An Epic Swindle: 44 Months with a Pair of Cowboys

by Brian Reade

  ‘You always say you’re focused on that but usually give off-the-record answers to enquiries. How come it’s suddenly changed?’

  ‘No off-the-record stuff. Nothing. I’m just focused on training and coaching as always.’

  ‘You suggested you were open to the possibility of the England job. Is that something we should treat seriously?’

  ‘It’s your decision. You never know what will happen in the future.’

  ‘Were you serious when you answered it?’

  ‘I was serious.’

  ‘One day you’re looking to stay here a long time, the next you’re talking about the England job. That’s a contradiction.’

  ‘The future is the future. Now, as always, I am focused on training and coaching my team, so I cannot say anything else. Just to keep preparing for the next game.’

  ‘So what you’re saying suggests perhaps the future here is in question?’

  ‘I am focused on training and coaching my team.’

  ‘So who knows?’

  ‘As always I am focused on training and coaching my team.’

  ‘Are you being allowed to do that as you wish?’

  ‘I am focused on training and coaching my team.’

  ‘Does everyone at the club share that opinion?’

  ‘As always I am focused on training and coaching my team.’

  This time there was no collective apoplexy in America. If anything the performance played into their hands as they could use it as evidence of a disloyal and eccentric manager who was talking about taking the England job. The owners’ response was speedy, curt and questioning of Benitez’s professionalism: ‘We made a significant investment in the squad during the summer and desperately want this team to succeed. There are some very important games coming up and all of us need to focus on winning those games and getting the best out of the players we already have. We’ll leave any talk of buying or selling players until we come across to Liverpool in December and sit down with the manager.’

  Two days later, after Liverpool won 3–0 at Newcastle, they issued another joint statement, this time claiming they had ‘nothing to say’ about a report that Benitez was about to be sacked for his latest outburst, and replaced by Jose Mourinho.

  Ten months after Liverpudlians accepted Hicks and Gillett with open arms, the beast within was stirred. The rumour about them wanting Rafa out wasn’t a rumour but a fact, the gossip about Rafa having his hands tied over transfers was more than gossip, and the fears that these people were not what they seemed took hold.

  The press conference performance left Jamie Carragher gobsmacked: ‘I couldn’t believe it. I was getting text messages saying “wait until you see this on Sky”. I have to say at first I admired the manager’s balls. Not many people would attack their boss so openly. I thought it was funny, but then I thought, can’t you just do it in private?

  ‘The Americans are probably thinking “hang on we’ve just spent nearly £50 million and you’re moaning at us again for more money.”’

  At this point Carragher is beginning to tire of the constant bickering: ‘Everyone was trying to be too clever, playing politics with no regard for the damage they were doing to the club.

  ‘I thought the manager and owners mightn’t like each other, but can’t they just let us play football? You don’t want your manager at a press conference playing stupid games, by going on and on about concentrating on coaching and training. We know you’re not getting on but just leave it alone for the sake of the team.’

  To Carragher, the blame isn’t all one way: ‘I blame both Rafa and the owners for what was going on. Him saying things before a game like focus on coaching and them hitting back through briefings or in videos.

  ‘It was as though they were all playing their own games instead of worrying about the most important thing, which was Liverpool winning on a Saturday.’

  Before the game against Porto, three days after Hicks and Gillett refused to deny a story calling for Rafa’s head, 2,000 fans gathered outside the Sandon pub, the club’s birthplace, and marched the short distance to the ground in support of Benitez.

  It wasn’t an anti-American, Yanks Out rally, more a shot across their bows and a statement of loyalty to Benitez. A firm reminder of Bill Shankly’s philosophy that the manager manages and the men in the boardroom only get involved when it comes to writing the cheques. But underneath the politeness the anger was simmering away.

  The protestors handed out leaflets, one of which read: ‘We may not agree with some player selections or tactics but this man is the nearest we are ever going to get to Shanks or Sir Bob.’

  At the front of the march they carried the famous Rafa-Tollah, a gilt-framed photo of the Spaniard, and held banners pledging support for the man who had given them the best night of their lives. One had a Spanish flag painted on it, along with Benitez’s face superimposed on a picture of Che Guevara’s and the phrase ‘No Pasaran’. They shall not pass.

  Another proclaimed ‘En Rafa Confiamos’. In Rafa We Trust. Just in case the Americans’ grasp of Spanish was less than perfect there was one written in English but dripping pure Scouse: ‘You’re the Custodians. It’s Our Club. Rafa Stays.’

  The fans had been told by journalists that the situation was now becoming serious and that the club was engaged in a civil war which was only going to get more vicious as time went on. They were being urged to grab a stick and be prepared to draw a line in the sand.

  Before, during and after the game all sides of the ground echoed to the sound of ‘Rafa, Raf-ael, Raf-ael Benitez’ and the manager applauded all four stands before the game started. He couldn’t resist his own little shot at the board, jabbing his fingers towards the directors’ box then pointing it at the chanting fans. His first words to the media after the game, with the fans still singing ‘Rafa’s going nowhere’ in the streets and pubs around Anfield, were to thank them ‘with all my heart’.

  A few days later, when the enormity of the show of solidarity sank in, he would give his most generous assessment of the fans, and an insight into why, when things became increasingly tough for him over the coming years, he would never abandon them.

  ‘Where have you ever heard in your life, anywhere in football, this kind of support for a manager?’ Benitez asked reporters.

  ‘Both before the game, on the internet and during the game it was the same. Why? I am not Bill Shankly. I’m sure he was a fantastic motivator. I have just tried to be a good professional. What happened the other day was different class. Am I surprised? From the very beginning the fans have been good to me. I have enjoyed every day here. Some people have said to me because I was fighting for the club on different issues the people of Liverpool like this. The people here like fighters. Maybe that’s an area where there is a connection between us. It is a very, very powerful connection.’

  Benitez’s critics always claimed he was a lucky manager, abandoning Napoleon’s take on fortuitous generals, and using his luck as another club with which to beat him. There is no doubting the fact that when he needed to dig deep and pull off results which kept him alive he could. And so it was proving that November.

  Although they had rarely been outstanding in the League they went into December unbeaten and in sight of leaders Manchester United. The Kop was bouncing to the sight of a new goal-scoring legend, Fernando Torres, and they had managed to claw their way back to European survival by slaughtering Besiktas 8–0 and hammering Porto 4–1.

  Win in Marseille (which they did with ease) and, as far as the fans were concerned, it was panic over. That’s certainly what David Moores and Rick Parry thought heading out to the south of France on 11 December. Until George Gillett summoned them to his hotel suite and handed them a document to sign which blew away any pretence that Liverpool had been bought with family money. Their worst fears were confirmed and their fiercest critics proved correct. They had indeed sold the family silver to a pair of shysters.

  Gillett asked the pair to sign up to a whit
ewash procedure. Until the mid-eighties it was illegal to buy a company with that company’s money. But the law was relaxed in 1985 to permit leveraged buyouts allowing companies to be bought using money borrowed against it.

  A whitewash procedure (which was made illegal in October 2008) would have allowed Hicks and Gillett to move their acquisition debt directly on to Liverpool FC’s books, as long as all of their directors gave written guarantees stating that for the next twelve months they could repay all of their creditors. Moores and Parry felt Liverpool’s income was already being used to fund the Americans’ takeover, contrary to what they had stated at their initial Anfield press conference. So they refused point-blank and harsh words were spoken.

  Gillett became emotional and apologetic, blaming the credit crunch and asking them to see it his way. He reiterated that he fully intended not to put his debt on to the club but the banks had got the jitters and wanted greater security against their loans. He swore his intention had been to sell off other assets to repay the acquisition debts, but that wasn’t possible now, and the banks were demanding they use the club as collateral.

  Moores and Parry walked out in disgust and Gillett informed his absent partner. They would never attend a board meeting or be asked to approve anything again. Five days later, when Hicks turns up at Anfield for the Man United game and pivotal talks with Benitez, the two geared themselves up for a Texan toasting. But instead of being hauled through the boardroom window into the car park Hicks slowly sidled up to them in the directors’ suite and whispered: ‘I hear there’s a bit of a local issue with the debt.’ As the two nodded Hicks just laughed and walked away, saying nothing. Local issues and local people, 3,000 miles away from Dallas, meant little to Thomas Ollis Hicks.

  The United game was a downbeat affair, with a lone Tevez strike separating the sides. Talk before and after the game was of what would happen at the big clear-the-air powwow between Rafa and the owners. For the first time though, Hicks and Gillett sensed an apathy towards them, bordering on suspicion.

  When the PA announcer George Sephton told the crowd that one of Hicks’s sons had proposed to his girlfriend the day before in the centre of the pitch, and that she’d said yes, the glad tidings were hardly acknowledged.

  The meeting lasted three hours and was described as ‘meaningful, positive’ and other such press release phrases. Benitez said they patched up their differences, which he put down to communicating long-distance with people when his English is not the best. In reality Benitez had been told he had to sell before he could buy in January and that any further public outbursts aimed at undermining them would be dealt with severely.

  He asked if they’d spoken to Klinsmann and they told him that they had, but it had only been about consultancy work. It wasn’t their fault, they told Benitez, if others had mischievously put two and two together and arrived at five. That night Gillett spoke at the Former Players’ Association Christmas dinner and reassured them that Benitez’s position had never been under threat. ‘Rafa is the one we want as manager and we intend to keep him on,’ he said to prolonged applause.

  Former Liverpool striker John Aldridge attended the dinner and he was impressed: ‘At the time I thought, fair play to him, he’s turned up at the do, he might be a decent fella.’ Looking back, he views the evening in a different light.

  ‘He was playing us. Trying to flatter and impress us. He gave a speech saying he would back the manager and back us ex-players. He basically said what he thought we wanted to hear. In hindsight it was simply everything you’d expect from someone who conned the fans out of their hopes and dreams. My dad was a con man, honestly. And a brilliant one. But those two were in a different league. He’d have seen through them straight away, mind, because he could recognise others who were good at conning.

  ‘But I didn’t. I’d met Gillett and Hicks in the Anfield press box at one of the early games and although something was always ticking away in the back of my mind about them, I didn’t see through them the way my dad would have. But we wanted to believe them, didn’t we? Even though we sensed they knew nothing and cared nothing about Liverpool Football Club and were only turning up at Anfield every now and again to show their faces and sing “Walk On”. We needed the new stadium and we were just hoping and praying they would deliver it.’

  When Tony Barrett accepted the job of Liverpool FC correspondent on the Echo at the start of the 2007–8 season, he realised a lifetime ambition. As a staunch Kopite what could be a better way to earn a wage than reporting on the day-to-day happenings at a club you’d worshipped all of your life? The reality could not have been more different,

  ‘I can’t think of a job I could have done at that time which could have been harder because I was effectively reporting on a civil war. Usually when you get a new job you have to start from scratch and create your own contacts, but they were coming to me. Everyone, and I mean everyone: owners, directors, manager and players, were coming to me trying to get their side across.’

  The Klinsmann story first appeared in the Sun on 10 December, with a German source confirming he’d been approached. But because the Sun is as widely read on Mersey-side as Grouse Shooters’ Monthly, and has far less credibility, nobody paid any attention.

  The story wouldn’t go away though and the fans, who were trying to decipher the power struggle at their club, were looking for answers. By the middle of January, with speculation reaching fever pitch, Tony Barrett took it on himself to go straight to the top for the definitive answer:

  ‘I thought, “Why not directly ask Hicks the question?” because I was guessing he would be naive enough to go for it.

  ‘He’d built his career on image and spin and I think he believed that he was bulletproof. What his ego wouldn’t allow him to understand was that he was in a sport which he just didn’t get, and in a place like Liverpool which he certainly didn’t get.

  ‘So I rang and said, “Tom, there’s so much misinformation. The national press are saying you’re trying to get rid of Rafa Benitez, but I can’t believe that.”

  ‘He then went into a big speech. He was in the car on his way to his daughter’s volleyball match and we had this big conversation in which he admitted speaking to Klinsmann but only as an insurance policy in case Benitez left. And he added, by the way, it was George’s idea.

  ‘“By speaking about going to Real Madrid, Rafa was playing us,” he said, “and we had to do it.”’

  Barrett was now operating very nicely in cunning bastard mode: ‘I said, “Tom that’s perfectly understandable. If the manager’s messing you about you’re perfectly within your rights to speak to another one, and I think you should put that to the fans.”

  ‘And he went for it. The thing is he was going a bit deaf and he couldn’t understand what I was saying. Everything I said I had to repeat and he’d come back with “I love your Scouse accent” but he had his PR head fixed on so tightly I think he’d have said anything just to get me to like him.

  ‘“The fans need to know this, Tom”, I said. “Yeah, you’re right,” he replied. So I persuaded him to let me email back to him everything he’d just said and give me the OK.’

  Barrett turned his phone off and stared at it, struggling to comprehend what he’d just heard. He’d been told by one of the owners what both of them had been denying for months. That they tried to replace a manager who had been to two European Cup finals in three years with someone who had no experience of club management. Mid-season. As Barrett thought through the magnitude of his exclusive, it popped up in front of him, on his email inbox, approved by Hicks:

  In November, when it appeared we were in danger of not advancing in the Champions League, weren’t playing well in our Premier League matches, and Rafa and we were having communication issues over the January transfer window, George and I met with Jurgen Klinsmann to learn as much as we could about English and European football.

  He’s a very impressive man. We attempted to negotiate an option, as an insurance policy, to
have him become our manager in the event Rafa decided to leave our club for Real Madrid or other clubs that were rumored in the UK press, or in case our communication spiraled out of control for some reason.

  After George and I had our long and productive meeting with Rafa following the Man United match, we put all of our issues behind us and received Rafa’s commitment that he wanted to stay with Liverpool.

  We never reached agreement on an option with Jurgen, and we are both pleased for him that he has a great opportunity to return to Germany and coach a great club team. Rafa has both of our support, and our communication has greatly improved.

  Foster, Rick Parry and Rafa now have regular meetings at Melwood on Monday mornings. The two families always try to have a telephonic meeting on Monday afternoons, so we all are on the same page. We all want to win more games!

  p.s. We are learning how to bridge my Texan and your Scouser (and my half deaf hearing!) My family loves the Scouse accent … I’m the one that struggles. Hope we get everyone settled.

  Tony Barrett was hauled into work at six a.m. the next day and by lunchtime the Echo, bearing a front-page splash headline of ‘Hicks: We Lined Up Klinsmann’ hit the streets.

  Suddenly two Americans were less welcome in Liverpool than they would have been in Osama bin Laden’s Tora Bora cave.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Get out of our club, get out of our club, you lying bastards, get out of our club’

  – The Kop

  The Sandon is a big, unremarkable, working-class pub on a bleak, semi-derelict road. Unremarkable, that is, except for one remarkable fact. On 15 March 1892, in one of its snugs, Liverpool Football Club, the love-child of local fourteen-year-old floozie Everton, came screaming and kicking into the world.

  Back in those pre-Boer war days the Sandon was where the players would change into their knickerbockers, and directors and fans would take porter and ale before ambling to a patch of grass, a goalie’s clearance away, called Anfield. What better venue then, for the descendants of those moustachioed Victorian pioneers to gather 116 years later to formulate a way of reclaiming that same club?