The last time I spoke to Gerard Houllier, his memory was as sharp as ever.
Barely two months ago, I decided to write about Nick Barmby’s move from Everton to Liverpool. Naturally, I wanted to speak to the manager that instigated the deal.
From his home in the outskirts of Paris, Houllier picked up the phone. It was early-ish one morning and he sounded a bit tired. The conversation started slowly but suddenly, the pace changed.
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Houllier had given Liverpool a psychological advantage over Everton during his time as manager and I wondered whether that started with the signing of Barmby — Everton’s best player.
His record in the Merseyside derby was excellent and he remains the only manager in Liverpool’s history to guide the club to four victories at Goodison Park.
I started a sentence by saying something like, “You took charge of Liverpool in 11 derbies…”
Houllier was onto me. “I think you will find it was 12…”
I laughed, and he sort of did, but you could tell the record mattered to him. Even though he was a joint-manager with Roy Evans in the forgotten 12th game and it was a 0-0 draw, Houllier cared about details.
The Barmby part of the conversation lasted for twenty minutes or so and I was ready to go but he wanted to carry on, asking about Liverpool. He loved Liverpool, the club. He loved Liverpool, the city. His appetite for knowledge was still there.
When I found out he’d passed away this morning, I thought back to the last time we met. He had been a formidable manager for Liverpool, helping the club re-establish itself as a European giant. In that process, he had intercepted fatalism and made supporters dream of the impossible again. Yet he was also ultimately a thoroughly nice man, helpful and generous with his time.
It was 2015 and I travelled to France for an interview that would form part of a book I was working on…
A navy-coloured Mercedes Benz crawls down Rue de Rivoli at rush hour, skirting the edge of the Marais district in Paris. The classy-looking saloon halts suddenly and a person springs out, waving his hands, beckoning me across the busy thoroughfare as fierce midsummer sun beats down on his shaven head.
My lift is Gerard Houllier. The person waving his hands is his chauffeur. Xavier Perez is wearing a crisply ironed white shirt from Ralph Lauren, a black tie and black suit trousers. His cufflinks are golden and their reflection glints in the wing mirror of his vehicle.
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“Meet Xavier…” Houllier says, before introducing himself. It turns out that Perez had been a goalkeeper for Red Star in the 1980s when they were the third team in the French capital behind Paris Saint-Germain and Racing Club. “I know he has safe hands as a driver,” jokes Houllier, who might be 68 but has a work life that remains unrelenting even though he retired from management five years earlier, hence the need for Xavier, who takes the edge off travelling by effortlessly steering him around Europe with all the smoothness of Alain Prost.
Preparations for this interview afforded me an insight into Houllier’s schedule. On Wednesday morning, he was in New York on business, consulting for Red Bull’s football teams, and by early evening he had arrived in Rennes, northern France, for a Leaders’ in Football conference where he wisely informed attendees that “athletes of the future need more freedoms — but need to accept greater responsibility”.
It was very generous of Houllier to agree to meet me when he did. It was planned for the Friday at 10 am but when I called him upon landing at Charles de Gaulle the afternoon before to finalise the arrangement, he suggested we convene immediately — despite the arduous journeys he’d undertaken in the previous forty-eight hours.
“I will see you in sixty minutes,” he informed me moments after I emerged from passport control. It was the second hottest day of the year in Paris. The carriages on the Metro were sweaty and the tracks below hideously dry. Services were disrupted. I arrived at my hotel seventy minutes later in a panic. As Liverpool’s manager, Houllier was a stickler for punctuality as well as appearance. I suspected that when he suggests a time — considering how valuable it is to him — he really means it.
Houllier is sympathetic towards my logistical anxieties when I hurriedly explain what has happened, flicking his hand to brush away my explanations with marvellous indifference. Relief washes over me like a cool wave. He is parked in the passenger seat, discussing in French with Xavier the more pressing issue of arranging an appropriate site for our sit-down.
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Houllier turns slowly to me: “So you know Carra?” he asks, the expensive leather upholstery creasing as he moves. It is only now I see his face fully. He looks healthy. His forehead is line-free and freckled, his hair swept back and reasonably dark, arms tanned. The sleeves on his spotty Lacoste shirt are rolled up.
I nod in reaction to his question. “Carra: a fantastic person,” he says emphatically, as though it is a fact rather than an opinion. There is a pause, which suggests that inwardly he might be thinking of the good times at Liverpool. I fill the void by speculating whether Jamie Carragher will ever become a manager, like Houllier, reasoning that he seems to enjoy working in the media. Houllier readjusts himself, sitting forward again, staring into the middle distance, arms folded. There is another long break. “He should try,” he says, with what sounds like a tinge of hope beneath the words. “Carra should try.”
It feels appropriate that we are navigating the Rue de Rivoli, a stately boulevard that bears the name of Napoleon’s victory over the Austrian army in 1797. France’s greatest leader later declared that “glory is fleeting but obscurity is for ever”, and it is a statement that can be applied to Houllier’s career, certainly as Liverpool’s manager. It is easy to forget just how successful and just how uncompromising Liverpool were under his guidance.
So easy, in fact, that on a banner that used to be unfurled across the Kop grandstand, there was one notable absentee. The flag read “Success has many fathers” and contained images of managers who have won trophies in the last fifty-five years. There was Bill Shankly. There was Bob Paisley. There was Joe Fagan. There was Kenny Dalglish. There was also Rafael Benitez. But there was no Gerard Houllier — despite the fact he added more silverware to Liverpool’s trophy cabinet than any manager in the previous two and a half decades.
Houllier’s status amongst Liverpool supporters is, indeed, a peculiar one. He led Liverpool to the League Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup in 2001, as well as to the quarter-finals of the Champions League and second place in the Premier League the following year despite the season being disrupted for him personally by ill health. Suffering from chest pains at half-time of a crucial league fixture with Leeds United, Houllier was rushed to Broadgreen Hospital before undergoing an emergency eleven-hour heart bypass operation. Signed off work by doctors for a year, he returned to management in five months, but things would never be the same again. In the next two seasons, he bought badly and, together with what were perceived to be overly cautious tactics, the adoration towards him steadily eroded. When Benitez was appointed as Houllier’s replacement in June 2004, the change was welcomed.
Returning to the present, we are approaching La Louvre, probably the most famous museum in the world. Xavier turns sharply to the right and drops us off on the Rue de L’Echelle, a street of high-end fashion shops and hair salons. Houllier knows one of the proprietors and after a brief conversation with the middle-aged man dressed solely in linen and possessing majestic silver hair, we arrive at the Hotel Normandy through its bar entrance. The venue is brilliantly raffish and perfectly French.
Before leaving us, Houllier’s friend whips out a Sunday newspaper magazine supplement. The weekend before, it had featured an interview with Michel Platini, which took place at the same venue. Houllier seems proud to tell me this. “Michel …” he says, whispering as if it were a secret that he was here, “… is still God.”
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The Normandy is the type of hotel that could feature in an espionage movie where members of the French Resistance design the downfall of their captors. Or maybe it could be used for a gangster epic about the rise and fall of Jacques Mesrine. I imagine Gerard Depardieu as the criminal overlord peering between the blinds of this quiet setting, wondering who might come for him next.
In this instance, a shard of daylight cuts across the otherwise dim room, which is furnished with oxblood-stained leather couches and mahogany tables, and has a burgundy-painted ceiling. Huge oak doors are left open, so a velvet curtain separates inside from out, and a faintly stale smell of tobacco from a different era hangs in the air.
Next to a piano, a hostess trolley has today’s issues of L’Equipe and Le Figaro, while from behind a small horseshoe-shaped bar a Moroccan waiter named Farid serves healthy measures of Pernod-Ricard and Campari to a couple of portly local men. Anticipating Houllier might like some wine, I ask for a glass of Sauvignon but instead he has a bottle of Evian in a schooner with lime, explaining that he is entertaining his wife Isabelle this evening, having not seen her in eight days.
When speaking of the moment he resigned from Liverpool, allowing Houllier to manage the club alone following five difficult months in a joint role, Roy Evans described his counterpart as “far cuter than me”, nevertheless admitting that maybe Houllier had the tools to advance Liverpool whereas he, ultimately, did not. The next few hours are proof that Houllier is an incredibly intelligent person. He is multilingual, able to switch between languages seamlessly — never to be found searching for the right words and consistently appreciating nuances. He is also passionate, emotional and brooding. To term him as knowledgeable feels like an understatement. His obsession with football — he calls it a “virus” — irradiates the fug of the Normandy. He speaks with the authority of a lecturer in a university hall.
Rather than waiting for a question to be asked, Houllier moves quickly to remind me about the achievements of the team that he built.
“You see, many people appreciate entertainment, but they do not understand pleasure,” he says thoughtfully. “Life is not just about aesthetics, the arts. It is about foundations and creating something that can last a lifetime. In football, a lifetime is only very short. You have a cycle of three years, then you change, develop and grow again.
“The most important compliment I had was from David Moores after we won the UEFA Cup in 2001,” he continues. “David said, ‘Gerard, you have put Liverpool back on the European map. You have also hauled the club into the twenty-first century.’ When I look back, that’s exactly what happened. I think winning the UEFA Cup helped the players believe they could win the Champions League in 2005. They were able to draw on experiences from before. It gave them the appetite and the confidence to compete with the best teams in the world. Before, Liverpool would lose to Strasbourg.”
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He moves on to a story from the player he appointed as Liverpool’s captain, a platform that enabled him to become a legend.
“Steven Gerrard told me that he believed the experience of winning the UEFA Cup four years earlier helped Liverpool win the Champions League in 2005. And this is the point. The word help is important. In football, there are always claims that person A or person B was solely responsible for achieving something. Football regularly becomes about the individual. But success is not achieved without a team. It is not achieved without help.
“I would say we changed a lot of things towards the end of the nineties that were very important to the long-term future of Liverpool. David came to see me in Paris, along with Rick Parry and Peter Robinson. They wanted me to join Liverpool for one particular reason. They told me that the club needed to change but it also needed to rediscover the culture of winning trophies — silverware. Rick, particularly, was very clear about that.
“We changed the habits in terms of the way the team prepared and practised. We brought a different attitude to training, demanding that the players looked after themselves in terms of diet. I personally think we also signed a group of players that went on to play together for a long time: players from different countries, different leagues and different attitudes — probably more in tune with what was happening elsewhere in football. This is not a criticism of what happened previously. But sometimes you need to change to evolve.”
Before Houllier, time stood still at Liverpool for nearly forty years. Players would come and go but the methodology remained fundamentally the same as the baton was passed on to different managers. Success meant there was no desire for adjustment. When Graeme Souness, a former European Cup-winning captain with Liverpool, was appointed as Kenny Dalglish’s successor in 1991 following unparalleled success at Glasgow Rangers, where he oversaw the modernisation of Ibrox, the training ground, diets and squad routines, he met fierce resistance amongst the Liverpool players when he tried to introduce the same ideas at Melwood.
Houllier believes had it not been for Souness’s reign, considered disastrous by most supporters, he would not have been in a position to “help” Liverpool towards the end of the decade.
“As a player, I loved Graeme Souness; he was one of my idols,” Houllier says. “In France, he was viewed as the ultimate British footballer: physically, technically and tactically very talented. I was aware of his problems as manager at Liverpool because I read books about him when I was appointed. He admitted trying to change things too much, too soon. So, I made the decision to change things gradually. Maybe that helped a little bit when I replaced Roy in the middle of the season. As a manager, you learn that it is very important not to break the habits of the players at this time.”
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In replacing Souness with Evans, Liverpool returned to tradition. All-time leading goalscorer Ian Rush was allowed to eat his pre-match meal of beans and sausage on toast again (banned by Souness), the players were afforded a greater level of social freedom, while, like before, injuries were treated by Ronnie Moran, who made running repair jobs (Souness had wanted to develop a clinic at Melwood where conditions would be treated properly, but this request was refused by the board).
Meanwhile, at other clubs, nutritionists and conditioning coaches were being employed, squads were becoming fitter and more professional, and young British players were benefiting tactically and technically as well as socially (by not drinking so much) from sage advice delivered by a host of experienced imports. Liverpool were trapped within a Celtic insularity and Evans spoke of not wanting to sign a “sexy foreigner just for the sake of it”.
Rather than signing one, Evans ended up sharing his job with a foreigner after three successive seasons where Liverpool threatened to engage in a championship race only to fall away in the final months. A perception existed that Evans was too lenient with players and a desire developed to appoint a disciplinarian capable of instilling the organisation and forward thought that Souness had dabbled with years earlier.
Few in Britain had heard of Arsene Wenger before he was recruited as Arsenal’s manager in 1996. In two seasons, he not only inspired the club to the title, after they had been mid-table at his point of arrival, but also transformed the way Arsenal were viewed: from defensive dullards to attacking sensations. Wenger came from France. Liverpool’s board began to wonder whether they could appoint someone with a similar background.
Houllier’s association with Liverpool began decades earlier, when he moved to the city in 1969 to work as a teaching assistant at Alsop Comprehensive, a one-time grammar school no more than a mile and a half away from Anfield on the Queens Drive ring road, where Walton becomes Bootle. He also studied, completing a thesis entitled “Growing Up in a Deprived Area”. It focused on social issues in Toxteth, an area he still refers to as “Liverpool 8”.
“Liverpool was a port and the major trading post in the north of England,” Houllier remembers. “The port goes into decline and Manchester builds an international airport. A lot of harbour masters and immigrants from the Commonwealth lived in Liverpool 8. There is a struggle and the poverty starts. The identity of the area changes completely and gradually it becomes tougher to live in Liverpool than it was before. By 1970, I think more than 20 per cent of people in Liverpool were unemployed and levels had not been that bad since the 1930s.”
Despite the struggles, Liverpool still had its football. In the 1960s, the teams of Bill Shankly were immortalised, while Harry Catterick’s Everton were known as the “Merseyside Millionaires” because of their spending power. Houllier stood on the terraces of the Kop when Liverpool beat Dundalk 10–0 in a UEFA Cup tie and there with him that night was Patrice Bergues, visiting from France, a friend whom he would eventually lean on as Liverpool’s assistant manager. Houllier submersed himself locally by playing centre-forward for one of Alsop’s old boys’ sides on a Saturday morning in the Zingari League, a competition where only the toughest survived.
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At the end of the academic year, Houllier returned to the farming village of Therouanne in north-eastern France, where he had grown up as the only son of a farmer who turned to butchery. Houllier saw a future in teaching and worked at different primary, secondary and grammar schools before becoming a lecturer in a school of commerce by his mid-twenties. He continued to play amateur football with Hucqueliers, then Le Touquet, and enjoyed it so much that when a job as a coach at nearby local club Noeux- les-Mines was advertised in the paper, he decided to abandon the educational path and go for it. “The virus,” he says, “was with me. I could not resist.”
Noeux-les-Mines’s history was in coal mining. He arrived there in 1976, initially as head coach, and was later appointed manager. In his six years at the club, Houllier — with Bergues playing in midfield — took them from the lower reaches of France’s third division to the verge of promotion from the second. It was an astonishing rise and enough to convince first-division Lens that Houllier was capable of taking charge of a bigger club.
There were other coaches around with long careers as professional footballers behind them but Houllier used his inexperience as motivation, compensating for his shortcomings by allowing his raw obsession to take him further. His studious manner meant days were long. For six days a week, he would leave home at 6am and not return until 11pm at the earliest. Houllier believes the levels of commitment as well as his innovations were the only way to make it possible for a small club like Noeux-les-Mines to compete against those with greater resources, and they also gained him respect amongst his peers.
“There were more opportunities for people like myself and Arsene Wenger to become coaches — why? Because the French FA were very serious about coaching education. This attitude was there in France, Italy, Holland and Germany thirty or even forty years ago, but it is a relatively recent phenomenon in England,” he says.
“With my background, if I was English, I would not have had a chance at that time. As a player, you have to learn your trade, so why should it be different for coaching and management? Listen, to be a doctor you need seven years. To be an engineer, you need five or six years. To be a teacher, you need time as well. To be a coach, it should be the same. I do not think you need to have been a top player to become a top coach. To be a top jockey, do you need to have been a horse? Of course not.”
In Lens, Houllier took charge of a small-town club that represented another coal-mining community, one that demanded its team match the diehard commitment of the fans. Cries of “a la mine” would be screamed at players who did not give 100 per cent and, like Liverpool, Lens was a place not without its social problems, with many of the mines long closed for business.
Under Houllier, though, Lens qualified for the UEFA Cup and recorded two top-seven finishes in three seasons. The success led to an approach from Paris Saint-Germain — the richest club in France — and a year later PSG achieved the first league title in their history. The arrival of Houllier was celebrated as the catalyst and on judgement day he was held aloft by the players inside the Parc des Princes.
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Argentine striker Omar da Fonseca, who played under Houllier in Paris before later clinching two titles at Monaco with Wenger in charge, recognizes similarities between the two coaches. He speaks of previous experiences where coaches tended to be former players “who lived and breathed the game but nothing else”. He describes Houllier and Wenger as having a more “futuristic approach” than the others. Houllier was good with psychology and particularly impressive when dealing with the media. “Because of his background and his language ability, he was able to deal with a cross-section of players.”
Houllier’s time in Paris came to a mutually agreed end after a disappointing 1987–88 campaign, and he joined the French Football Federation, first as a coach before becoming technical director and then Michel Platini’s assistant for the 1992 European Championships. When Platini stepped aside following a group-stage exit, the reins passed on to the next man in line. At the age of forty-four, Houllier had taken twenty-two years to propel himself from parks footballer in Liverpool to the most important managerial role in France.
Houllier describes how he made it his “mission” to see his country qualify for the 1994 World Cup in the United States, and with two games to go all they required was one point each from favourable home fixtures with Israel and Bulgaria. Despite being bottom of the group, Israel sneaked an astonishing 3–2 victory in the Parc des Princes before David Ginola carelessly surrendered possession in the final minute against Bulgaria, enabling Emil Kostadinov to secure an improbable win for the visitors. France were out of the World Cup and in the aftermath Houllier infamously berated Ginola as a “criminal”. A feud has existed between the pair ever since.
After being replaced by Aime Jacquet, Houllier returned to the FA and was tasked with the responsibility of reorganising France’s football structure at youth level. In 1996, his side, which included Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet and Nicolas Anelka, beat Spain in the final of the under-18 European Championship. Two years later, the presence of Henry and Trezeguet was crucial as France’s senior team lifted the World Cup on home soil.
Liverpool first made informal contact with Houllier about the possibility of taking on a role at Anfield in 1997 — a full twelve months before he was unveiled as joint manager with Roy Evans. Liverpool had gone as close to the title as they would under Evans in the 1996–97 season, eventually finishing in fourth place by virtue of goal difference, having gained the same number of points as Newcastle United in second. Poor defeats towards the end of the campaign undermined Evans’ position.
“There was a phone call from Peter Robinson early that summer,” Houllier explains. “But I was very much involved in the preparation for the World Cup. I couldn’t leave. It would have been treason for anyone to walk away from their country at that moment. I would have appeared in France as a traitor.”
Twelve months later, Houllier’s contract was up and he decided to try something different. Celtic, having won the Scottish title for the first time in a decade, had spoken to Houllier about replacing Wim Jansen. Sheffield Wednesday had sacked Ron Atkinson and they were even more persuasive. Houllier was tempted by England. “I loved English football.” He was very close to moving to Hillsborough.
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And then Robinson called again, wishing him luck. The pair had kept in regular contact ever since Houllier, like many coaches from the Continent, had visited Anfield to study methods during France’s winter break. Arsene Wenger had made the same trip in the mid-1980s when he was at Nancy.
“Peter said to me, ‘I would like to congratulate you on your move to Sheffield.’ I was silent. ‘What, you haven’t agreed terms yet?’ Peter made his point very quickly. ‘If you haven’t agreed to go to Sheffield, then I would like to speak to you’. There were a few issues with my contract in Sheffield, which delayed the appointment. So, I said, ‘Peter, of course I will speak to you’. The following day, Peter arrived in Paris with Rick Parry and David Moores. Within ten minutes, we had reached an agreement.”
It was unclear which role Houllier would take at Anfield. Robinson’s approach and the hastily arranged meeting in Paris had not been ratified by Liverpool’s board. Houllier would potentially become the club’s first foreign manager and the first outside appointment since Bill Shankly forty years earlier.
Initially, the board favoured keeping Roy Evans in charge. It was suggested that Houllier should take Ronnie Moran’s job as first-team coach. But Robinson felt it would have demeaned Houllier’s pedigree. A position as director of football was also put forward but again Robinson believed that Houllier needed to have access to players and be able to instil discipline. In the end, the board agreed to make them joint managers and Houllier says he agreed it was vital that Evans should remain. “I thought he’d done a good job in the years before. His experience was essential.”
It did not concern Houllier that he had not managed at club level for more than a decade, although he admits it was a different challenge compared to the national team.
“Club (football) is day-to-day involvement — it never stops,” he says. “With the national team, you have time to form a wider perspective but in that sense building momentum is more difficult. You have less time to prepare your team, so you have to be incisive with every decision. Personally, I prefer being with a club, because there you can build up, develop. I took great enjoyment in seeing players develop both as footballers and as people. With a club, this is possible; you know you are having a serious impact. You can prepare on a short-term and medium-term basis as well as having a long-term vision. With the national team, you prepare for the next game, always.
“When I went to Liverpool, I felt very prepared because I had experienced management at every level, from amateur to international. My time as technical director was very important because it taught me how to step back and look at everything from above. You could not be a coach on the field all of the time. With France, I prepared a game in a ten-day window. As technical director, I learned how to prepare for the next ten years. I realized I had to win trophies very quickly at Liverpool, because that is the demand. But I realized too it was a long-term job. I realised Liverpool needed somebody to oversee everything.”
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Four months after arriving at Anfield, results were not good, and the squad was confused by the arrangement in the dugout. While the old players turned to Evans, the new deferred to Houllier. The relationship was dysfunctional and Houllier suggested at a board meeting he would agree to Evans finishing the campaign in sole charge before handing over the reins to Houllier, providing the desire was there.
“It did not work because we had different opinions on how the team should prepare and maybe how players conducted themselves,” Houllier explains. “I was the hard one and Roy was the easier one. We’d put a session on and some players would say, ‘Roy, I’m staying in the gym …’ It didn’t work, anyway. It worked at the beginning. But soon it did not. Picking the team was not the main problem.
“I went to speak to the people. I said, ‘It’s Roy’s team.’ If Liverpool still wanted me in the summer, I would come back. But Rick Parry stepped forward and made a point about how the players would feel like they were the rulers if that happened.”
At this point, the influence of Tom Saunders, the conduit between the boardroom and Melwood, was significant.
“He was fantastic,” Houllier says. “If you ask Phil Thompson, he will tell you. Tom was always supportive, always there having a nice word — a lot of wisdom. During one board meeting, he stood up and said, ‘Mr Houllier, we recognise we are not yet the best team in the world. But we have trust in you. We are patient people. Do what you have to do — do what is good for the club. We will support you.’ I left that meeting knowing I could now do what was necessary to change Liverpool — and with the confidence to see it through.”
Houllier takes his time to outline the task he faced.
“The role of the Liverpool manager was threefold. The number one mission: get results, get trophies. Rick Parry, I asked him, ‘What do you want me to achieve?’ He told me Liverpool had a silverware tradition and that must be upheld.
“The second thing, I would say, was to leave a legacy. When I left, I don’t think anyone could argue (that he’d not achieved that). Some managers don’t think like this. Sam Allardyce, for instance, he buys, he buys, he buys. You have (Youri) Djorkaeff and so on. Players are (aged) 34–35. Then he leaves and what happens? Nothing is left. We signed players for the long term: Hyypia, Henchoz, Hamann. We used young British players. I think the best way is to leave behind a way of thinking and put the club one step forward, where everybody contributes. Because of your style, your management and your personality, you can leave an imprint on the club. We improved Anfield, we built a different Melwood and, as David Moores said, we took Liverpool into the twenty-first century. The players we had were not all old at the same time.
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“Then the last mission is to make your players progress. I would say Carragher progressed. I would say Murphy became a better player. I had to put him on loan at Crewe to learn a different way and come back with different values. Michael [Owen] became Ballon d’Or. Hyypia — nobody knew him before. And Heskey, nobody believed in him, but I did. If he had had more belief in himself, he could have achieved more. Sometimes you do not succeed absolutely with everybody. Robbie [Fowler] had some good times and bad times. When I look back, I think we did OK. Six trophies in five years is pretty healthy.”
When Houllier arrived at Liverpool as joint manager with Roy Evans in the summer of 1998, he describes the squad as “talented but underachieving”, with a defence that was “a bit too weak”.
“We had a good striking force with Robbie, Michael Owen and Steve McManaman, although I knew quickly that Steve was going to leave us for Real Madrid,” he says.
The problems at Liverpool were deeper than anyone on the outside really appreciated. This was a dressing room led by Paul Ince, who called himself the “Guv’nor”. When Houllier quickly arrived at the conclusion that Ince should be sold, he received a call from Alex Ferguson — who had made the same decision at Manchester United three years earlier. Ferguson told Houllier it would prove to be one of his best judgements as Liverpool manager.
“It is a very difficult decision to get rid of the captain,” Houllier insists. “In the long term, it proved to be an important call. Why? When I got rid of Paul Ince, then Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen, Jamie Carragher, Danny Murphy and David Thompson, they all blossomed. Paul was a huge player and a fantastic player. I liked him a lot. He was captain of the national team and captain of Liverpool. Why did I get rid of him? Because I felt the other younger players needed to be able to breathe. Paul was the organizer of the social occasions. There were parties, not just ones arranged by him. I wanted this to stop and for the players to focus.”
It was clear that Ince’s time at Liverpool was at an end a few days after a defeat to Manchester United in the FA Cup following two late goals. Liverpool had led from the third minute when Michael Owen scored. It was two months into Houllier’s reign as sole manager and Liverpool had defended as well as they had done in an away game in the years before to hold on to the lead. In the seventy-first minute, Ince signalled that he needed to be substituted.
“We were close to knocking United out,” Houllier remembers. “It would have been a huge result for us. They eventually went on to win the treble, so historically we know how important these moments are. Paul said he had a strain. He walked off the pitch. I thought, Wait — you’re captain of Liverpool. You are 1–0 up at Old Trafford against your former club. If the captain of Liverpool leaves in that sort of game, he only goes straight to hospital. A few days later, Paul was training again.”
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At a team meeting, Ince told Houllier in front of the rest of the group that training needed to be more focused on attacking. Houllier saw this as a challenge to his authority. It was true that Liverpool had struggled for goals in the months since he became manager but defensively the team were conceding fewer. Houllier considered this more important.
“I implemented training sessions aimed at helping the tactical relationships between defence, midfield and attack. That was my coaching. But in the five-a-sides, I’d stand back and watch what was happening. I kept all of the results from the five-a-side matches, knowing which players had won and which players had not. Paul enjoyed the five-a-side matches. But he was not winning. So when Paul was unhappy about the amount of attacking work, I reminded him in front of the group that in the sixty or so five-a-side matches that had taken place in the months before, he’d only been on the winning team something like five times. And that was the end of the discussion.”
Houllier liked the characteristics of English players, however. “First, they fight harder,” he says. “They really have a great desire for their team, their club. They are very competitive.
“Second, they are loyal: loyal to their manager, loyal to their teammates. They are straightforward. They tell you the truth and they don’t cheat. They have a huge respect for the hierarchy: the boss is the boss.”
Yet at Liverpool, the players had too much power and when the power is with the players, Houllier believes there is also unrealistic expectation.
“The pressure comes from the discrepancy between the team’s potential and what they can really do. When I came to the club, I had Babb, Harkness, McAteer . . . you name them. We bought Hamann, Henchoz, Hyypia. For the cohesion of the team and the club, you need to stay together for a minimum of three years. I was given that opportunity. I arrived in 1998 and in 2001 we won five trophies.”
Jamie Carragher says Houllier possessed an English attitude when it came to the way he wanted Liverpool to play. Houllier stresses, though, that he did not want to change too much, too soon.
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“I am not a great believer in revolution despite the fact I am French! I prefer slight reforms, convincing people to change. I did this with Carra and Danny Murphy particularly. They had a wild side. They listened. Both of them took the right turn, learning from the senior international foreign players like Hyypia, who was very important. Jamie Redknapp was also a good player but was injured. There were a few problems with Robbie Fowler and I wish I’d known him two or three years before, when he was at his peak.”
Houllier says he “reached” for the young local players he thought had the mentality to deal with the pressures of being a footballer in the twenty-first century. He explains, for example, that he gave Fowler and David Thompson “many chances to get it right”. Eventually, though, both were sold.
He speaks about Jamie Carragher like an adopted son.
“Jamie was clever in reading the game and learning from his experiences, both good and bad,” he says. “He played in several positions: central-midfield then left-back and right-back. Maybe he wanted to play in one position but he never let that desire get in the way of his performances. He was patient with himself and patient with me.
“We had Henchoz and Hyypiä in central defence and that is, of course, the position where Carra ended up. But I explained to him from the beginning that I saw him as a player who would evolve and find himself. In France, we had [Patrick] Battiston and [Maxime] Bossis, and Carra was like them. They started their careers at full-back and eventually became the main centre-back. The experience in the early years gave them a different perspective of the game.
“They were faced with different situations. I would say that to be a full-back you need to be a better player than a centre-back in possession of the ball. Carra never got the credit he deserved for his football ability. He was an excellent passer of the ball and rarely gave it away. I remember many games and many goals where he was there at the start of the build-up.
“Carra is a highly competitive person. In terms of wanting to win, he was Luis Fernandez. Sometimes you get players with talent but they do not get as far in their careers because of a lackadaisical attitude. Carra probably had less talent than some. But it was his attitude that determined his life. Talent is nothing without professionalism: doing things the right way and managing details.
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“That was a big challenge for me generally. Convincing players that talent is one thing, but the way they work and practise will help them blossom. I personally believe Carra is the best example of this: maybe not so talented but so determined, so engaged, so competitive, so hard working and team-thinking.
“His fear drove him on. Some players have a fear of not being up to the task but they are able to turn it into a positive. Don’t get me wrong, Carra was very confident and I liked that. Michael Owen was the same. Stevie — he was a bit afraid at the beginning but quickly became confident. In fact, the manager can often be the confidence builder and breaker for the player. But only the player can internalize the balance. It’s very difficult to find someone who can mix fear and confidence as well as humility and ambition. Above everything, if you fail to prepare — well, you know the Scout saying. It is one of life’s truths.”
He had not even heard of Steven Gerrard when he arrived at Liverpool but within a few weeks of Roy Evans’ departure, Houllier rewarded his “aggressive” performances in the youth sides with a first-team debut.
“Every manager has his own philosophy. I liked to use wide players but those with experience of playing in-field. I realized the team needed to be more solid. Central-midfielders understand the demands of each position because they are in the middle of everything that happens. They receive the ball from the goalkeeper, the central-defender or the full-back and then release it wide, forwards or backwards again. So they have a better tactical appreciation of each position.
“I was looking for somebody to play on the right. Steve Heighway said to me, ‘Maybe I have an answer to your problems.’ He said I should go to the academy to watch a youth game. The game was against Blackburn, I think. I had seen the player in a practice match at Melwood but you can only tell in the real games when the competition is fierce.
“After five minutes, I knew that the player would not fit. His name was Richie Partridge. But in the middle of the park there was this guy shouting at others, tackling hard and passing the ball fiercely long and short. He was quick and he could read the game. He was really making an impact. So I asked who he was and they told me he was an under-18. He was just helping out because there had been injuries.
“So I said, ‘Maybe I’ll stay.’ In the second half it was the same. He was ruling the place, controlling the pace of the game, you know? He had not long turned eighteen and was nearly two years behind most players. At the end of the game, I spoke to him. ‘What is your name?’ I asked. He told me he was Steven Gerrard. I said, ‘Tomorrow you train with the professionals at Melwood.’ He was a bit nervous and told me a programme had already been set up for him at the academy the following day. ‘No, Steven, you are with us now.’
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“The next morning, there was a challenge to be won in midfield during a training session. Steven Gerrard beat Paul Ince. I said to Patrice, ‘This boy is ready.'”
Gerrard’s body was not yet accustomed to the demands of professionalism, however.
“Mentally, he was one of the strongest boys I have ever known. But he wasn’t able to train because he was injured a lot. They couldn’t find the cause and this frustrated me. If you can’t train, you cannot prepare for the job. You have to be able to respond to seventy games a season. I had this in mind for Steven because his potential was massive. But the injuries, the strains — they would not stop.”
Houllier organised for Gerrard to be treated by a team of external physiotherapists in France.
“The biggest problem was, some people did not believe in him because of the injuries. This is the truth. There was a feeling at Liverpool before that if you suffered from injuries, you would not become a player. But I realized his potential. He excited me. Stevie’s body was growing, growing and growing. He needed time. And I gave him time.”
Before Houllier settled on the cheaper option of Sami Hyypia and Stephane Henchoz, he wanted to install a young British pairing at centre-back.
“Sol Campbell was one idea and Rio Ferdinand was outstanding too. I liked Ferdinand a lot. He was a very modern defender, able to build possession from his touch. He was a defender too and sometimes people forget that. But I had £12 million to spend and I needed to reconstruct the defence with that money. Ferdinand was the first one I thought of. He was eighteen years old. And the price was £12.5 million. I needed two (centre-halves), not one.
“It is thanks to Peter Robinson that I found Hyypia at Willem II. He had a friend who worked for a TV crew covering European football. A lot of times, he was in Holland. He told Peter there was a good centre-back. My initial reaction was to tell Peter that if there was a good centre-back, Ajax, PSV Eindhoven or Feyenoord would have taken him. I was reluctant. It was only because I could not find what I wanted that I went to see this player. After fifteen minutes, I knew I would take him. I could see that he could defend and play; he passed the ball very confidently. I could not believe that nobody else had signed Hyypia.
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“Henchoz was at Blackburn. Roy Hodgson is a friend of mine and he was their manager. I went to Blackburn and every time I liked him (Henchoz). He was stubborn and always seemed to be in the right place. In the end, Hyypia cost around £2 million and Henchoz was £3.5 million. We had money left to buy Hamann. And this was the base of the team for the next few years.”
Houllier used the history of Liverpool as a bargaining tool with higher-profile targets.
“Liverpool is known for two reasons: the Beatles and the football club,” he says. “It has a special resonance in peoples’ minds. It represents magic. Liverpool remains a big hit in terms of its culture, its history and personality, as well as the warmth of the town. We managed to sign Markus Babbel and lots of clubs wanted to sign him. The competition was fierce. I convinced Babbel that in a short period of time, we would win trophies. I convinced him that winning trophies at Liverpool would mean more than it might at other clubs because when you win something for Liverpool, the people, they remember you forever.”
Financially, he felt backed by the club’s board “up to a certain level”.
“We were not as rich as the others,” he says. “But I realised Liverpool never had been. The idea always was to buy young players and develop them. I think John Arne Riise was a good example of this. We bought him for a small fee, had his best years — under Benítez as well — then the club sold him to Roma for a higher fee. This was our game. Other clubs could afford mistakes and it would not matter too much. When we made a mistake — and there were some — it mattered more.’
Liverpool were widely considered to be a flaky team under Roy Evans. Two years into Houllier’s reign, the reputation shifted. Liverpool became obdurate and horrible to play against.
“When you are a manager, you should always ask yourself: what is going to hurt your opponents?” Houllier says. “I knew Roma, for example, could hurt us because they were a very good team. You try to stop that. But you also know they have weaknesses in areas where we are strong. I thought about the weaknesses and flaws of every team we played against and sometimes our team selection would reflect that. This idea was new to Liverpool because previously it had been the same team week in, week out.
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“It took people time to understand that rotation was needed. We achieved some great results this way: a 0–0 in Barcelona, for example, where Emile played on the left and Michael up front on his own. We were criticized for being defensive after the game and I could not believe it. It made me even more determined to win the second leg, which we did 1–0 [thanks to a Gary McAllister penalty]. People remember the second leg because of the atmosphere inside Anfield. But for me, the impact of the first leg was more important. It said to Barcelona, ‘This Liverpool team will not concede goals, even in the Nou Camp.’ Psychologically, it was damaging for them and brilliant for us.”
Houllier uses five words to describe the 2000–01 squad that achieved an unprecedented cup treble and qualified for the Champions League for the first time since its inception by finishing third in the league. He also reminds me that by winning the UEFA Cup, he is one of only two Frenchmen to lift a European trophy as manager — the other being Luis Fernandez in 1996 when he led Paris Saint-Germain to the Cup Winners’ Cup, beating Liverpool en route.
“My players were generous, talented, believing, ambitious and resilient,” he says. “They used to enjoy themselves. In training, you could feel the camaraderie. A good atmosphere developed very quickly. There was pleasure and performance.”
When he became Liverpool’s manager, the club could afford to appoint different coaches who specialized in fitness, goalkeeping, defending and attacking.
“Before training, I would hold a meeting and tell all of my coaches what I wanted,” Houllier adds. “I would then watch what was happening and only get involved when there needed to be an intervention tactically.”
Yet, the responsibility of leading the club took over his life. It was part of the job description to be obsessed, to treat it as a “mission”.
“Yes, you have to be 150 per cent focused,” he continues. “It’s not a job; in fact, it’s a mission. There are times when you lose and you have to try to show you are not affected. You have lost? OK, next game. Don’t waste your time and your energy on what went wrong. It sends out the wrong message. Some managers watch videos. But I had faith in my players. I liked to use video more to show what the players had done right rather than what they had done wrong. You cannot do anything about the past.
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“There are times when you need to recharge the battery and do something different, whether that’s going for a meal with some friends or going to the cinema. But you can’t have much of that. On the outside, people see the end of the season as a time when football shuts down. Managers do not. I remember a quote from Bill Shankly about the most important day in a manager’s year being the day after a season has finished. Everybody else at the club goes on a break.
“But you don’t. You are preparing again for the next challenge. You have to put the season in the past, learn lessons from what went wrong and get on to the next stage. I’d always done that. This is the most important time. You have to change the team. And success — to a large degree — is determined by the players you sign and the players you sell. So there is no time to relax.”
Houllier is adamant that it was genetics — thin arteries run in his family — rather than stress that caused him to suffer from high blood pressure, contributing towards him being rushed to hospital at half-time of the game between Liverpool and Leeds at Anfield in October 2001 with chest pains.
During a busy summer, where he was again active in the transfer market, Houllier had not taken a rest before the start of a season where Liverpool won the Charity Shield and the European Super Cup, before starting well in the league. Normally, he’d take a short break in the first week of September when most of the players were on international duty. Instead, he went scouting, back to France, where he watched Anthony Le Tallec and Florent Sinama Pongolle: players he would later sign from Le Havre.
He did not know what was happening when the chest pains began during the game against Leeds.
“It happened at half-time. If it had happened at the end of the game, I would not be here now talking to you,” he says starkly. “At full time there was unbelievable traffic around Anfield and the ambulance would not have got through. At half-time, this was not the case. I was very lucky.
“I thought I had the flu. I wanted to have some vitamins and return to the game. But Dr Waller, the club doctor, stopped me. He was very insistent. He knew me. He wanted to take my blood pressure and quickly decided we should go to the hospital. After that, it was a matter of luck. There are only three cardio specialist hospitals in England and one of them is in Broadgreen, just a few miles away. The traffic meant we were there in less than ten minutes.
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“Again there was more luck. The surgeon who usually operates on such illnesses was meant to be spending the weekend taking his daughter to Leeds. Instead, because he was tired, he stayed in Liverpool. So he was close by — a succession of lucky moments.”
Houllier immediately underwent an operation to repair his aorta. It was a procedure that was expected to last nine hours but stretched to eleven and a half. It was uncertain whether he would live.
“Again, the next day the team was flying out to Kiev for a Champions League match. Imagine if it had happened on the plane. I would have died.”
During his three-week stay in hospital, he was up on his feet and walking around, and he had a television installed in his room so he could keep up to date with the latest football news.
Phil Thompson soon started advising him on team selection and other issues. He insisted Rick Parry keep him abreast of important football-related developments. In December and January, Houllier was involved in the signings of Abel Xavier and Nicolas Anelka. While Houllier was convalescing, Anelka flew to Corsica to meet him.
David O’Leary, the Leeds manager, regularly received calls from Houllier, often at curious hours. O’Leary described him as a “night owl, working away at night”. O’Leary later publicly suggested Houllier should quit football management. “I’ve told him,” he said, “this job isn’t conducive to coming back after an operation he’s had.” At the Liverpool Echo Sports Personality of the Year dinner, Houllier told the audience there were people who thought he should forget about football entirely. He then added, pertinently, “Maybe I should forget about breathing.”
Doctors had told Houllier that he should take eleven to twelve months off work. Instead he officially returned in less than five. He was fifty-four years old.
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“We needed to beat Roma 2–0 at home. In my place, Phil [Thompson] had done a fantastic job. I asked him whether he thought my presence for this game would help – maybe bring something that people did not expect. So I told nobody. I did not want the press to focus on me before; I did not want the players to be distracted.”
When a frail-looking Houllier appeared in the dugout moments before kick-off, the roar seemed to emerge from the guts of each Anfield stand.
“We won 2–0,” he smiles. “I have spoken to Fabio Capello [the Roma manager] since and he told me that when he saw me, he realised Liverpool would win. The reaction from the players was spectacular.”
In the short term, Houllier had chosen his moment well. And yet history suggests he came back too soon. The first sign of his judgement not being quite what it was came in the Champions League quarter-final when Liverpool were defending an aggregate lead in the second leg against Bayer Leverkusen, only to decide to replace the defensive-minded Didi Hamann for Vladimir Smicer, an attacking midfielder. The result was a 4–2 defeat.
“I tried something different to try to upset the opponent,” Houllier reasons. “We’d have played Manchester United in the semi-final. It would have been more of a problem for them than it would for us.”
He mentions again that success in football is often determined by recruitment and sales, and it is particularly important to get the timing right. Before Houllier’s illness, his record was strong in this field. Afterwards, it was not. Houllier reasons that his judgement had not abandoned him but flexibility had. He was on strict instructions to rest more frequently and rather than flying somewhere in Europe to watch a target immediately after a Liverpool match, he would go home to Sefton Park and spend the evening with his wife Isabelle instead.
“The initial decision was mine: which type of player we needed and in which position. The scout would provide a list, maybe with some new names. We saw the player several times and then sent different scouts. We’d enquire discreetly about personality. ‘Is he a team-thinking player or too individualistic? Does he work hard in training?’ You have to be careful. We were misled with two or three players. You buy a player and learn when he arrives that he likes to go to nightclubs. You have to take advice from the right people, of course, but ultimately as the manager you are accountable. If the player fails, it should be your responsibility. It’s your call. I always made the last call.”
Towards the end of the 2001–02 season and into that summer, Houllier was told he must rest rather than devote the amount of time that he had to recruitment in the years before his illness. He is talking about record signing El Hadji Diouf, Senegalese compatriot Salif Diao and French midfielder Bruno Cheyrou when he mentions players that later ‘did not lift the team to expected levels’. Houllier admits relying on the opinion of Patrice Bergues, who had been Diouf’s manager at Lens, when he recommended the forward. ‘We could have done better,’ he admits.
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Houllier had taken Nicolas Anelka on loan from Paris Saint-Germain in December 2001. In spite of Anelka’s chequered past, when he had supposedly struggled to fit in to the social structures at Arsenal and Real Madrid, there were no reports of problems in relation to Anelka’s behaviour at Melwood before Houllier decided a permanent deal was not going to happen, choosing to sign Diouf instead.
“First of all, it was a good idea to sign Anelka — to help us finish the season before,” he begins to explain. “I didn’t keep him because his representatives were very unfair to Liverpool as a club. We’d resurrected his career.”
Houllier’s friendship with Laurent Perpère, the Paris Saint-Germain president, had led to a compromise between the clubs over a transfer fee. That prompted Liverpool to deal with Anelka’s financial adviser and the meetings, though intense, went reasonably well. Liverpool soon suspected, though, that someone, somewhere was negotiating with other clubs on Anelka’s behalf.
Houllier explains what happened next: “They wanted so much money it would have raised a problem within the changing room in terms of the wages he was earning. So we told them we couldn’t go that far. We managed to reach a compromise. But then I heard there was a chance he would go back to Arsenal. At the same time, he was negotiating with Manchester City and this, I believe, was an attempt to drive up interest, create a competition and increase his earnings. I felt that I was not going to win. I feared that if I kept him and he did well, there would be another round of negotiations soon after to try to increase the value of his contract. If he was unhappy, he might try to leave for another club. The process had taken too long and, ultimately, it did not deserve the energy.
“I was right about Anelka because he’s had half a dozen clubs after leaving Liverpool. He’s moved around too much. Other managers had the same problems. At least I had the courage to withstand the pressure of those representing him. From a football point of view, it would have been interesting to keep him. He was gifted. But from the club’s point of view, it was a danger. As a manager, I thought about the club and the stability of the dressing room.”
Diouf struggled for goals, was shunted out on the right wing and was banned for spitting at a Celtic supporter during his first season as a Liverpool player, with Houllier warning him at the time that “the stigma of what you did will follow you around for the rest of your career”.
Jamie Carragher said that in Diouf’s first week training at Melwood, he realised the player did not possess the speed to be a success in the Premier League. Houllier cites a different issue.
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“Diouf should have worked but did not,” he insists. “The top of the roof is mental. You build the house: physically, technically and tactically; Diouf, he understood tactics. But you are half the player without the right mentality. Stevie and Carra — they had the roof.”
During his last two seasons in charge, the tide of opinion turned against Houllier. It became public knowledge that criticism from former players at this time cut him deeply, though he also mentions several names who had condemned his team long before — even when results were good. Ian St John, who had been one of Bill Shankly’s players, was one of them, snappily referring to Houllier as “the Frenchman” when working as a radio commentator.
“There are things you can control in life and things you cannot control. If asked now, maybe I will say that I paid too much attention to things I could not control. Sometimes I was hurt because it was coming from former players. Even Carra said to me, ‘Why are they always having a go at us?’
“We were doing our best for the club and I felt they should have been more supportive. You cannot control the wind, the rain or the state of the pitch when you play away. You cannot control the referee — there is no point trying to change his decisions. You cannot control what is in the press. Everybody is entitled to have an opinion, even if it is not the right opinion and it hurts. You need to live with a thick skin sometimes. But what you can control is the way you are going to react — the way you take it; the way you hold your composure rather than being impulsive.
“We were labelled a defensive team and when you have a label, it is difficult to shake. In 2000–01 we scored 127 goals. I think only two Liverpool teams have scored more goals in one season. And you don’t win anything without a good goalkeeper, a good defence and a good striker. On the pitch, at least, it is as easy as that.
“The next year we finished ahead of Manchester United and with eighty points. In the previous decade, Liverpool had not finished ahead of Manchester United, so when that happens you’d expect to win the title. Unfortunately, that year Arsenal went on an incredible run. Still the criticism came from the same people. They were waiting when the results were not quite as good.”
The player Houllier really wishes he’d signed was goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar, who was given a tour of Melwood only to agree to join Fulham. Jens Lehmann was his second choice that summer and was close to being bought from Borussia Dortmund along with Tomas Rosicky. Both would later sign for Arsenal.
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As we finished our initial summit at the Normandy, Houllier invited me to meet him the next day in his office. When I arrive, he is thinking about the changes that have happened in management and football.
“The game is younger: the players are younger, the coaches are younger, the people in key administrative roles are younger,” he says. “With youth, you have energy. People will commit their lives to the quest to become greater. From my own experience, I know it is good sometimes to step back and watch. When you do that, you see details: the attitude of the players, the way they react when they lose the ball. By stepping back, you see their form. When you stand in the middle telling everybody what to do all of the time, you gain control but you lose perspective.
“Players need tough love,” he continues. “It is important to be accessible. Players should feel like you are approachable at all times. I remember taking calls at 7 am. Their problems became mine. As a manager, you make decisions but you also need to appreciate the human impact of those decisions. You should explain them. For that, you receive the respect.”
Houllier stops to consider the number of trophies Liverpool have won since his departure in 2004. There have been three in eleven years, a Champions League and FA Cup being delivered by his successor, Rafael Benitez. Houllier won six in five years. “So we didn’t do too badly.”
History, indeed, should reflect better on his reign. Bill Shankly took charge of Liverpool in 1959 — twelve years after Liverpool’s last league title, a period where nothing was won in between. When Houllier was appointed, eight years had passed since the last championship.
Although he achieved more silverware than Shankly in a shorter period of time, Liverpool were further away from the title at the point of his departure than they were when he arrived. I ask Houllier what might have happened had it not been for his illness. He seems reluctant to think about it. It seems to frustrate him. He prefers to reflect on the legacy he left behind. He takes me back to the day he arrived at Anfield as manager.
“Look at Shankly; Shankly goes, who comes? Paisley. Paisley goes, then it’s his assistant, Fagan. Fagan goes; Dalglish. Dalglish goes; Souness. Then Roy Evans. I could understand the headlines ‘GERARD WHO?’ But the most important thing in any managerial reign is to consider how you leave a club, what shape it is in then. That is more important than what it is like when you arrive. I thought about this a lot at the beginning. They [the supporters] will always remember you if you leave a legacy. I can confidently say I left a legacy for Benitez.
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“Number one: me being there before broke from the tradition of the Boot Room. It proved there was another way.
“Number two: Benitez had a team, one that won the Champions League. Twelve of those players were with me the year before.
“Number three: I also left with the team in the Champions League. If we had not finished in the top four in 2003–04, Benítez would not have featured in the Champions League the following year. Also, he had new facilities and a set-up that was Continental in its standard compared to the way it was before I went there.
“All of this, it makes me happy. Had it not been for my illness, would Liverpool have won the league? I wish I knew for certain.”
This interview is adapted from a version that first appeared in Ring of Fire, by Simon Hughes
