all that mattered to me.’

  Petržela pushed a group of young players to the foreground. Berger, Vladimir Šmicer, Radek Bejbl and Pavel Kuka would all feature for the independent Czech Republic national team that reached the final of the 1996 European Championships.

  By then, Berger had done enough at Slavia to be spotted by the scouts of Borussia Dortmund and he moved to Germany in August 1995 for £500,000.

  ‘Dortmund was an unbelievable side: Matthias Sammer, Jürgen Kohler, Andreas Möller, Júlio César, players that were champions – six World Cup winners. They’d played in Italy, there was experience, know-how, guys that knew all the tricks.’

  Previously, Berger had played as an attacking midfielder or centre-forward. In Germany, coach Ottmar Hitzfeld used him as a screen for the defence.

  ‘Hitzfeld saw things very differently. He was a genius in terms of man-management. This was a squad full of huge egos, players with personalities and big opinions. Everybody thought they knew the right way. There were seven huge stars. But the manager always knew how to handle them so well. Ultimately, that was why we achieved success.

  ‘Players like Möller and Sammer, they would speak to the manager all the time. Do this, do that. Why do we have three training sessions today? They were asking questions constantly. Ottmar was having to listen to everybody. You could see that some of the things the players wanted to change were big and others were small. If they were small, Hitzfeld would bend a little. OK, if you’re tired, you can have a day off, guys. It made the players feel like they were important, as if they were able to have an influence. Really, though, it was always the manager’s call. If the changes were big, the manager would go his own way. He was dictating. He was very clever.

  ‘It made me realize that the best managers guide. At that top end, you are not teaching the players to play, are you? They are stars anyway, people who have won everything already. They know what to do, how it works. Even the training sessions, they were not very special. On the outside you think of a secret. What is going on in there? There must be something magical. The reality is, training was always basic, very simple. The most important thing was the man-management, having the dressing room on your side.’

  Berger helped Dortmund to the Bundesliga title, playing twenty-five games. Then his focus switched to the European Championships.

  ‘It was funny. I remember the last training session. I was running and Jürgen Kohler was alongside me. We were talking. “Hey, Patrik, what are you doing this summer – a holiday?” I told him that I was going to Euro 96. “What? You’re going to watch some games? How did you get tickets?”

  ‘“No, Jürgen,” I told him. “We’ve qualified and we’re in the same group as you.” I’m still not sure whether he was teasing me or whether it reflected what outsiders we were. Nobody expected us to do anything.’

  Berger was introduced as a half-time substitute when the Czechs met Germany in their opening match. By then, Germany had already opened up an unassailable two-goal lead. Few would have foreseen the same teams performing in the final a few weeks later.

  ‘We were huge underdogs. In the groups, we also had to play Italy and then Russia – a match of significance for bigger, more political reasons. Most of our players were still very young and playing in the domestic Czech Republic league. We were unknown. It was the last tournament before the Internet age. You couldn’t just go online and find out about us. You had to watch and learn. That helped us a lot. We had nothing to lose.’

  The success of the Czech team led to many of their players moving abroad. In the months after the tournament’s conclusion, Slavia Prague lost Jan Suchopárek to Strasbourg, Bejbl to Atlético Madrid, Šmicer to Lens and Pavel Nedveˇd to Lazio. Karel Poborský might have joined Berger at Liverpool but elected instead to join Manchester United.

  ‘For us to reach the final was like winning the tournament,’ Berger insists. ‘The Czech Republic had only achieved independence from Slovakia in 1993. We were a new country with a smaller pool. It meant that the manager had to look to youth, and players like me were given opportunities that might not have been there as a united Czechoslovakia. That was a strength because it generated camaraderie. We understood each other. We were very naive but had no fear. I remember playing against Belarus in the final qualifying game and we had to win. There were no nerves. I scored. We won.’

  Berger was told about Liverpool’s attempt to sign him by his agent before the Czechs’ last training session ahead of the final. After just one season with Dortmund, he appreciated it would be difficult to agree a release from his contract.

  ‘Dortmund had been great to me and it was not a pretty way to leave. As a footballer you sign a contract and if you are lucky there is a lot of money involved. But life is short and sometimes you might only have one opportunity. The clubs can be as ruthless as players. Sure, Dortmund wanted me then, but what about in a year’s time? Managers, owners, chairmen, they all change. Attitudes change. My childhood taught me that if you wanted something and were in the position to take it, you must do everything to make it happen. As a human being with the freedom to make choices, you owe it to yourself to exercise that privilege.’

  Berger was on the verge of going on strike to force the move through. In the end, he arrived at Anfield on the first day of August 1996 for £3.25 million. He was surprised by the ‘very basic’ nature of the club’s Melwood training facility.

  ‘It was behind in terms of the places I’d seen at other European clubs,’ he says. ‘I was a little bit shocked Liverpool should have it like this. Everything was old. The only thing that was up to date was the grass, which they cut every day.’

  Berger accepted that this was the way it had always been at Liverpool.

  ‘The club had achieved so much success, why change it? I spoke to the other players and that was clearly the idea that had been indoctrinated. I was young, new and had not mastered the language, so I thought it best not to ask any questions.’

  The spirit in the dressing room also surprised Berger.

  ‘It was a lot louder than in Dortmund, more joking, laughing,’ he continues. ‘A lot of us were the same age with similar attitudes. Stan [Collymore] was on his own, because I think the key players had figured out he wasn’t really interested in being with us. He did not want to make himself available to the group. I soon realized people on the outside saw young players with a lot of confidence and sharing an identity as a bad thing because we did not win trophies.’

  Berger admits that sometimes behaviour was stretched a little too far. He too fell into the trap. Berger was already married by the time he arrived in Liverpool. His wife was also expecting their first child. ‘The boys would go out but they respected the fact I wanted to be with my family most of the time. I trained hard and I went home to Southport, where I was very happy.’ But then he recalls the Christmas party of 1996, an event that led to Liverpool’s players appearing on the front pages of the tabloids after police were called to the Moat House Hotel on Paradise Street, a favourite haunt of the squad since the late 1970s when Bob Paisley introduced a nap to the pre-match routine. On this occasion, strippers were ordered and the drinks flowed.
It did not help that Merseyside Police headquarters was based just around the corner at Canning Place.

  ‘It was my intention just to have a few beers and go home. I remember telling Robbie Fowler that at the start of the night as he walked past. He just laughed.’

  Fowler tells a story about seeing Berger towards the end of the evening. ‘I was leaving the club and saw Paddy with a large brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, with him going, “I love your Ingleeesh parteees!”’

  Berger smiles at this suggestion. ‘If Robbie says that happened, it probably did. That was a rare night out for me. People might remember it.’

  Berger backs Fowler’s suggestion that only the stragglers remained by the time the police stormed through the doors. ‘It was harmless fun,’ he says. ‘All the players had departed by then, at 4 a.m. I am told there were some problems at the bar, so the hotel security called 999. Unfortunately, BBC Radio Merseyside was situated over the road and they figured out that something was going on, so the news spread quickly.’

  The following morning, the players emerged from their rooms blurry-eyed, hungover and still in their fancy dress. The press were waiting.

  ‘Even though none of us had anything to do with the problems, it confirmed everyone else’s belief that we were just a group of party animals, not serious about the football.’