Red Machine
Page 28
Throughout this interview, Moran speaks about Ferguson with reverence. Despite the enduring enmity between Liverpool and the club that Ferguson represents, he continuously emphasises the idea that United have scaled the heights by following similar principles to those once held at Liverpool. When Ferguson decided to retire, he was in his third decade of success at Old Trafford. By the ’80s, Liverpool had also been dominant for that period of time.
‘You don’t have to be a genius to realise that if you repeat something, you get better at it,’ Moran continues. ‘We’d tell the players to try to pass to the nearest red shirt in space. If that didn’t happen, it was the nearest red shirt even if he was marked. And if that wasn’t possible, look for something else. This wasn’t rocket science. Over the years, the lads got to know the drill. And because there were five or six of us on the staff that thought the same way, when Bill retired it passed to Bob and the same from Bob to Joe and Joe to Kenny. Not much would change. It made it easier for the staff and easier for the players.’
There was a commonly held belief about the style of football Liverpool should try to execute. But there was no dogma. Liverpool could adapt accordingly when they needed to. That’s why they were considered the most streetwise team in Europe.
‘With football, it’s all about getting the balance right between the team and the individual. You need to have a team where the individual can express himself. You need the clever ones, the ones with it up there. But you also need the ones that will do all the donkey work.’
Fundamentally, though, one character trait linked all of Liverpool’s players.
‘They mustn’t like losing,’ Moran reiterates. ‘You can’t have someone that comes up with excuses like injuries, either. I’d tell them to fuck off. After that, you had to love playing. I knew a few – even back then – that didn’t give a bollocks what was going on. They didn’t last long. You had to really care, like anything in life. If you care, you try harder and do better.’
Moran retired from Liverpool in 1998 following 46 consecutive years with the club. Until recently, he would spend Tuesdays and Fridays at Melwood, walking around the perimeter of the training pitch for his morning constitutional at the invitation of former player and assistant manager Sammy Lee. ‘I’d never look at what was going on,’ he says. ‘It wouldn’t be right, nosing into someone else’s business.’
With that, it really dawns how privacy was arguably Liverpool’s greatest strength. Moran has a knack of telling you something interesting but not the interesting thing you really want to know. At his age, the mind searches for an answer that sometimes it cannot offer. Yet I am also convinced that this is a tactic indoctrinated into him – not to reveal too much. At the end of our chat, when I’ve stopped making notes, he places his hand on my shoulder and says with an emphasis, ‘I haven’t let too much slip there, have I?’
Moran informs me that he has been offered book deals before, ‘to tell stories about fights and girls’. But he did not feel comfortable complying with the idea. ‘I bollocked it off after that was suggested,’ he explains.
In keeping with Bootroom traditions, Moran never sought the limelight and never promoted himself above his colleagues or the team. It was the Liverpool way to deal with any problems internally. ‘We were no different to Manchester United now,’ he says. ‘You see Fergie – he doesn’t let many leaks out, does he?’
Like those that supposedly protected the Ark of the Covenant, Moran will take many of Liverpool’s most intimate secrets to his place of rest. But I leave him believing that perhaps it was Liverpool’s simplicity that outsiders found most complex.
‘Them lot there,’ he says, pointing again at the photograph from the beginning of our meeting. ‘They didn’t want to lose. That’s what football boils down to.’
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About the Author
SIMON HUGHES is a journalist and author. He writes for the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and The Independent, as well as Liverpool Football Club’s official magazine.
Red Machine won the Antonio Ghirelli prize for the Italian Soccer Foreign Book of the Year, 2014. His other titles include Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout and The Torres Story.
Simon’s latest book, Men in White Suits: Liverpool in the 1990s, the Players’ Stories is the inside story behind the decline of Liverpool FC, as told by a host of influential characters associated with the team during this tumultuous period in the club’s history.
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