by Simon Hughes
In 1984, all Robinson cared about was getting into the Liverpool team on a regular basis. Despite featuring mainly as a substitute, his memories from the period are fond.
‘Being a part of it was just brilliant,’ he says. ‘When we got through the semi-final, our options in the final were either Dundee United or Roma. I asked Graeme who he wanted, thinking with the greatest respect to Dundee that we’d batter them. It was potentially, and as it turned out to be, my only European final, so I hoped Dundee won. I wanted the easiest opposition. But Liverpool were in the business of collecting trophies, and Graeme had seen it all before. When I told Graeme about this, he looked at me like I’d just fallen out a fucking tree.
‘My nickname was Cat, because I always went in goal before training in the kickabout. “What are you going on about, Cat?” he replied, staring at me. “We’re the best team in the world. Nobody can fucking beat us; it’s impossible that we’ll go to Rome and get beaten.”’
In the meantime, Liverpool won the league, three points ahead of surprise runners-up Southampton. In between the final game of the season, a 1–1 draw against Norwich at Anfield, and the trip to Rome, the squad flew to Israel.
‘We played a friendly against the Israeli national team by arrangement of the famous Jewish super-agent Pini Zahavi and it was sponsored by Budweiser. It was supposed to help us acclimatise to the more humid weather in Rome. Instead, the trip was in essence a major piss-up, and Joe gave Graeme a wad of money to take us all out to forget about the final that was looming. By the time of the kick-off against the Israelis, everyone was steaming. I had a bottle of lager ten minutes before the start of the match – hair of the dog ’n all. [It worked, as Robinson scored the first in a 4–1 victory.] La Stampa, the Italian tabloid newspaper, was outraged by the way we were acting and followed us everywhere, taking pictures of the lads getting pissed up. We were out every night, swimming in the sea after a few. It was great. They wrote a lot of stories about us and compared us to the Italians, who were stuck in the Dolomites contemplating the game and getting wound up. I don’t think the Israelis saw the funny side either, because we were meant to be the great professional Liverpool, but instead we were acting like a gang of British holidaymakers.’
When the team boarded the flight to Rome, it was time to get back to work. For the fans, though, trouble was waiting on the streets of the Italian capital. Fewer than 15,000 Liverpudlians made the journey to Rome. In 1977, when Liverpool lifted their first European Cup in the Eternal City, double the number had travelled. Given that the previous victory over Borussia Mönchengladbach is widely accepted as the greatest night in the club’s history – and a night played out against the backdrop of the most historic city in the world – the dwindling number of travellers reflects how Thatcher stripped income levels on Merseyside during the ’80s. Given what happened, though, perhaps it was a blessing there weren’t 30,000 Scousers there this time around.
Upon arrival at Termini, the main train station in central Rome, Liverpool supporters were greeted by riot police laden with machine guns and CS gas. Roma were champions of Italy and, having not won a European trophy before, were expecting to lift their first on their own front lawn. Liverpool fans had questioned the logic of how necessary it was to hold a European Cup final on the home ground of one of the finalists, but UEFA didn’t care. ‘The canapés were ordered, the Pinot Grigio was on ice, the five-star hotel suites had been assigned and the club-class suites booked,’ as Brian Reade, a respected columnist for the Daily Mirror, noted.
While the Roma Ultras waited inside the Stadio Olympico burning Union Jack flags, Liverpool supporters were herded onto buses that headed straight to the stadium. Following on Vespas were hooligans with scarves across their faces, making slitting gestures across their throats. The entire city seethed with vitriol and hostility.
The players felt the wrath too.
‘The Italians tried to destroy our hotel from the ground,’ Robinson recalls. ‘On the morning of the game, there were bricks and glass all over the streets that had been thrown overnight, but we were well protected deep inside the complex in central Rome. It was like the Christians being fed to the lions. There were banners outside specially welcoming the English infidels. But it never crossed my mind that we’d lose. And we weren’t frightened of playing in front of their own crowd. We were brainwashed into believing we’d win.’
And Liverpool did win – on penalties. Souness was magnificent, and Robinson appeared as a substitute in extra time when a leg-weary Dalglish was taken off.
‘Graeme was a Trojan that night,’ Robinson remembers. ‘Every player on the pitch was in awe of him. He was brave and magnificent, and led the team like a warrior. Roma had Falcao and Cerezo – two fantastic Brazilian players in midfield. But I forgot they were playing, because of Graeme’s performance.’
While the Liverpool players celebrated inside and long into the night, Liverpool supporters struggled back towards the station for the long journey home. Again, they were greeted by hooligans outside the ground. On a Radio City press bus, one journalist helped a stabbed and bleeding supporter to a nearby hospital.
‘We had to wait for a few hours inside the dressing-rooms for the frenzy to die down,’ Robinson says. ‘It didn’t bother us because we’d just won the European Cup. But the Romans, it is fair to say, were not the most welcoming hosts.’
Winning the European Cup should have represented the zenith of Robinson’s Liverpool career. But there was a nagging doubt festering at the back of his mind.
‘I didn’t want to become cynical about the game or my passion for Liverpool. My dreams had come true when I signed for them, and I didn’t want it all to end. After winning in Rome, I sat with my wife next to Graeme and his missus, sipping champagne, thinking, “I’m finished.” I felt I’d lost something – even though we’d beaten Roma in their own back yard. It couldn’t get any better than this for me. In some ways it felt like the only way was down from here. I didn’t want to become an also-ran. I kept thinking that I needed to leave Liverpool before I became surplus to requirements. OK, we’d done the treble [the League Cup was collected in March over Everton, with Robinson looking on from the stands in a Maine Road replay] but, personally, I had an average season after a really dodgy start. I realised Liverpool never stood still and they were always considering how to improve. Maybe I’d be sacrificed.’
Six months later, after only another ten appearances, Robinson’s fears became a reality.
‘I had to live up to greatness, and I thought about that too much. I thought back about when I was a boy watching games from the Kop and idolising the players. Now, people were idolising the team I played for, and I struggled to deal with that. Was I worthy? It was impossible to strike a deal with Liverpool. Be there and be the best or go. The alternative was to rot in the reserves and pick up my money, but I’m not a businessman and football shouldn’t be a business.
‘Paul Walsh was coming in, and I figured that it was principally to replace me. Their criterion in signings was always spot-on. I thought I’d be condemned to be the reserve team. So I went and told Joe that I was uncertain of the future and he immediately offered me a two-year contract. I told Joe that it really wasn’t about that, and I spoke to him like he was my dad. He thanked me for being so honest but didn’t understand why I felt that way, although he respected it as well.’
Robinson received a call from his old boss, Alan Mullery – now at QPR.
‘The day before I went to speak to him, he got sacked, but I went down nonetheless and agreed the first deal I’d ever done in my life because of the money. It was my biggest mistake. I was unfair to QPR because I compared everything unjustly to Liverpool, when really I should have gone abroad. Before everything was completed, I called Joe Fagan to tell him about my plans. I was due to sign for them on the 27th of December and Joe said, “Well, you’re in the first-team squad on Boxing Day, and don’t forget I’ll give you another two years …”
‘
So I went to Anfield and picked my boots up in the Bootroom, because I wasn’t in the team. I walked away from the ground as all the fans were leaving, and I must have looked like a kid that had lost his first dog. I wept like a baby. It was so fucking painful. But I knew if I’d stayed I’d have become cynical about the team I’d loved, and it would have ended up breaking my heart in a different way. I just knew that I was never a great enough footballer or supremely professional enough footballer to become a Liverpool regular.’
Robinson lived on a Hyde Park estate during his time at QPR. But the move did not work out, prompting his retirement from international football also. He’d made his debut for Ireland in 1980 at Brighton under Eoin Hand. But with Jack Charlton now in charge, he stopped enjoying it.
‘Jack Flinstone [referring to Charlton] came along and had wonderful success born out of a prehistoric anarchy,’ he says. ‘He gave joy to all sorts of people, but I fell out with him. Basically, I disagreed with everything he ever said. He was a tad rustic. When you compare him to Bobby Charlton, all I can say is that it seems strange that someone from the same family could be so different in their approach to football and humanism.’
Robinson needed a fresh start, so he accepted an offer from Osasuna – a club he knew nothing about.
‘I had a frivolous image of Spain that included summer holidays, costas, drinking lots of cheap alcohol and chasing girls. But I also knew they were passionate about their football and they had these great teams called Real Madrid and Barcelona. When I first moved, it wasn’t a cultural choice. I only moved because I wanted to play football.’
Recalling the exact date he first landed at Bilbao Airport, Robinson continues after ordering a steaming espresso coffee.
‘I came over on 7 January 1987. I didn’t know whether I was going to be here forever. What I did know was that I was going to receive an education – an education that I wanted. But something strange happened. I enjoyed more or less everything about Spain and the way the Spanish interpreted life. I finished up realising that I had loads in common with the Spaniards. We laughed about the same things, cried about the same things, so much so that when I was 36 or 37 I said to my mum, “About 36 years ago, you didn’t bump into a Spaniard, did you?” She slapped me for that.’
Osasuna were second from bottom in La Liga when he arrived, and they lost 4–1 at Athletic Bilbao on his debut.
‘We were so bad that I said to my dad that they shouldn’t be signing me, they should be signing David Copperfield. What made it even stranger to me was that the club was run by Opus Dei, and when the bell rang before we went out to play everyone prayed to God. I didn’t realise this, and I said to my dad, “I tell you how bad we are – before we go out, we have to pray we don’t lose.” They still do that to this day. Pamplona is the most religious city in Spain.’
Despite initial fears, Osasuna managed to avoid relegation and finished respectably at the end of his first season. That summer, the club’s president then asked Robinson to do a special deed by recommending an English player they should recruit. Robinson suggested Sammy Lee.
‘He came on 13 July – the day before the end of the Fiesta de San Fermin, also known as the running of the bulls. The festival runs for around ten days, and most of the residents in Pamplona don’t go to sleep during that time. You get architects, lawyers and doctors – the pillars of society and mainly upright people – day in day out getting paralytic on booze. There are fireworks every day, and I remember as I drove Sammy into the city off the motorway we could see rockets exploding. Sammy couldn’t believe it. His first experience of Pamplona was 1.2 million people going bonkers. In fairness, it wasn’t a true representation of what Pamplona was really like. Sammy must have thought it was a really crazy place.’
The way Robinson talks about Pamplona, you would think he was an agent of the city’s tourist board.
‘Pamplona is a great city when you don’t know what is going on. I am very grateful to it because it was my port of entrance to Spain. It’s a difficult place because half of them feel Basque and the other half certainly don’t feel Basque, so you can’t speak about politics at all. That means you can’t really talk about football as well, because Real Madrid are the most popular team in Spain and are considered nationalist. It’s beautifully complex, because when you don’t understand what’s going on you don’t realise its quirky ways. But when you know what it’s about it becomes prohibitive. Then it becomes less of an easy place to live.’
Settled, Robinson began to genuinely enjoy his football for the first time in his career.
‘The autumn of my career all of a sudden became spring,’ he says. ‘It made me realise how unlucky I was as a footballer in England. All of a sudden, someone would have a shot and it would ricochet off my head and go in the top corner. This was strange for me. In my whole career, I was never under delusions of grandeur. When I was at Liverpool and I went in that dressing-room, I didn’t know whether to treat them as teammates or ask them for autographs. I don’t have any videos of me playing football because I didn’t like the way I played. I would never have paid to watch me play. Then, all of a sudden, I was a star.’
By the end of the summer of 1988, Robinson decided to play one final season before retiring. On a Good Friday fixture against Las Palmas, he scored both goals in a 2–0 win.
‘After the game, I walked out of the dressing-rooms and people were laying down palms for me to walk on. I couldn’t believe it.’ Better was to follow. Osasuna travelled to the Bernabéu to play Real Madrid on Bernd Schuster’s debut. Robín, as he had been christened by his teammates by now, was asked to room with a teenager who was due to make his debut. ‘The manager just wanted me to tuck him in and make sure he didn’t get panicked.’ During the night, the youngster suggested that Robinson should perform a special celebration, as it was likely to be his last game at the Bernabéu.
‘Whenever we were in the showers after training, I always used to pretend to be a bullfighter and use my towel as a prop. The whole squad used to shout “Olé, olé” when I moved from side to side. It was a bit homoerotic.’
After ten minutes, Robinson volleyed his side into an unexpected lead. Recreating the celebration in full view of a now half-empty restaurant, he performs the groove.
By the end of the game, the visitors had settled for a draw and with time to waste time the Osasuna manager, Pedro Mari Zabalza, decided to substitute the furthest player away from the dugout. It happened to be Robinson.
‘My number came up, number 9. Everyone was telling me to walk slowly, so I did, with my head down because my knee was hurting. All of a sudden, the whole of the Bernabéu started to clap. I felt embarrassed and started to trot. I reached the centre circle and the referee went, “Michael … saludo.” Then I realised they were applauding me. It was a standing ovation and I walked off the pitch crying my eyes out. They did it because of the celebration. The Spanish media couldn’t get their head around the fact that an Englishman had come and played for an unfashionable team, then scored a goal and in the centre of the Bernabéu done this celebration of a traditional bullfighter.’
Robinson never considered management, although he was approached in the mid ’90s by Atletico Madrid’s rabble-rousing former president Jesús Gil y Gil. After Robinson rejected his offer to be Radomir Antic’s assistant, Gil concluded the conversation by calling him a ‘fucking tart’. Instead, important breaks followed after his retirement: Robinson commentated on the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
‘For the first time I saw football and it had nowt to do with the pitch,’ he says. ‘It was about people arriving in Italy from all over the world with painted faces, sleeping on pavements, jumping in fountains. I’d never really seen fans – as a footballer you are isolated – and it was like opening Pandora’s box. But there weren’t snakes and reptiles in there; it was beautiful. If I had been aware when I played of what football meant to people, I wouldn’t have been able to tie my fucking boots up because of the responsibility.’
It was an education that underpinned the show Robinson was asked to present on Spanish television, El Día Después.
‘I couldn’t believe it when they asked me,’ he says. ‘I only had 100 words in Spanish and most were expletives. They told me that was the least of their worries.’
El Día Después was written, directed and presented by Robinson. ‘It was as if I had been given a blank canvas to play with all the paints and all the brushes that I wanted and create something completely out of my own imagination. I felt like I was a kid and been locked in Toys R Us and everybody had gone out.’
The show was a universe away from the way football is covered in Britain. Despite being a former player, Robinson had told me in the past that he considers himself to be a journalist who wants to ‘invade living rooms’. He resents the way sports broadcasting, and that of football in particular, has been ‘hijacked by ex-pros’ in other countries, mainly England.
‘There is a screaming necessity for journalists to challenge the ex-footballers. They chat with a certain vernacular, whereby they all relax: Lineker, Hansen, Lawro and the rest. Alan thinks every goal is a defensive error because you can stop a tape anywhere and find a mistake. Then Lineker and Lawrenson just agree. It’s all happy families. Alan and Lawro know I think that because I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s nothing personal, but it’s quite sad that they’re not challenged.’
Robinson, who has been the player most generous with his time in the production of this book, could genuinely talk all day and all night about football, politics and social issues. By now, the pianist is looking at us as the only people left in the restaurant while playing a tune that sounds like music to the closing credits of Custer’s Last Stand.
While I am due at the Calderón for Atletico Madrid v Osasuna later this evening, where I will still be suitably oiled following this predominantly liquid-based lunch, Robinson heads back to his villa just outside Madrid on a road that leads to the distant northern barrack town of Burgos. I’ve been there before on a past press trip and it’s an elegant piece of land, resting on the edge of an exclusive golfing resort.