by Simon Hughes
Scales is adamant that the talent at Liverpool was as considerable as it was at Manchester United. Yet this potential was not harnessed in the right way.
‘United had Alex Ferguson in charge, who instilled the discipline and focus that was needed to be successful. In Roy Evans, we did not have that. In any walk of life, if you give people an inch they’ll walk a mile, especially young lads. Above Roy, it wasn’t there either. The chairman David Moores could have been more forceful on a lot of issues. If a club does not have structure, then it’s not going to function on the pitch in the long term. The whole approach at United was more professional from top to bottom. Old Trafford was set up for the twenty-first century and was forward thinking. Liverpool looked to the past for all the answers but did not apply those principles to what was happening in the present. Liverpool was caught in a time warp. Melwood was undeveloped. The only official merchandising at Anfield was sold from a little shop in the corner of the car park. Whenever the team bus rolled into Old Trafford, there was a megastore and thousands of fans queuing up to buy shirts.
‘The fact that the United boys were doing the same socializing, meeting in the same places, proves that to be successful you’ve got to have all the pieces of the jigsaw in place. You’ve got to have the right set of players. You need the right manager and coaches. You need the right owners, commercial and marketing teams pushing things forward financially. United had all of this. Liverpool did not, although we weren’t far off. It wasn’t as if United were finishing twenty-five points ahead of us and we were mid table, struggling.’
Scales believes what was once one of Liverpool’s greatest strengths had become its weakness before he’d even moved there.
‘Money changed the game and it’s no surprise really that a club with socialist principles was the first to fall by the wayside. Liverpool were the first victims of football’s revolution. At Liverpool, the collective ruled. Suddenly, the players realized the wages they were on would not be able to sustain their lives after football, so they tried to claw as much money from the game as possible. The atmosphere changes. Graeme [Souness] tells them to stick or twist; many of them twist. It unravelled quite quickly.’
Under Souness, a fissure had opened up in Liverpool’s squad, and spirit had drooped to the point where only five players turned up to the end-of-season trip to Tenerife after winning the FA Cup in 1992. Evans attempted to address the issue by allowing the players to go out when they wanted, drink what they wanted, and generally liberated them. Liverpool’s players seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time together once again – just like before – and Evans must have considered this a positive, something that would be reflected by good results on the pitch – just like before. The rediscovered unity was illustrated when Liverpool’s squad invested a couple of grand each in a flat racehorse.
‘We were in Est Est Est over lunch trying to come up with names. It was classic Scouse humour. Robbie said, “Imagine if the commentator says, ‘And there’s Some Horse coming up on the outside.’” We all laughed and went with it. It won its first three races at Haydock. Unfortunately, I’m the worst gambler in the world and only bet on the fourth race when it didn’t even finish.
‘The camaraderie was absolutely brilliant at Liverpool,’ Scales continues. ‘It was the best I’ve seen anywhere. We went out win or lose. But we went out when we lost because it was the mechanism young lads at that time would use to switch off from the disappointment. The training was intense and we’d play two games a week. The decision to go out wasn’t a show of disrespect or an abuse of our status. It was just a way of unwinding and releasing the pressure of playing with a group of mates – your teammates – who were going through the same emotions. Of course, we’d never sit there talking about the pressure. We’d have a drink and talk about something else to escape it further. Nobody on the outside seemed to mind whenever we won, because people wanted to be associated with success, even though – again – we were going out to relieve the tension that had been generated to secure a good win earlier that afternoon.’
Liverpool’s players had shared strong working relationships with members of the press in the 1970s and eighties. By the nineties, however, the attitude towards football coverage in the media was shifting.
‘In the previous era, the players relied as much on the journalists as the journalists did on the players,’ Scales claims. ‘The journalists would go on tour with the players and accompany them on nights out, then show up at the Christmas parties and get involved in all the fun. There was a respect, an equilibrium. That quickly changed when the red-top newspapers in London started hunting for more gossip to fill their columns. Football changed too, with footballers becoming the new rock stars in the eyes of the media. A lot of people think of the football press as one living and breathing organism, but it’s not. There are muckrakers and there are journalists. Unfortunately, the football press wasn’t in charge of its output any more. Unfortunately for us, anyway. Liverpool were the most popular and successful club in the land and were falling just short of the standards that were previously set, at a time when media intrusion was intensifying to a level nobody had seen before. We were always going to be targeted.’
Scales believes Liverpool’s players were almost too familiar with one another. It was rare that cruel words were exchanged. Evans’ attempt to draw them together had gone too far.
‘Collectively, we should have been more like Wimbledon, where there was an understanding that if things were going wrong, we had a responsibility to do something about it. At Wimbledon, the self-governance came from the senior players, who appreciated the sacrifices that needed to be made to make Wimbledon successful. At Liverpool, what had been successful for the senior players previously was not going to be successful for our team due to the acceleration of professionalism. Because the manager believed it was the senior players that should dictate the way things were run – as it always had been under Shankly, Paisley and Dalglish – Liverpool lost their way. At United, Ferguson was orchestrating everything.’
Scales can’t recall a meeting being arranged where the players’ responsibilities were outlined forcefully.
‘If it did happen, it had gone too far for Roy to get the right response. It would have fallen on deaf ears. It is sad because Roy is the nicest fella you’ll ever meet. But unfortunately, in my opinion, he didn’t have the respect or gravitas that he needed to meet the expectations of the club just when football was changing. I think it frustrated Ronnie Moran, who was the opposite of Roy in terms of temperament. It must have frustrated Sammy Lee and it probably frustrated Roy inwardly too. I regret it. We missed a great opportunity to be something special. I honestly feel that group of players could have defined the era and reclaimed the glory of the eighties.’
Scales considers it unfortunate that there have been worse Liverpool players since – certainly with less talent – that have been a part of a squad that has won more and therefore are remembered with more reverence.
‘We’re the Spice Boys and it’s something we have to accept now because it will never change. It frustrates me. It’s very easy to forget the incredible highs. I only need to talk about the 4–3 win against Newcastle when Stan Collymore scored the winner in front of the Kop in injury time for the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck. At the end, the crowd rose and the sound of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” was deafening. I’d lost my voice and had a ringing sound in my ears by the end of that night. The emotion was incomparable to anything I’ve ever experienced in my life.’
Three days later, Liverpool lost at Coventry City, a result that more or less conceded the title to United.
‘It was a shambolic display: one extreme to the exact opposite. It was terrible. I was terrible. Roy can’t take the blame for that. Individually, we all made errors. There were times when we all got too excited and lost our focus. Certain things just shouldn’t have happened. Robbie Williams was on the coach, maybe more than once. Why? Robbie was a great lad and we
had some laughs. But he was going through his exit from Take That. His drink and drug problems were well known. How can you have someone in that situation on the coach going to games? Why the hell was that allowed to happen? It fuelled the whole Spice Boy thing. We all hated the tag but the truth always hurts, doesn’t it? I know I could have done more to avoid it. All the boys could have.’
The Liverpool squad’s reputation as a group of flamboyant hell-raisers was intensified by the way the team played. Evans demonstrated his commitment to the Liverpool way by selling Julian Dicks and Don Hutchison immediately following his appointment, as well as by freezing out Paul Stewart, Mark Walters and, initially, Mark Wright. In midfield, Liverpool re-established their credentials as the best passing team in England, keeping possession better than any other side. In Scales’s first season on Merseyside, 1994–95, Liverpool conceded thirty-seven league goals, better than champions Blackburn Rovers and worse only than Manchester United. But despite the statistics, even the dogs on the streets around Anfield knew of Liverpool’s defensive crisis.
‘It was the crucial times we conceded goals that formed this impression,’ Scales says. ‘Roy chopped and changed it a lot. I played in a back three alongside Neil Ruddock, Phil Babb, Mark Wright, Dominic Matteo and Steve Harkness. Then on the flanks there was Stig Bjørnebye, Jason McAteer and Rob Jones. Every week, it was a different combination. I felt that we were never allowed to settle. It’s no wonder there was an inconsistency, especially at set pieces, when your responsibilities change depending on who you are playing with. You look at the stats and it worked pretty well. But not well enough.’
In the 1995–96 season, only once did Liverpool concede three goals in a match and that was during the famous victory over Newcastle United that Scales has already referred to. It came at a late stage when both teams were chasing the title.
‘I’ll always remember Razor putting his hand up for offside while I was following the man, not realizing Razor had made the call. There was no pressure on the ball either. [Faustino] Asprilla ran through and scored. We were all over the place even in victory. The defending might have been dubious but it was football at its most expressive.’
There were other occasions at Anfield when Liverpool were losing and the pressure inside the stadium was unbearable.
‘You could hear a pin drop,’ Scales says. ‘I remember giving the ball away or not quite winning a tackle. The groan that followed – there’s nothing worse. The pressure was massive. I hear other footballers say that whenever they play, it’s their space and all their issues off the pitch are forgotten in ninety minutes. You couldn’t at Liverpool. You were stepping into a cauldron, representing the hopes and dreams of everyone watching. I knew the supporters would give their last breath to try to force a win. Dealing with that knowledge isn’t easy. Liverpool supporters are not like other supporters because the majority of them have played football themselves. They’re very educated. They understand the emotions of the game. If there’s tension on the pitch, the crowd feel it too. They just get it. The connection between the supporters and the players is closer at Liverpool than I’ve experienced at any other club or seen anywhere else. There is an emotional intelligence, a bond that is unrivalled.’
Liverpool’s progression under Evans was marked at the end of Scales’s first full season with a 2–1 victory in the League Cup final over Bolton Wanderers at Wembley. ‘You win a final and you feel proud. But it was our ambition to win leagues and FA Cups. No way did we feel it was an achievement that put us back to where we wanted to be at. It was satisfying but it wasn’t enough.’
Twelve months later, an FA Cup final against Manchester United presented the opportunity of fulfilling an ambition.
‘Everything was different: the build-up, the enormity of playing United. It was a moment where we knew we really blew it, losing 1–0. It showed up our inadequacies as a team and it was the lowest point in my career. Stepping off the pitch, I was angry. If you look at the photographs taken that day, you’ll see it. There was so much right about our team and so much wrong. It encapsulated everything: coming so close to being successful but feeling a million miles away.’
Scales reacted by rowing with Sammy Lee and Doug Livermore on the coach.
‘Somebody’s wife was invited on; I won’t say whose. I lost it. We’d just lost what was probably the most important game in a lot of our careers. But once again, the organization was random and chaotic. We were wearing our white suits. I’d had enough of it. I told them that things had to change. The structure and discipline wasn’t right. What are we doing? Where are we going? I think it contributed towards me leaving Liverpool, because I challenged the coaching staff openly. This isn’t me trying to sound clever after the event. I was exasperated by that point. I think the players wanted the discipline. By that, I don’t mean someone grabbing you by the throat for being naughty. Just the basics being right: arriving on time, being quiet when the manager speaks. Not having a big party in central London after you’ve just lost an FA Cup final …’
Scales expected to be included in Terry Venables’ England squad for Euro 96 that summer but was surprisingly omitted. He was also scheduled to get married to Ruth and had already been on the stag do with his Liverpool teammates in Dublin when the wedding was called off. ‘I got really down. I returned to preseason training in July three days late with laryngitis because of the stress. I was all over the place. It was the beginning of the end.’
Scales played ninety-four games for Liverpool and was usually selected when fit. At thirty, he started suffering from more injuries.
‘It was just as I began to really get football. But the injuries were self-inflicted. I would train too hard at times, pushing my body harder when I’d had a drink. But of course my body was tired, maybe run-down. I’d have been better off resting.
‘When I first signed for Liverpool, I stayed at the Haydock Thistle and every morning after a night out I’d go running round the racetrack to try to sweat some of the badness out. I thought I was doing myself some good. Because the complex is huge, I got locked in on one occasion and had to do a massive run back to the hotel. On Friday at training I felt fine but by Saturday my legs had locked up. I was in bits. I had a nightmare of a game that day. I could carry on with this type of behaviour when I was twenty-one or twenty-two but as I got older I wasn’t listening to myself. It caught up with me.’
In late November 1996, Scales received a telephone call from Roy Evans.
‘He said that Leeds had made a good offer for me. I’d been in talks with Liverpool about a contract extension but things had gone quiet. I reminded him of that. “All I can say is, we’ve accepted the bid,” Roy kept telling me. But then he said that if I wanted to sit on my contract, I was entitled to. Spurs also made an offer. I wanted to stay at Liverpool, so I rang Roy twice that weekend hoping to hear something positive from him – that he really wanted me to stay. His final words were, “It’s your decision.” It probably sums up his management style. He wanted the players to have the right answers.’
The problems with structure that Scales witnessed at Liverpool also existed at Tottenham. ‘Again, the jigsaw wasn’t complete. We had Jürgen Klinsmann, Teddy Sheringham, Darren Anderton, Sol Campbell, David Ginola and Les Ferdinand. But we were miles away.’
Scales retired from football in 2001 after a brief spell at Ipswich Town. He is still involved in the game, working as a commentator for foreign television stations, and also works in commercial licensing at clubs as prestigious as Inter Milan and Juventus. ‘It is one step removed, where the glare isn’t on you,’ he says. ‘It’s given me an incredible opportunity to explore and be the person I really am without trying too hard.’
With that, Scales stubs out a final cigarette and, after a polite farewell, disappears into the sprawl of south London.
CHAPTER SEVEN
PADDY, THE EVEN BETTER-LOOKING ONE,
Patrik Berger, 1996–2003
PATRIK BERGER IS the kind of ma
n that women stalk. There he is, striding purposefully through the hotel foyer: tall, olive-skinned, cropped dark hair – generally very handsome.
‘He could wear a bin bag and still scrub up,’ my mother once told me. That was before she moved predictably and somewhat disappointingly on to José Mourinho. Today, Berger is sporting a pair of stonewashed jeans, a plain white T-shirt, sandals and a set of multicoloured beads around his left wrist. His warm eyes exude kindness and an understated strength. He has manful gritty stubble dotted across a chiselled jaw. Beneath there are the shoulders of a Titan. It is exhausting just watching him.
Not much has changed. Aged forty, Berger remains the dropdead gorgeous pin-up boy from the wall poster. The female bar staff gravitate in his direction from all sides, like he is a planet with its own orbit. Even though he is initially accompanied by his extraordinarily attractive blonde wife, Jaroslava, it does not stop them gazing.
I decide to tell Berger the information about my mother immediately. In the manner of Roger Moore, his right eye begins an involuntary angular rise as I splutter out the slightly embarrassing tale. His sigh reflects that of a gentleman who has heard this story many times. His response is perfectly indifferent. His fluency in English also makes my ineptitude in foreign languages feel quite shameful. ‘Well,’ he begins, with the flick of a hand, ‘if a lot of women liked me, what can I say? Power is an aphrodisiac. If you play for Liverpool and you are young, you will get the attention, especially if you go to town for a few drinks, for shopping or to dinner. And I do not think there is anything wrong with that. If you are young, free and single – so what?’
Berger’s arrival at Liverpool in late summer 1996 acted as confirmation that a footballer with a head shorn like a billiard ball was yesterday’s news. There had been Jamie Redknapp and Jason McAteer before him but Berger was distinctive. Who was this talented and mysterious Eastern European with a tawny complexion that belied his heritage? Months before, Berger had scored a goal against Germany at Wembley in the final of Euro 96 only to later finish on the losing side. He was twenty-two years old; a Bundesliga winner with Borussia Dortmund; a person for whom career possibilities seemed endless. Over the next seven seasons in almost two hundred games he would score thirty-five goals for Liverpool, the majority arriving via his cannon of a left boot. After scoring twice in his second game for Liverpool, Leicester City’s goalkeeper Kasey Keller said he’d never seen a ball move so fast in his life. Steven Gerrard later claimed Berger’s shooting was some of the most ferocious he’d ever seen.
