The Times Interview: Jamie Carragher

Carragher’s Guide to Liverpool, Part 3: A Working-Class Hero Is Something To Be

“I’m getting more praise than Beckham at the moment, aren’t I? It’s nice, good for your confidence. But the main thing’s always the team.”

SOME heroes are manufactured, some spring, ready-made, from the box. The few still achieve heroic status the old way, through hard work, assembling their reputation painstakingly, piece by piece. It has taken the Kop nine seasons, since his debut as an 18-year-old, to celebrate Carragher properly.

He played in central midfield that day, against Middlesbrough in the League Cup, and went on to fill a variety of roles. Houllier moved him to full-back to accommodate the arrivals of Stephane Henchoz and Sami Hyypia. It took Benitez to return Carragher, full-time, to centre-half, the position he played at 16.

Already Merseyside Sports Personality of the Year (the proudest moment of his career, he says), he has barely put a size nine wrong this season, but it’s not just the reliability of his clearances and interceptions that has made him invaluable. Playing alongside alternating partners, Hyypia and Mauricio Pellegrino, both of diminishing pace, Carragher has read the game beautifully, always putting himself in position to stop his sidekick from being exposed. He has become an arch anticipator of attacks and organiser in defence. Without wishing to denigrate Steven Gerrard, you sometimes have to remind yourself that the captain’s armband is worn by Liverpool’s No 8, not their No 23.

“I’ve maybe always been classed as an ‘unsung hero’, but with other English players leaving Anfield, there’s only me and Stevie left, and I was always going to be looked at more. I think the journalists like to butter us up because we’re the only two they can interview in the right language afterwards . . .

“Being in the middle’s better because you can influence the team more and you don’t get as exposed as you do out wide. There’s nothing worse than a quick winger. But I’d say playing in different positions earlier in my career helped me learn the game. Being a utility man has maybe only hindered me at international level.”

He adds that he is playing with more confidence than ever because of Benitez. He loves talking tactics with his technocrat manager. “I like thinking about the game. Even as a kid, I bought all the magazines, Shoot and Match. Now it’s World Soccer and 4-4-2. Sky Sports News is on in our house all day.”

He grew up supporting Everton. “Marsh Lane is very Catholic and very Evertonian. I was probably an Everton fan until I was 16. I didn’t really like Liverpool as a kid, but three or four of us from Bootle Boys got the chance to join them, and, aged nine, you don’t turn that down. I actually left and went to Everton for a year, but it was a case of the heart ruling the head. I realised I’d made a big mistake and that Liverpool at that time was the better place for a youngster, so I phoned and asked, ‘Can I come back?’ ” When he did, he was introduced to a tiny but already sensational schoolboy, Michael Owen. Each the other’s best mate in football, they always seem an odd couple. “We’re more similar than people think. His public image is such that he doesn’t give much away. He plays everything with a straight bat, like Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker. It must be something to do with the agent they’ve got. (Carragher deadpans this: he is with the same management company as Owen.) I tell Michael he’s got to appeal more to the man in the street. He’s a bit too good to be true sometimes. He needs a bit of scandal in his life. I speak to him probably twice a week and he texted me after Juve. He’s delighted for Liverpool.”

Can’t Carragher lure Owen back to Anfield? “I tell him to come back every week! Seriously, he’s been a bit frustrated at times this season, but I think he feels right now that he might be about to get a run in the team. He scored against Barcelona and the manager dropped Figo to let him play. He’s banging in goals for the biggest club in the world, so at the moment he’s happy.”

Banging in goals . . . a scorer in his third game for the club, Carragher’s next strike for Liverpool came three years later. Since January 19, 1999, more than six years have elapsed since the No 23 put a ball in the net. “My career total should be three, mind. There was a game against Middlesbrough where I scored but had to give it to Michael. As it was going in, he went to kick it and he claimed he got the slightest touch. He ended the season joint top league goalscorer alongside Dion Dublin and Chris Sutton because of that . . .”