Men in White Suits

by Simon Hughes

  Though Thompson speaks endearingly about his upbringing, with admiration for his parents ‘who made all the sacrifices’ to make him a footballer, he admits that Ford was the hardest of environments.

  ‘It was a working-class area,’ he says. ‘It was rough and there wasn’t much opportunity. As a kid, you needed to have your wits about you. My dad was unemployed for a long time during the recession. He lost his job working for British Steel. He wasn’t alone on that front. A lot of people were in similar positions. It was a struggle. He eventually became a driver for Wirral Council, working with local libraries transporting books around. Me mam was a cleaner.’

  Thompson says he had two options: to get into trouble or to play football.

  ‘There was nothing to do,’ he continues. ‘There was plenty of open grass where they’d planned to build extra houses but it never happened. So we’d run about on there causing mischief. We’d throw stones at windows and kick balls around. I was obsessed with the ball. When you find a wall and kick a ball against it constantly, you get to know where it’s going to bounce, the spins with the kerbs and the bumps. It refines your anticipation and judgement. I think it’s a great exercise for kids now: just kicking a ball against a wall. It used to happen at Melwood too. They had a big wooden structure with numbers. You could practise passing, volleys, headers – everything – while improving your control at the same time.’

  At school, Thompson was taught by a Mr Boyle.

  ‘He was very competitive. He loved football. There was a sports centre that was a two-minute walk, so he used to arrange five-a-sides most days. He’d pull me out of lessons for a game. He’d go on one side and put me on the other because there was nobody other than me that was capable of levelling the teams out.

  ‘I remember being really good from a young age [at football]. I don’t know where that came from. If I saw something I liked from a live match on the TV, I’d go and copy it on the street straight away. I’d spend hours until I got it right. I had two older brothers, so I was knocking around with them and playing with bigger lads. That helped me too. I had to learn to handle myself. I had to adapt. I couldn’t let anyone who was bigger get the better of me. You learn to swim. If you don’t, you sink.

  ‘Other teachers at school would say I was cheeky bordering on naughty and a bit easily led. If a practical joke was going down, I’d make sure that I became a part of it. Obviously, I wasn’t very academic. If I put my mind to it now, I think I’d do OK with exams. But I never had the patience. My focus was only on football. I liked football because it never stood still. It’s a dynamic sport. I’m exactly the same now: my life bores me if it’s not dynamic. With football, every day was different, no two games were the same.’

  Even though they did not have the money to pay for luxuries, Thompson’s parents found a way to help him. During the school holidays, a course was taking place at the IM Marsh sports grounds affiliated to the University of Liverpool in Aigburth, across the Mersey river. Scouts from Liverpool Football Club were said to be in attendance.

  ‘It cost £80 for a week and me mam and dad scraped the money together from somewhere. They begged and borrowed to make sure I was there. And, fair enough, some of the sessions were laid on by Hughie McAuley and Dave Shannon – two of the main men at Liverpool. Frank Skelly was a scout and he was observing everything on the touchline. Jamie Carragher was there too. We played against each other and flew into a few tackles. Carra was tough. But I always thought I was tougher.’

  Thompson learnt to execute the Maradona and Cruyff turns.

  ‘We practised them every day. It seemed to be the way at soccer schools. At the end of the week, we played a game. I did the Cruyff turn then went into the Maradona immediately. I’d taken the coaching on board and I could hear Dave [Shannon] telling someone else on the touchline, “That kid’s got something.” After that session, I was asked over to Liverpool.’

  Carragher was invited along too and the pair soon became close.

  ‘Carra was the same type of person as me, although I wasn’t quite as loud as him. His dad was as hungry as my dad. You could hear their voices above the other parents during games. They’d push you. They were very driven. Carra had been the best in his age group for Bootle Boys and I was the best for Wirral. We’d played against each other a couple of times and I could tell he was a top player. It’s easy to forget he was a centre-forward who scored a ton of goals. You couldn’t stop him. He was powerful, very fast and technically brilliant. You know when someone is extra special, though, because they always want possession of the ball. They have desire. They hate losing. They hate being beaten in a tackle. You can tell how much it upsets them. Carra has always been like that.’

  Like Carragher, Thompson had grown up as an Evertonian.

  ‘All the family were Blues. I’d go to Goodison as much as possible. I grew up hating Liverpool. They were the team I wanted Everton to beat the most. But at the start of the nineties, Liverpool’s youth system was better. Tranmere had shown a bit of interest in me but I really wanted to go to a place where I knew I’d have the best chance of developing. The people made it. People like Steve Heighway and Hughie McAuley made me feel wanted and loved.’

  Being an Evertonian eased any nervousness.

  ‘Maybe it takes the edge of the pressure off a little bit because you’re not in awe as much as the lads that support Liverpool. You go in there and think, “Fuck it, I’m stamping my own identity on this place.” Me and Carra would arrive at Melwood wearing our Everton shirts. I used to do it for attention. I was as staunch as they come. But you quickly change. You’re being given an opportunity to display your talent and take on a career in a sport you love. When you start playing for Liverpool against Everton, you realize how much it means to the players, the coaching staff and the parents. For those ninety minutes, there’s hatred everywhere you look. You’re desperate to beat them. You can’t afford to wish you were playing for the other team. Otherwise you’ll play badly and lose the game.’

  Thompson was aware then that the journey to Vernon Sangster – the playing fields that used to be just over the road from Anfield where Liverpool’s youth teams trained – was a burden on his parents.

  ‘Initially, it was twice a week. We didn’t have a car, so they had to pay out again for public transport. I was too young to travel by myself, so I needed one of them to come with me and it cost double. We had to get the bus from the Ford to Hamilton Square in Birkenhead town centre before getting the train over the river to Lime Street, then another bus. It was an hour and twenty minutes each way. I fell asleep on the way home most of the time.’

  After progressing from a schoolboy to the YTS, the journey to Melwood, even further away in West Derby, needed to be made each day.

  ‘Again, it was bus – train – bus, with full-time training in between. After sessions, we had numerous jobs to do: collecting bibs, cleaning balls, cleaning boots, cleaning kit, sweeping the dressing-room floor, wiping down the toilets. It was dark by the time you went home. I enjoyed it because it really gave me a sense of purpose. But I also remember feeling absolutely fucked. It started to tell on my performances. I’d gone from being one of the leading schoolboys on the books, tipped to become a firstteam player, to being so lacklustre it was a joke.’

  Thompson’s struggles were noticed by Steve Heighway, who ran Liverpool’s centre of excellence. He had played nearly 475 games for the club after being spotted as a winger at non-league Skelmersdale United while completing a degree in economics and politics at the University of Warwick.

  ‘Steve came knocking at the door one evening. He thought I was on recreational drugs, because they certainly weren’t performance enhancing, I was playing that badly. Steve was asking whether I was going out partying or whether I had a new girlfriend distracting me. None of that was true. I couldn’t cope with the transition from part-time to full-time. It was a burden on me physically. It felt like I had glandular fever.’

  It transpired that T
hompson’s biggest problem was his diet.

  ‘The next question from Steve was about food. It had remained the same from the age of six to sixteen. It was chips with everything: beans, egg – always fried. Me mam seemed affronted: “His diet’s fantastic, great! He has fried rice on a Tuesday, curry on a Wednesday.” You could see Steve’s face drop. Inwardly, he must have been saying, “What the fuck?” So he gave me mam a telling-off and me a telling-off. I hadn’t adjusted to professionalism at all.’

  Heighway’s role in helping Liverpool’s young players grow was significant.

  ‘I was slow to develop both physically and mentally. I was immature. I remember Steve telling me when I was fourteen that I probably wouldn’t mature until I was about twenty-one or twenty-two. What he meant by that was that I wouldn’t be ready for professional first-team football at Liverpool until that age – maybe a little bit later than everyone else. Although he was right, that comment hurt me at the time and it stuck with me. I was determined to prove him wrong.

  ‘I didn’t reach maturity until I was twenty-five. Steve had that eye for knowing how kids were going to develop. He understood the psychology of football and was great at assessing people. He was one hell of a coach. But he was outstanding at helping players not just become good footballers but good people as well, teaching lads how to become men.’

  Thompson was eighteen when, under Heighway’s leadership, Liverpool won the FA Youth Cup, beating West Ham 4–1 on aggregate after winning both at Upton Park and Anfield in May 1996. Goals from Jon Newby and Davy Larmour secured a 2–0 victory in London before Michael Owen and Stuart Quinn helped wrap up the tie on Merseyside. Thompson says this team was different to that of Manchester United, which four years earlier had won the same competition with a group of players that would become the cornerstone of the club over the next decade: Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, Butt and the Nevilles.

  ‘That United side had more natural ability than ours,’ Thompson concedes. ‘We were a team filled with passion and rage. Aside from Gareth Roberts, who was from Wrexham, and Michael [Owen – brought up in Hawarden near Chester], every lad was from Liverpool or Wirral. There were a few Irish boys on the fringes and they contributed massively too. We spent loads of time together both professionally and socially. There was a team spirit. We all got on really well. On that pitch, every time we stepped over the line something twigged. There was a chance another side might beat us by a piece of individualism or skill. But they’d never out-fight us. We weren’t dirty but we’d always be in their faces. We’d go to the end and we wouldn’t give up.’

  The approach was epitomized by Thompson agitating in the centre of Liverpool’s midfield.

  ‘Hughie McAuley was another coach whose influence was as great on the lads as Steve Heighway’s. Hughie drilled it into me that ability only takes a footballer so far. It’s mentality that takes you furthest. If you didn’t have the bollocks, you’re screwed. That stuck with me too. If I got tackled, it upset me. If I made a bad pass, it would make me feel bad. If someone dribbled past me, I’d get angry. At the age of nine or ten, I’d be aggressive if things didn’t go my way. By the time I reached the first team, it’d be even worse because the expectation was on me to do better. I was meant to be on a level playing field with these players, so to have someone out-do me would feel embarrassing. Because I was smaller and not as quick as others, coupled with the self-doubt, I’d compensate for it by being an angry head.’

  Thompson says two players made the difference for Liverpool. One went all the way in their career and the other did not. Their names were Michael Owen and Jamie Cassidy.

  ‘Michael was a few years younger than the rest of the group but even as a teenager he was a world-class player. I’d heard there was a special kid on the books at Liverpool but the first time I saw him play was on the TV for England at Wembley. He scored an incredible goal. It looked like nothing fazed him. In the Youth Cup run to the final, some of his performances were incredible. He was so, so quick. In many ways, he changed the way the game was played in this country because suddenly every club was looking for someone with the same pace. But there was only one Michael Owen. He was a phenomenon.’

  Cassidy was a left-winger who would play eight times for Cambridge United before dropping into non-league football with Burscough.

  ‘Cass was very elegant but forceful with it. He knew the game. He could hug the touchline but join the play in central areas too. He was a very modern footballer. Then he did his cruciate and broke his leg in separate injuries in quick succession. He probably lost his pace a little bit at a crucial time. Otherwise he would have been a first-team player. I always looked up to him. He was held in higher esteem by Steve Heighway than me and Carra at one stage.’

  It frustrated Thompson that West Ham were rated so highly and expected to beat Liverpool.

  ‘At Liverpool, you weren’t brought up to blow your own trumpet. It was nice to receive credit. But if you achieved something, you weren’t supposed to talk about yourself. It was all about letting your football do the talking. As a group and as individuals, we were very humble off the pitch. If you see our interviews and compare it to the London players, they used to big themselves up and we did not. It used to annoy me, that. Rio [Ferdinand] and Lamps [Frank Lampard] were the worst ones for it. Every time I turned on Sky Sports, Rio and Frank were there talking about how great this West Ham team was. Nobody was talking about Liverpool. It really motivated us.’

  Their cup triumph earned the group extra respect from younger members inside Liverpool’s youth system. In his autobiography, Steven Gerrard recalls how shy he was around Carragher, Thompson and Cassidy, a trio of sharp tongues.

  ‘Steve Heighway used to highlight all the good players in the higher age groups. That would keep you reaching and striving to reach their standards,’ Thompson says. ‘For me, it was Iain Brunskill, Andy Harris, Phil Charnock and Dom Matteo. Steve would always say to me, “Watch them, follow them …” But I also know Steve was telling younger age groups the same things about me, Carra and Cass. He was very fond of us. It was clever because it meant there was a hierarchy and you never got too far ahead of yourself at a young age.’

  Thompson says, ‘I remember speaking to Stevie [Gerrard] and you could tell he had admiration for us at that time. But his acceleration into the first team was rapid, so it didn’t last too long. Stevie had something. He was very small and very slight as a teenager but he used to dominate games with his passion. He was slamming people, getting stuck in. His running and movement marked him out. You could tell he had the potential to be special. But you didn’t know how tall he was going to be or whether he was going to fill out. Then suddenly he grew these legs and shoulders. He had growing pains because he grew so quickly. He arrived at training one day and it was as if he became a man overnight.’

  In August 1996, Thompson was selected on the first-team bench for the opening game of the season at Middlesbrough. With the team wearing an ecru-coloured kit, the game came to represent the best and worst of Roy Evans’ Liverpool in ninety minutes: breathtakingly rapid in attack, often hapless in defence. Fabrizio Ravanelli scored a hat-trick for the hosts to secure a 3–3 draw. Two nights later, Thompson was introduced as an eighty-sixth-minute substitute for Robbie Fowler when Arsenal were beaten 2–0 at Anfield.

  ‘The pace of the game was astonishing,’ Thompson remembers. ‘Everyone else on the pitch was a real man. I was a boy. I wasn’t even shaving. I was ten stone wet through. Fellas like Steve Bould were trying to tackle you. I was more of a technical player than pacey. So I had to figure out ways to get past him. I was thinking to myself, “Fucking hell, is this what it’s going to be like every week? Am I ready for this?” You’re always doubting yourself at that age. Bould was a proper bruiser.’

  Thompson had always believed that he was destined for firstteam football at Liverpool until he started to train with John Barnes and Jan Mølby.

  ‘They were the two that made you realize how far you
had to go. I used to dribble a lot and take too many touches because I didn’t trust anyone else on the ball. I put too much effort in. Barnesy would point out that I was eventually going to make a simple pass, so there was no point making all kinds of twists and turns. He told me it was important to conserve energy. He told me that just because someone else is five yards away it does not mean that it’s not a great pass. I was always looking for the Hollywood ball. Just by changing the angle, the game opens up. Football was a game of angles. It was so simple, it was genius. Playing in that position in the centre of the park latterly in his career, I never saw Barnesy surrender possession.

  ‘Jan was on the same level. He’d come through the Dutch system of playing and some of the knowledge he passed on to me was crucial to my development. I wish he’d stayed a little bit longer but instead he went off to Swansea to become their player-manager.’

  Ronnie Moran’s backroom presence was also important. Moran was entering the final phase of his long career as a Liverpool player, reserve-team manager, first-team coach and temporary boss by the time Thompson first encountered him. Moran was the disciplinarian on the staff.

  ‘Ronnie could cut you down with one comment,’ Thompson says. ‘He was black or white. That’s what was good about him. You knew what was going to upset him and you knew what was going to make him happy. He was very passionate. He was tough and never allowed you to get ahead of yourself.’