The media merry-go-round continued with Phil and Ian Cotton, the club’s press officer, permanently by my side: a general press conference, radio, daily
newspapers and then the Sundays. Just when I thought I had finally finished, Phil took me into another room. With a look of fear in his eyes, he said: ‘Now, you’ve got to talk to Liverpool TV and the club’s official website.’ Well, seeing as we’re here…There wasn’t a minute to think or relax and I immediately realised that things were going to be very different in England. There was so much to get used to.
When I flew to Liverpool for the second time in two days, I still wasn’t aware that my life was changing by the minute. So much was happening that I needed to take a step back and pause for a moment but there just wasn’t a chance to do so. On the way to the presentation that afternoon we had been waiting at passport control at Liverpool airport when a group of fans recognised me. They gave me an amazing ovation and I began signing autographs but I couldn’t hang about because we had to get through passport control. There was a car waiting to take us to Anfield. As I was on my way there, I got a call from my childhood hero Kiko Narváez, the former Atlético Madrid player and one of the stars of their double-winning team, who’d rung to wish me luck. He had listened to what I said during the press conference at the Calderón in the morning and he told me that he thought I’d made the right decision. The call over, there was silence in the car, broken only by the sound of the engine, and I watched distractedly out the window as the city went by. Just as we were going past Goodison Park, the man Liverpool had asked to look after me, Owen, said something. Jorge Lera, a friend of mine from Bahía Internacional, translated for me as he pointed up at the ground: ‘He says: “I hope you score loads of goals.”’
We went into Anfield through the Memorial Gate and Jorge translated as Owen explained what happened at Hillsborough in 1989, when so many Liverpool fans died. It was a tragedy provoked by negligence and one for which there still hasn’t been an explanation. Rick Parry, Liverpool’s chief executive, and Rafa Benítez were waiting for us in the room where the managers’ families wait on match day. The room where I was to sign my contract with Liverpool. Margarita Garay, one of my representatives at Bahía, had just finished making some minor alterations to a couple of clauses when I walked in. I took short steps, glancing at the pictures on the walls, looking at the other people in the room. I took no notice of the food that had been laid on for me. Who could eat at a moment like that? I was handed a pen and I signed the contract that bound me to Liverpool for six years. Benítez congratulated me in typical style: ‘You’ve got to get to the gym. You’re too thin to play in England.’
It took a few months for me to get to know every corner of the stadium. One of the most emblematic is the dressing room. On a match day you go in through the players’ entrance to the sound of the fans singing and chanting alongside the team bus. You go along a narrow corridor, turn right and come to a room that has not changed in a hundred years. It’s a small room with benches, pegs on the walls, two treatment tables and a table in the middle covered with bandages and strappings and other equipment. The players take up half the room, the coaches and backroom staff the other, but this year the staff have taken to using an old storeroom to try to gain a little space. Before every game, Steven Gerrard or Dirk Kuyt take charge of the music, just as Sergio Ramos does with the Spanish national team.
You look around and think it’s a small space for so many people, but tradition dictates. There’s no room for luxury at Liverpool. As Gerrard told Benítez and Robbie Fowler told Gerard Houllier: ‘This is where Liverpool players have always changed—the same Liverpool players who have won countless titles. We’re no bigger than they are.’
The dressing room is an extension of the pitch and the rest of the ground. Anfield is not a modern mega-stadium but the history that surrounds it is far more important.
On your way out to the pitch, you can’t get lost: the tunnel only goes one way, towards the greatest of stages. You really notice the silence as you make your way there. I think the opposition know that something special is going to happen and they’re quiet too, trying to take in the moment. As you reach a small opening at the top of the stairs, a kind of improvised waiting room, the silence is broken by players geeing each other up and the sound of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ coming from outside. It’s a song that sets your heart racing and gets the adrenaline pumping, ready for the battle that’s about to begin.
When I signed for Liverpool on that summer evening, I asked the club to get me twenty shirts with my name and number on so that I could take them back to Spain with me and give them to my friends. It had been such a hectic day that I’d completely forgotten all about them until I was at John Lennon Airport and I heard a shout from Owen, standing there with a bag in each hand. ‘Fernando,’ he called out, ‘your shirts’.
VI The men who made Liverpool great:
‘Here, you’ll enjoy these. They’ll help you learn something about the history of this club and what makes Liverpool great.’
I still remember Owen Brown’s words as he handed me two DVDs and two books on Liverpool. Owen is one of the employees at Liverpool and he looked after me as I took my first steps in the city. There were still a few hours to go until I had my medical just before completing my transfer to the Reds, but he already wanted me to familiarise myself with the history of the club since 1892. The first thing that struck me was that Liverpool FC was founded on 15 March, just five days before my birthday; the second was that it all happened because Everton couldn’t pay the rent at Anfield.
My first encounter with Liverpool’s legends came courtesy of the Spanish journalist Guillem Balagué. He got me and Kenny Dalglish—King Kenny—together for an article for The Times newspaper. First, though, I want to talk about a fantastic meal that the former Liverpool player and European Cup winner Michael Robinson organised. He brought together Liverpool players past and present for Informe Robinson—the programme that he directs and presents on Canal Plus television in Spain. The meal took place in a restaurant in the heart of Liverpool: four legends from the Liverpool side of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and three representatives of the current ‘Spanish Liverpool’ team—Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Robinson himself and Sammy Lee, who at that stage wasn’t yet part of the coaching staff, plus Pepe Reina, Álvaro Arbeloa (who has since joined Real Madrid) and myself. Xabi Alonso couldn’t make it on that cold night in February, while Albert Riera hadn’t yet joined the squad.
After we had been introduced to each other, Souness led the conversation. An elegant, charismatic Scotsman, captain of the team that won the European Cup in Rome in 1984, he was a real leader. Halfway through the speech made by a Uefa dignitary after Liverpool had won the 1984 final on penalties, Souness decided he
had heard enough and quickly pulled the cup from his hands to lift it into the sky because Roma’s fans had already started leaving. ‘I wanted them to see us celebrating,’ he said. Sitting there, his character shone through as he talked; you could imagine him as a leader, a captain. But the star was sitting next to him. ‘The fans declared Dalglish the greatest player in the club’s history,’ Souness said. ‘They called him the Dog’s Bollocks—as good as it gets.’
The four of them were very complimentary towards me. Kenny said that I was Liverpool’s best summer signing. Sammy likened me to none other than Ian Rush, the highest goalscorer in the club’s history. I listened carefully to everything they said—men who had won it all.
One of the talking points was Rafa Benítez’s rotation policy. Souness took no prisoners. ‘I’d like to see some of the old Liverpool philosophy. When you have a great group of players, let them express themselves, let them play, let them complement each other,’ he insisted.
‘Rotation is a mystery. No one knows why Liverpool’s best players don’t play every game. I would like them to know they’re the best, to feel it.’—Graeme Souness
‘I don’t think the game is any more demanding