Dalglish agreed. ‘What’s changed is the players’ mentality,’ he said. ‘If you insist on telling a player that he’s tired, he’ll believe you. If you tell him to play, he’ll play. No player ever goes up to the coach and says he’s tired, so just get on with it; get out there and play.’
Dalglish also revealed one of the keys to winning six league titles and three European Cups. ‘We had great people, a strong dressing room. We were down to earth and also ambitious. We felt like we were nothing special but we always attacked; we always faced up to the opposition. We always went for them,’ he said. Dalglish had set it up, now Souness put it away. ‘Every year was fantastic because we always won something,’ he added. ‘If we only won one trophy it was a bad year.’
Over two and a half hours, the three of us listened to stories from the past—Liverpool’s current players hanging on every word uttered by Liverpool’s legends. Robinson told us that the team most people rated as the best in the world trained in dirty kit every day, faithful to a tradition that went back to the 1960s.
By the end of the evening, I couldn’t thank them enough. It’s because of them that we are here today and hopefully one day we’ll be sitting on the other side of the table. Souness’s response, on behalf of them all, really made us feel special: ‘No, thank you for listening to a load of nostalgic old men. And remember: they always made us feel like we weren’t as good as our predecessors. Our three European Cups weren’t as important as the first one the club won.’ And with that he wished us good luck.
My first visit to Melwood came just a few minutes after my presentation as a Liverpool player at Anfield—a first glimpse of my new workplace. I went into the dressing room and was shown my locker. Not that it was mine yet: it still belonged to Robbie Fowler and he hadn’t emptied it out. The lockers are allocated by shirt number. Mine was No. 9 so I was taking over from a Liverpool legend. I literally took his shirt too: a few months later Liverpool played Cardiff, Robbie’s new team, in the Carling Cup and I was told that he wanted to swap shirts with me. I didn’t need asking twice. His shirt is a treasure I’ve kept with pride.
Liverpool’s No. 9 has always been special. There was Fowler, of course, and people also told me about Ian Rush, John Aldridge and Roger Hunt—one of the all-time greats. I remembered Robbie’s goal celebration against Everton, the one that got him into trouble. I was told about Rush at Anfield and Juventus. About John Aldridge, a clone of Ian Rush. Former players are a key part of every club; they are always there to offer advice and they always want the best for the team. I love talking to them now at Liverpool, just as I did with the greats at Atlético Madrid. Teams are a product of their past and it’s important to honour your history. It’s the best way to ensure you’re on the right path for the future. In Madrid, I used to love talking to Adelardo, who played more games for Atlético than anyone else; to Garate, one of the club’s great No. 9s from the 1970s; to Luis Aragonés, a coach and a player for so many years at Atlético; or to Luiz Pereira, the Brazilian defender who’s now president of Reserva Atlético. It was thanks to them that the club became great; they are role-models for the players of the future.
There’s nothing better than listening to the man who fans consider to be the greatest Liverpool player of all time: Kenny Dalglish. As I said, Guillem wanted to do a report on Liverpool’s past and its present. But Kenny and I are not the same: he is the greatest player of all, I was just a new arrival. I had only scored a handful of goals, nowhere near what Kenny had achieved. There was no comparison: I still haven’t done anything to even get close to him and I felt a little embarrassed, but Dalglish immediately put me at ease. ‘You can only ever be a legend in someone’s mind. So long as you never become a legend in your own mind, there’s no problem,’ he said. ‘People want to pigeon-hole you, Fernando; they want to label you, rank you, judge you and compare you to others. But all that really matters is that you are yourself.’
Balagué reminded me that Kenny and I do have things in common: we’re both strikers, we’re both Pisces, we were both Liverpool’s record signing and, he said, we’re both capable of turning the Kop into ‘a frenzied hive of humanity’…more importantly, Liverpool unites us. As Guillem put it: ‘That’s what this club is all about. Players come and go, but the shirt and the continuity remain. Torres plays with Jamie Carragher, who played with Robbie Fowler, who played with John Barnes, who played with Ian Rush, who played with Dalglish. And Dalglish played with Emlyn Hughes, who played with Ian St John, who played with Roger Hunt, who played with Ronnie Moran, who played with…Well, you can keep it going all the way back to Malcolm McVean, the man who scored the first goal in Liverpool’s history in 1892.’
The other thing we have in common is goals. Dalglish told me that we’re the ones who make people’s dreams come true. The fans can’t play, so they live their dreams through us. Then Kenny revealed something that surprised me: ‘I always wanted to go on the Kop, but I never could,’ he said. ‘The only time I have ever been on the Kop is when the stadium has been empty. It’s funny, my son has been there but I haven’t. A friend of mine took him and looked after him;
he spent the game with him on the Kop. He lived a dream that I couldn’t.’ Like Kenny, I’ve only been on the Kop when it was empty. I would love to think that when I retire it will be impossible for me to watch a game from the Kop too. That would mean I had achieved something great.
Dalglish told me, as he later repeated during that meal with Souness, Lee and Robinson, that the key to Liverpool’s success was the harmony within the team. ‘No team has ever been successful without a good atmosphere in the dressing room,’ he said. ‘They don’t have to go out for drinks together or be best friends, but having a good group is very important. We had a great dressing room, we were really united. Even now there are six or seven of us that are still close. We play golf, we go out with our wives. It’s special. That doesn’t happen now, does it? In twenty years time there won’t be six of you still round the club.’ Who knows? What I do know for sure is that we are all committed to keeping Liverpool great.
During that meeting we talked and talked about football. I talked about the fact that there are games when things don’t go for you but that I will never hide. I always want the ball, even if I’m having a bad day. Liverpool’s legendary No. 7 said he was the same. ‘Of course you want the ball. You have to keep going. As a striker, you miss more chances than you score. The goals aren’t what matter most; what matters most are the chances you miss. The more you miss, the closer you are to the next one you’re going to score. You have to think like that: if you don’t have the courage to develop that kind of attitude you won’t make it at this level.’
I’m not the kind of person who watches a lot of football on television; when I do it’s because I want to know about other teams, about my opponents. I have to study them and prepare myself properly to face them.
In Dalglish’s era, there weren’t so many games broadcast on television, so he had to go and watch players, to see what habits the goalkeepers had, what the outstanding qualities of the defences were, to see if he could learn anything. Then, later on, he watched games to see if there was a player he might like to sign. ‘But,’ Kenny said, ‘I don’t enjoy it as much as I did when I was a kid.’
I learned so much from my time with Kenny. I really like him. He’s a normal person who’s very accessible. He says he doesn’t feel like a legend but that’s exactly what he is. The fact that he has stayed so normal really struck me. I can’t be compared to him but I feel proud to have been able to speak to him for so long. It was a real honour for him to have given up his time to talk to me. Meeting Kenny has made me even more hungry for success, even more determined to work hard and maybe, just maybe, see if one day I can compare myself with him.
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