Carra: My Autobiography (8 page)

And it's not just the Everton players who seem to have developed what I'd call the Goodison persecution complex. I didn't really blame Stubbs for defending his team, even if I disagreed with his comments, but I'd expect their hierarchy to be more considered and careful with their remarks. There are plenty at Goodison who've done the club no favours when talking about Liverpool.

The person I've respected most at Everton during my time as a player is David Moyes. Without doubt he's Everton's best manager in twenty years. And the quip he made on the day he joined about Everton being the People's Club on Merseyside was genius. It immediately got the Evertonians on his side and wound up the Liverpudlians, so fair play to him. Brilliant stuff, I say. That's what it's all about in this city. Make your own fans proud of you, and if it gets your rivals' backs up it's a classic double-whammy. There's no harm in that at all. In 2007, Rafa Benitez tried to hit back when he talked after a game about Everton being a small club that came to Anfield to play for a draw. How did they react? They put a statement on the official Everton website having a go at Rafa. How small-time can you get? It was embarrassing, but it proved my point about the different reactions to upsetting comments.

Let's be blunt about this. If I really wanted to be cocky about Liverpool's achievements, I've got plenty of ammunition. We could really milk our European successes and domestic trophy haul if we wanted, but I firmly believe we've kept a lid on it to make sure we don't unnecessarily upset our neighbours.

I could understand Evertonians being wound up by Rafa's comments in exactly the same way Liverpudlians still get angry about the People's Club statement, but surely the hierarchy has a duty to rise above that? We all have a responsibility as players and fans to be careful what we say and not to inflame tensions even more, but in the heat of battle, or in the immediate aftermath of a game, it's forgivable if mistakes are made. At boardroom level it's a different matter. You should show some dignity and rise above the banter. Everton don't need to justify how big a club they are in England, and certainly not on Merseyside. Rafa only recognized how big Everton are when he arrived in this country. When he was in Spain he had no reason to see Everton as he does now.

What made their reaction even more surprising is it came at a time when the debate about the two Merseyside clubs sharing a stadium was being revived. There was a time when some argued this made sense logically and financially, but tradition ensured there was no prospect of the fans accepting it, especially as the nature of their rivalry changed. I've never wanted it and would never have supported it. Everton sympathizers, however, seemed keen on the idea being discussed and there were regular stories in the
Echo
and
Liverpool Daily Post
talking up the possibility. Once again, there was an inescapable undercurrent of Everton's jealousy of Liverpool tainting my view of their motives.

For years, Everton championed their project to build a stadium on the King's Dock on Liverpool's famous waterfront. Liverpool FC weren't invited to the party. I can't remember a single interview with Everton owner Bill Kenwright in which he said it made sense for Liverpool to head to the King's Dock with his club. Now there's a wonderful arena at the venue, but there's no football club playing in it. Everton's perilous financial situation meant their dreams were dashed.

By then, Liverpool were pressing ahead with the new stadium on Stanley Park. Soon after the King's Dock plan was scrapped, the agenda of some of the Everton fans switched from being boastful about their own stadium to critical of the decision to allow Liverpool to build theirs. Evertonians said they'd been refused permission to build a new Goodison on the park in the 1990s. But even if they had, as with King's Dock, they wouldn't have been able to afford it.

This sense of injustice turned into what can only be described as an unofficial campaign to get Liverpool City Council to agree Liverpool's plans on the condition they spoke to Everton about a shared stadium. They were too late.

By this time my switch to Liverpool was virtually complete. The club had taken over my life, rearranging my head as well as stealing my heart. I was seeing red rather than feeling blue. You can attempt to follow both teams with the same intensity, but in the end it's a straight choice. Try to sit on the fence and you're quickly exposed as a fraud, hiding your true feelings but fooling no one.

I often wonder what kind of person I'd be if I'd never played for Liverpool and was still travelling home and away following Everton. I'd be an elder statesman of the away-day crowd. Maybe young lads would be getting introduced to me and my dad, hearing stories of how we were on the pitch celebrating some of Everton's most glorious victories. Would I have gone swimming with the tide on derby day and joined in the abusing of Stevie and Robbie? I wouldn't have known them if I wasn't a player. But I wouldn't have gone down that path. I know it. If I picture myself alongside fans singing 'murderers', it makes me feel sick. I'm ashamed of it. I know I'd be the one telling those around me to stop, like my dad did to the idiots at Goodison who sang Munich songs at United fans in the mid-eighties.

To me, it's a younger generation that's most guilty of taking the derby rivalry to an extreme, fans who weren't even born in 1985 but who want to believe what they're told, or just want to 'fit in' to impress their friends. It's the same at Anfield. When snotty-nosed teenagers sing about the Munich air disaster – something which disappeared for years but crept back into the game not so long ago – I want to go into the stand myself and rattle some cages. I suspect some of those who behave in this way don't think of the implications of what they're doing. It's self-abuse, really, bringing shame upon themselves and their city as much as hurting the targets of their venom. But no matter how unacceptable they're told it is, they still do it.

Growing up where I did in Marsh Lane, the choice of red or blue was made for me. As I got older, my ability to play at the highest level took me in a different direction and gave me an opportunity few Scousers get: I got to pick sides. I was also fortunate to be given an insight into how both clubs operated at close quarters, and I reached the conclusion Liverpool is a bigger and better-run club.

Originally I only wanted to play for Everton, but when I left Liverpool as a schoolboy to do so, I knew I'd made a mistake. At first I still liked Everton and wanted them to be performing well, but increasingly I became less tolerant. The transformation from loving them to openly wanting them to lose took years to complete, as I said, but when I saw some of my best friends suffering as a result of revolting abuse, naturally, my love for Everton receded. Anfield called me. It was my professional commitment and personal friendships that finally took my heart from Goodison and positioned it slap bang in the centre of The Kop.

Regular first-team football for Liverpool made me increasingly unconcerned about hearing Everton's results, but if you want the date, time and venue of my full conversion from Blue to Red, I can provide the details. It came on 24 January 1999, the day of the FA Cup fourth round tie between Manchester United and Liverpool – Old Trafford, followed by a ceremonial visit to The Chaucer.

United won the treble that season, but we were two minutes from knocking them out of the cup with the kind of gritty performance we produced regularly during the more successful period of Gérard Houllier's reign. We'd been 1–0 up for the entire match thanks to Michael Owen. Defensively we were outstanding. At the time it was probably my finest game for Liverpool.

We lost two goals in the last two minutes, the winner arriving in injury time. Coming home on the coach was, to that point in my career, the worst feeling I'd known in football. I headed straight to The Chaucer to drown my sorrows, hoping I'd see a few sympathetic mates. I knew I was going to take some punishment, but I thought most people would feel sorry for me.

Perhaps I should have known better. As I walked through the door, there was laughter. Friends, people I'd grown up and travelled around Europe with following Everton, didn't think twice about treating me like any other 'dirty' Kopite. I stood there for a brief second unsure what to do. I could have brushed it off, sat down, ordered a pint and taken my medicine with the help of the much-needed lager I'd craved all the way down the M62. That's what I'd do now, but not then. Mentally and physically drained and demoralized, I turned around and went straight home.

That moment exposed how much my allegiances had changed and how I was now perceived by my own friends. It had taken me ten years to walk those few symbolic miles across Stanley Park from Goodison to Anfield, but without even realizing it at the time, that was the moment the journey finished.

There was a time I would have been sitting with my Blue friends initiating the laughter at the Liverpudlians' expense, just as I did when I saw the Arsenal graffiti in 1989. Now I wasn't a fan, but someone who'd been toiling for his team only to see the biggest win of his career stolen in the worst way possible. When I walked into The Chaucer that evening I was heading for a collision with my own past, and a glimpse of what would have been my future if I hadn't been lucky enough to be a Liverpool footballer. I didn't like what I saw.

As I made my way from the pub and into the Marsh Lane drizzle, I wasn't walking away from my mates at the bar, who were perfectly entitled to have their fun. I was turning my back on that bitter Blue eleven-year-old who'd celebrated Michael Thomas's winner. I was turning my back on Everton.

There's nothing like your first time.

The adrenalin rush; the anxiety beforehand, as you want to do yourself justice; the yells of approval as you approach the climax; and the feeling you're sharing something special. That's what winning your first significant trophy does to you.

Holding aloft the 1996 FA Youth Cup with my Liverpool teammates was as pleasurable an experience as any I've had in the game. It wasn't the greatest performance I've been a part of. In many respects we fumbled through much of the competition, and it was more memorable for its originality and symbolism than its place in the history of the club. But to those of us who played a role in it and went on to represent the first team, the first kick in that tournament signalled the beginning of the end of our apprenticeship.

We began that Youth Cup campaign of 1995–96 as kids, unknowns with everything to prove. We ended it on the threshold of a senior debut, with plenty of ammunition to suggest we'd be around for many years to come. I was eighteen, jogging confidently around a packed Anfield alongside players of the calibre of Michael Owen and David Thompson, clasping medal number one as a Liverpool player, and there wasn't a grain of doubt in my mind this wouldn't be my last. Amid the celebrations, I vividly recall sensing this triumph was the platform for much more. We all knew unthinkingly this wasn't the peak of our success at Anfield, but another important step on our journey. There would be more illustrious finals heading our way in a red shirt. This was like a final exam before graduation, and we'd passed with first-class honours.

If you win a cup as an adult, you want to savour the moment and appreciate it for what it is there and then. As a youngster, there's a different sensation. No sooner are you holding one cup than your mind is racing ahead and you're dreaming of where it will lead. In my case, I felt I'd shown I was ready to be promoted to first-team duties. I'd only have to wait a few weeks for this ambition to be realized.

In 2006 and 2007, those memories came rushing back as I watched Steve Heighway win the FA Youth Cup for the first time in ten years, and then defend it with another crop of fresh-faced youngsters. I sat in the stands alongside Steven Gerrard to offer my support and could visualize myself running about with the cup and how excited I'd been about the years to come. But as I applauded the next generation, I was partly proud and partly saddened by the scenes of jubilation I was witnessing. There must have been a sense of apprehension, hollowness even, as those emerging youngsters hailed their win. None of those players must have felt confident this would be anything but the highlight of their careers in red.

So much had changed at youth level between 1996 and 2006, and players following in my tradition are suffering the most. I've become one of a dying breed – a Liverpool lad playing for Liverpool. The timing of my arrival as a Liverpool player was as impeccable as one of my most important last-ditch tackles. And given what's happened since, it had to be. Although I believe myself good enough to have played for the club in any era, I'm not convinced I'd have been handed the same opportunities had I broken through a few years later.

The trip from Liverpool's youth side to the first team used to be straightforward. Nowadays it's an obstacle course, the route blocked by a combination of foreign recruits and political infighting between the club's opposing factions at youth and senior level. It's as if we've erected our own barriers between the youth and first team.

Being part of a successful Liverpool youth squad once meant you were tantalizingly close to a full debut. Nowadays, the previously short trip from the Anfield Academy to becoming a household name is a voyage of a million miles. Playing for Liverpool wasn't a distant fantasy for me. Walking through the gates of Melwood as a nine-year-old, I believed it was a genuine possibility I would play for the club. The tragedy for someone at the same age today is that that hope is remote.

The reasons for this have been a constant source of conflict at Anfield, and there have been times I've wanted to get involved in the debate. My playing commitments have meant – up until now at least – I've never allowed my strong opinions to intrude on what is essentially an issue for the club to resolve. All I know for certain is this: the days when Premier League managers were prepared to gamble on or show patience with their up-and-coming talents are over. It depresses me how local lads are rapidly becoming as much an endangered species in the Liverpool first team as players who wear black boots.

Of course it's not just Liverpool suffering in their desire to bring through their 'own'. There's a nationwide epidemic, with an increasing shortage of quality players coming from the academies. Or perhaps I should put it another way: the players coming through the ranks are suffering from a shortage of chances to show they have enough quality.

The stakes in the game are too high to permit a long-term vision with youth development. Managers are under insufferable pressure to get instant results, so they won't take risks with players who, like me, may have needed six months or a year of first-team experience to establish themselves. Some clubs could have gone through three managers by then.

I wouldn't say all the Academy boys who've followed me and Steven Gerrard were necessarily in the same class, but several have been moved on at a stage when they were being judged on their 'potential'. But the longer you spend alongside top-class players and the more you're selected, the better you become. Potential has to be given the chance to grow, and those seeds are only planted on football pitches during games. If you're starved of the minutes, you learn nothing new, progress no further, and slide into obscurity.

The best any reserve on the fringe of the Liverpool senior squad today can hope for is a Carling Cup appearance and a few preseason friendlies, unless you're a world-beater at seventeen or eighteen. Forget coming into your own at twenty or twenty-one, as so many did in the past. Those who've come through The Academy but aren't playing regularly by then might as well decide where they fancy going on loan.

As I said, you can't blame the managers for their bloody-mindedness, given the enormous demands upon them. They've got to look for the quick fix, and would rather buy an established player they know from abroad than blood an unproven teenager. Fans are also more intolerant than they like to think, and won't stand for experimenting with youth unless it's instantly successful. Supporters will always embrace the idea of their side being packed with local talent, even suggest it's a fundamental ambition of the club, but the passports of the players are consistently shown to be irrelevant when it comes to judging results. The fans are no less forgiving if a Liverpool team full of Academy recruits gets beat. Recent history proves this.

One of the most controversial managerial decisions of the last twentyfive years at Anfield was taken by Rafa Benitez in the FA Cup third round defeat against Burnley in 2005. He was slated for selecting a team packed with youngsters from our Academy, even though a virtually identical side was lauded for beating a full-strength Tottenham team in the Carling Cup a month earlier. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Benitez's choice that particular day, as a result he'd have had to question his own sanity before taking the same decision again.

The next worldclass Merseyside teenager to make his Liverpool debut will feel the breath of forty thousand sighs of relief as fears of the extinction of local talent are eased. The hunt for the next Gerrard, Owen or, dare I say, Carragher has become as obsessive as the club's pursuit of the Premier League title, and has led to some high-profile casualties.

Liverpool were spoiled for a sustained period in terms of the idea of Scousers emerging through the ranks and becoming the mainstay of the senior side. In the 1960s and 1970s the club could rely on a steady rather than spectacular stream of local talent. Ian Callaghan, Tommy Smith, Chris Lawler, Phil Thompson, Jimmy Case and David Fairclough successfully jumped from the boys' pen on The Kop on to the pitch, but it was never the case that two or three a year made the breakthrough. For much of the 1980s Liverpool struggled to find anyone good enough from the area. The likes of Sammy Lee and Gary Ablett were exceptions. The double-winning side of 1986 had one Merseysider in the squad, Steve McMahon, and he was signed from Aston Villa. In the great side of 1988, John Aldridge had been brought in from Oxford after spending most of his career outside the city in the lower divisions.

Before Kenny Dalglish appointed legendary ex-winger Steve Heighway to look after youth development, hardly any players had moved from the reserves into the first team for a decade. The School of Excellence, as it was, included many who'd been enticed to the club by Dalglish and Heighway. We continued to represent our Sunday League sides, but we'd head to Melwood once a week, staring at the shiny cars and smart clothes of the professionals in between training sessions. Knowing I'd be sharing the same pitch and dressing rooms with some of the world's greatest players was inspirational.

Heighway's appointment coincided with some spectacular discoveries. A flurry of us arrived around the same time in the 1990s, enhancing the club's reputation for nurturing local talent. Steve McManaman, Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard and I saved the club millions in transfer fees; others like Stephen Wright, Dominic Matteo, David Thompson and Stephen Warnock made millions more through their sales.

Sadly, in recent years this conveyor belt, which was so prolific, has ground to a halt.

If ever a coach paid for achieving too much too soon, it's Heighway. The proficiency with which local boys made the step up heaped pressure on him to unearth more of us on a season-by-season basis. Over £10 million was spent on the new Academy, with extra millions committed annually, but the School of Excellence days were the club's most rewarding. Heighway eventually left Liverpool in 2007, despite winning two successive FA Youth Cups, partially because he was sick of the criticism. The split between The Academy and Melwood was unhealthy for the club and I felt the youth director was unfairly treated.

There were times I felt unless a youngster was as good as Stevie or Michael, our managers would be too quick to dismiss them, favouring some of their own foreign imports who weren't any better than the Academy lads. And anyway, homegrown players of Gerrard's class come around once every thirty years at any one club. From the moment they make their debuts, they look like world-beaters. Mo was the best player in the side on the day he broke into the first team. Stevie walked into the same category. Their examples should have been enough to convince the senior management that if the quality was there, Heighway would find it and nurture it. Houllier and then Benitez were constantly at loggerheads with Heighway, and frustrated that players of first-team quality weren't arriving from the youth setup every year. Both had experience of their own as youth coaches in France and Spain, so they resented having no influence in this sphere at Liverpool.

While I understand their sense of dissatisfaction, the club was right to trust Heighway. Managers come and go, but you've got to maintain continuity across as many levels of the club as possible. What was essentially a clash of personalities became something much bigger, and it was detrimental to Liverpool. Changing the youth set-up every few years when a manager leaves makes no sense. The key is for the youth director and manager to work together, but that became increasingly impossible as the conflict cast its shadow across the club. Given the lack of cooperation, it's no real surprise Steven Gerrard remains the last Academy success story, from as far back as 1999.

Houllier and Benitez knew they were never going to get someone of his ability every season, but they still had plenty of quality local players to work with. Stephen Wright was one of those who showed promise when he broke into the side, but Houllier later sold him to Sunderland, replacing him with Abel Xavier. I can understand why that annoyed the Academy staff. Wrighty was one of those who'd give you that extra 10 per cent commitment, and with the right coaching and quality players around him he could have stayed at Liverpool for a lot longer. Replacing him with Xavier was nonsense from both a football and business point of view, precisely the kind of decision that has been and is being replicated across England: a promising English youngster makes way for a foreigner with a reputation (not all good) and plenty of experience but who's no better. Houllier also sold Matteo, another youth product, to Leeds so he could buy Christian Ziege – another expensive flop. He later admitted he'd been too quick to accept a good bid.

Of all the youngsters to make their debut under Houllier, none started as well as Jon Otsemobor, who was tipped for stardom throughout his Academy career. After two man-of-the-match performances at fullback, he was subbed during the first half of a game at Manchester City and never played again. It seemed to me that some were almost relieved he didn't succeed after their arguments with Heighway. They'd decided Heighway wasn't finding the right players and nothing was going to convince them otherwise.

You could say many of these players moved elsewhere and did nothing to prove Liverpool's decision to offload them wrong. I reject this as a foolproof theory. Had they stayed at Anfield, they'd have played at a consistently higher level and inevitably improved. They were denied the same opportunities to develop their game as the rest of us. In 2007–08 I watched Danny Guthrie perform well for Bolton and often thought he could do a job for us, but he just wouldn't have had the same chances at Anfield.