People talk about Kenny being the greatest Liverpool footballer of all time. He probably is. But you know what, he is the greatest man who has ever played for Liverpool Football Club. There is no shadow of a doubt about that. To be involved with him was just a huge honour. He was brilliant to play for.
He had such a calming influence over everyone at the club. He was just The King. He was a true man. The humility he shows constantly on a daily basis to everyone was overwhelming. When I say ‘everyone’, I don’t just mean the players. I mean all the employees of the club. The impression you get of him on the television, defensive and monosyllabic, is the exact opposite of what he is like when the camera is turned off.
We started the 2011-12 season reasonably well without being outstanding. We were inconsistent. We had a good win at Arsenal but we were heavily beaten by Spurs. We drew matches we should have won. I didn’t start that many matches. In fact, my best spell was around Christmas and the New Year when Luis Suarez was banned after he was accused of racially abusing Patrice Evra during the Liverpool-Manchester United match at Anfield on October 15.
I was on the bench for that game against United. I didn’t have a clue what had happened. There’s no reason why I would. The referee came in after the game and I saw him speaking to Kenny and Luis but I had no way of knowing what had happened. All I knew was that Liverpool often seem to get a raw deal from the authorities and that Manchester United wield an awful lot of power.
I liked Luis. He was an incredible player and a lovely guy. He trained hard and he worked relentlessly during matches. People talk about him diving but he took a hell of a lot of punishment, too. He would take his socks off after a game and his calves and his ankles would be black and blue from where he had been kicked. He was a brilliant professional.
Luis was accused of calling Evra ‘negro’ during the match against United. I’d heard that used before. The first time was when Nolberto Solano was speaking to Lomana LuaLua at Newcastle.
I pulled him up on it straight away.
“You can’t say that,” I said to Solano.
Nobby looked surprised.
“Why?” he said. “He’s my black friend.”
I heard Luis using the same term when he was speaking to Glen Johnson, Liverpool’s right-back, too. Johnno certainly didn’t take any offence and he speaks fluent Spanish, too. He knows a little bit about the culture. I didn’t really see what the difference was between that and what Luis was alleged to have said to Evra.
Some people said it was all about the context. If it was said in an angry way, it took on a different meaning. It all got very complicated.
Liverpool closed ranks. I was 32 and I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to get involved. I had enough troubles of my own. I liked Luis. I certainly knew he wasn’t racist. The other players in that squad knew he wasn’t racist. I knew because of the way he interacted with the black players in our squad and the way they interacted with him.
I stayed out of it. Five days before Christmas, Luis was banned for eight games and fined £40,000 by the FA over the Evra incident. The next evening, we played Wigan at the DW Stadium and in the warm-up before the match, we all wore t-shirts with an image of Luis on the front to show our support for him. Kenny got a lot of criticism for that but we all wanted to do it.
I was happy to wear it. I wouldn’t have worn one if I thought Luis was a racist but I knew he wasn’t. And I thought the ban he had been given was harsh. I thought he’d been set up, actually. I think most of the players felt aggrieved about the way he and the club had been treated. If it was a Manchester United player, I think it would all have turned out very differently.
Luis was banned when we played the first leg of our Carling Cup semi-final against Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium in the middle of January. It was a loaded game for me but even though I wasn’t on great terms with Roberto Mancini, I really didn’t feel any great desire for personal revenge or anything like that. I had a great deal of respect for the club and especially for the City fans. I certainly didn’t harbour any bitterness towards them. I felt a bit calmer about things.
The news about Speedo had hit me incredibly hard at the end of November. Some time after his death, I went home to Cardiff for a couple of days. Those days are just a blur. I can’t remember what it was like. I wish I could tell you that I was comforted by my wife or my family but I don’t know. Then I went up to Speedo’s house. I knew Ed was a big Liverpool fan and I wondered if taking both the boys into Melwood might give them a tiny bit of relief from what they were going through. They were all smiles about that so I took them and Speedo’s dad into training with me.
You know when you take people to Melwood that you are taking them into the greatest club in the world. Moments like that make you realise why. The boys were greeted with open arms by every single person at that club. They had kits and boots lined up for them. Kenny was there waiting for them. That’s Liverpool Football Club. I have always been proud to support them but that day was the best.
The days went on and I still found it very difficult to come to terms with what had happened. I was haunted by what I heard people saying about Speedo, about how it was sometimes difficult to get a conversation out of him, about how he didn’t have very many close friends, about how he would shut himself off, about how most people didn’t really know what he was like. I was haunted by it because it sounded like they were talking about me.
I started to feel afraid. What’s going to happen to me in a few years’ time? My personal life is gone, my marriage is basically over, I am extremely unhappy. What am I going to do when I stop playing football? Who am I going to be? There were so many questions left unanswered.
While I was in this state of mind, Liverpool’s club doctor, Zaf Iqbal, approached me. He told me I needed to see someone. For the first time, my guard was down. I knew he was right. I agreed. He recommended Steve Peters, a psychiatrist who was working with Britain’s Olympic cycling team. And when I sat down with him, not one single person in this world has ever made more sense to me than him.
Steve took a lot of the anger out of me. All the bullshit about getting back at people was gone. So I felt like I didn’t have anything to prove to anybody at Man City. They knew I was a good player. I got on well with the lads there, too. I had good relationships with Nigel de Jong, Carlos Tevez and Micah Richards. They held me in high esteem and I did the same with them. I wanted to enjoy the matches against them. Over two legs the best team would go through. Whatever would be, would be.
We won the first leg at the Etihad 1-0 with a Steven Gerrard penalty. I felt confident after that. For them to get to the final, they would have to beat us at Anfield on a midweek night in front of a packed house. It was going to take a performance from Man City that would have to be out of this world. And if they were capable of that, then they would deserve to go to the final.
Nigel de Jong put them ahead after half an hour and we equalised with another Gerrard penalty just before half-time. Edin Dzeko put them 2-1 up midway through the second half but then 15 minutes from the end, Glen Johnson and I exchanged passes in front of the Kop end and I darted into the area and slid the ball past Joe Hart into the corner of the net. City couldn’t score again. We were through.
And so I had scored the goal that had given this incredible club that I loved so much the opportunity to go back to Wembley for the first time since 1996. Kenny brought me off two minutes from the end and even the Man City fans applauded me. I loved them for that. City were class, actually. The players I’d played with came up to me at the final whistle and hugged me. I shook Mancini’s hand and wished him all the best in their bid to win the league title.
I wanted them to win that but I knew I had a chance now to lift a trophy with Liverpool. A trophy with Liverpool with Kenny Dalglish as your manager. That was why I played the game. It was why I wanted to be involved in the game. It was a wonderful night. I also felt calm. I had things in perspective. Speedo’s kids were at the game
. Stevie G lent me his box and the kids and Gary’s father came.
There was something else special about reaching the final. We already knew who we would be playing: Cardiff City. I had never played against Cardiff before and I had never wanted to. I didn’t want to upset people at home. I didn’t want people to feel I was trying to beat Cardiff. I had never felt comfortable with the idea of putting myself through that. But there was no way around it this time. It was the final.
I spoke to Steve Peters the night before the game. On the morning of the match, I found myself looking at pictures of Speedo as I sat in my hotel room at The Grove. His kids were going to be at Wembley too. I made sure all the people who had been there for me had tickets. People like Andy Williams, the knee surgeon, and Garry Cook, City’s former chief executive, who had been forced out of the club by then. I was going to make sure I enjoyed the day. I wanted to win the trophy but I was prepared to lose as well. And if Cardiff won, that would be fine.
Kenny named the team and I wasn’t in it. I was surprised but I wasn’t down. I would have loved to start because I thought the game would have been made for me and Luis up front but I was happy to be involved. I knew I would be coming on, too.
Before the match, the manager showed us a short film that illustrated what Wembley meant to Liverpool and what it meant to the club being back there. I sat there watching Shankly talking and Kenny scoring that magnificent winner against Bruges in the 1978 European Cup final. And I thought about all my years of growing up and wanting to be part of this club. When the film ended, there were tears in my eyes.
Twenty minutes in, we went a goal down against the run of play. But we dominated the game and Kenny brought me on for Jordan Henderson 13 minutes into the second half. It was nothing to do with me but two minutes later we drew level when Martin Skrtel scored from a corner. The game went to extra-time and Dirk Kuyt put us ahead with 12 minutes left. It looked like it was over because Cardiff were exhausted but in the last few minutes, they pinned us in our own half.
They missed one great chance when Dirk cleared off the line but the ball went for a corner. Peter Whittingham bent a brilliant delivery into the box and Ben Turner scored. Credit to them. There is even a picture of me smiling after they had scored. I admired their refusal to give up.
So it went to penalties. Kevin Keen had asked me if I wanted to take one of our five and I said ‘yes’. Then I thought about it. I didn’t want to score a pen to win a trophy for Liverpool but cost Cardiff the chance of winning one. But I didn’t want to miss a penalty and be responsible for one of Cardiff’s greatest moments. For the first time in my life, I asked to be left out of it. I think they put me down for number six or seven.
I wasn’t needed. We missed our first two penalties but scored the next three. That meant that Steven Gerrard’s cousin, Anthony, had to score Cardiff’s fifth penalty to keep their hopes alive. He put it low to Pepe Reina’s right but it went wide. The trophy was ours. Most of the lads sprinted over to leap on Pepe. I didn’t go with them. I went to see the Cardiff players straight away. I congratulated them and Malky Mackay. It was a good moment for me but I had been playing with those players the previous year and I was proud of the guts they showed that day at Wembley. I had so much respect for them.
Even when we lifted the trophy, I was speaking to the Cardiff owners. If you look, I’m not even in the team celebration photo. I was speaking to the Cardiff physios and players. I was sharing the moment with them. I had got my trophy. This was what I’d chased all my career. I was happy but I was happy before. I just didn’t know it.
I had other things to think about as well. I knew that the problems I had been having with my marriage were now beyond repair. When the adrenaline stopped, I went up to see my wife and kids in the area where the families had been watching. This was going to be the last time. My wife was happy for me but I knew there must have been part of her that felt exasperated, too. ‘You’ve chased this your whole career and now you’ve got it,’ I imagined her thinking. I knew my marriage was over by then.
I went back to Cardiff with her after the game and we didn’t really talk on the way home. There was nothing more to say. Once you have been 18 years with each other, you separate, then there’s an in-between where you can’t live with them but you can’t live without them, then there’s divorce. It was a lot for us both to adjust to. Because of the work I’d done with Steve Peters, I’d suddenly become a nice guy. She didn’t want nice. She needed to hate me. So she resented me even more.
The following Wednesday, I captained Wales for the Gary Speed Memorial game against Costa Rica at the Cardiff City Stadium. How do you prepare for a game like that? The last time I prepared for a Wales match, Speedo was in charge. The whole thing was weird in a macabre way. It was Chris Coleman’s first match in charge of Wales. It wasn’t exactly an upbeat way to begin.
Everybody, players and fans, wanted to pay their tributes to Speedo but no one really knew what to say. Don’t forget, this was a group of Wales players who had been given absolutely no support by the Welsh FA in the wake of Speedo’s death. No one ever checked on us or asked how we were dealing with things. No one asked any of us how we thought the succession should be dealt with. No one asked us what we thought the most sensitive way to proceed might be.
This was a group of players who had been through a terrible trauma and I found the Welsh FA’s insensitivity strange. They didn’t seem to understand that a tragedy like that heightens players’ loyalty to the regime Speedo had represented. We didn’t want all the work he had done to be wasted. We wanted it to be nurtured. I think we probably felt that was a good way of respecting his memory. Most of us wanted Raymond Verheijen and Osian Roberts, Speedo’s assistants, to retain senior roles in the set-up.
To his credit, Aaron Ramsey spoke out about it. “We don’t want to be taking a backward step again, having a big change and players not wanting to turn up and play for their country,” he said. “At the moment everybody wants to play, everybody is reporting for international duty and enjoying themselves. We just want as little change as possible; we had great results in the last few games and the team was playing full of confidence.”
Judging by what happened, it seemed that the Welsh FA hunted him over that. At least he had the courage to say what he had to say. I tell you what, Speedo would have been proud of him for that. That’s what Speedo would have done, too. He would have said the right thing and he would have said the honest thing.
The truth was it was our first time together as a squad since Speedo’s death and we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know how to act. We didn’t know whether to try to treat it as a celebration of his life or to mourn. His two boys stood with me in the line-up before the game because I was captain for the day in Rambo’s absence. They were incredibly brave. They inspired the rest of us.
I didn’t want to play. I don’t think any player did. The fans wanted to show their respect and we had to be there for them. Part of you feels you have to go and put on a show but it wasn’t like that. It was just a sad occasion. We lost 1-0 and then everybody limped home. When I got back to Liverpool, I was emotionally drained. Won my first trophy, played in a memorial game for one of my best mates, marriage over.
The breakdown of my marriage had started to take a heavier and heavier toll on me. I struggled to sleep the night before games. Even with sleeping tablets. I couldn’t block it out any more. I spent more and more time talking to Steve Peters. I was using him more than Ronnie O’Sullivan was, which is saying something.
I missed games through injuries that I’m convinced were caused because of the fatigue brought on by my sleeplessness.
But Liverpool still had big games to play that season. We were struggling to make any real impact in the Premier League but we had one trophy under our belt already and now we were going for the FA Cup, too. We beat Stoke at Anfield in the quarter-finals in mid-March and drew Everton in the semis.
Everton were ahead of us in the league
by the time the match came around in April and their fans convinced themselves this was the occasion when they were going to get one over on us. There was a lot of talk that there was finally going to be a shift in the balance of power on Merseyside and that Everton were ready to take over the leading role.
What drove me on was not just pride in the club but seeing the nerves that were afflicting Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard. I told Carra he was one of my heroes and there was no way I was going to let him lose. We got the train down to London and I sat at the same table as them. They were petrified by the thought of losing to Everton.
I knew we would be all right. I started on the bench again so I was watching when a mix-up between Carra and Daniel Agger let in Nikica Jelavic to put Everton ahead midway through the first half. Poor Carra must have thought all his nightmares were coming true at that point.
But Everton conjured a defensive mistake of their own in the second half when Sylvain Distin left a backpass short and Suarez ran on to it and clipped it past Tim Howard. Kenny brought me on for Stewart Downing with six minutes to go and I could sense Everton had gone. They were out on their feet and before long they had conceded a free-kick on the touchline level with the edge of their area.
I had only been on for three minutes. I bent the free-kick in and Andy Carroll glanced it in. There were a few minutes of injury time but Everton didn’t threaten us at all. When the final whistle went, I looked for Carra straight away. I couldn’t see him at first. Then I discovered why. He was on his hands and knees on the floor. It was relief that had felled him more than anything, I think. Sheer relief. I ran over to him and gave him a pat on the back. He looked up at me.
“Thank fuck for that,” he said.
My wife wasn’t there this time. My eldest boy, Ellis, was there. He always has been. But I didn’t go back to Cardiff this time. I flew back to Liverpool with the team. I didn’t fancy going back to an empty flat on my own and Carra was going straight from Liverpool airport to his local pub in Bootle. He was ready to celebrate. He said if we had lost that day, everything he had achieved in his Liverpool career would have been thrown out of the window. People would always have reminded him of that defeat.
Craig Bellamy - GoodFella Page 29