Ring of Fire

by Simon Hughes

  ‘I was very, very happy, living at home, around people I love. The club came to me and said, “Albert, we have sold you to Bordeaux – the offer was good for the club.” They told me to fly to Barcelona and sign the contract. I could not believe it. I wanted to stay in Mallorca. There was an offer from Atlético Madrid but my heart and mind was in Mallorca and I was too young to go. It showed me that in football, your life can change very quickly. If you become too attached, your heart can be broken.’

  The move to Bordeaux was successful without being spectacular. He went back to Spain with Espanyol and when that did not work out initially, he signed for Manchester City on loan.

  English football supporters probably do not realize the esteem in which the English game is held abroad.

  ‘For me, England is the home of football,’ Riera says. ‘I liked playing in England the most. People ask me whether I miss the weather in Spain. I always say, “Sunshine is for when we go to the beach. A wet pitch is for football.”

  ‘Real Madrid and Barcelona are the two biggest clubs in the world and maybe they always will be. But the best football is in the Premier League because you are competing every weekend. There is intensity in England – sometimes animosity – but also a respect. I played on the wing. The terraces were close to me. I liked playing close to the line. You can feel the crowd, hear the noises. In England, you can smell the soup! You experience every sensation: the sound, the scent, the taste of the football. At corners, the fans get very excited. The anticipation that something was about to happen was enormous. You don’t get that in other countries. In Spain, I sometimes think the fans would ban corners if they could. In France, we would not even practise attacking or defending corners. In England, it is like a goal.’

  Riera returned to Espanyol, where he resurrected his career under Ernesto Valverde, a manager who ‘appreciated the value of traditional wingers’. Riera helped the team to the UEFA Cup final, only to lose on penalties to Sevilla at Hampden Park in Glasgow.

  ‘Everywhere else I went, the managers wanted the wingers to defend or cut inside to help the number 10. When that happens, you are no longer a winger. My strength was getting chalk on my boots and stretching the opponent’s defence – focusing on the attack. Valverde let me do this.’

  Upon signing for Liverpool, Riera can remember recognizing the step up in standard within five minutes of starting his first training session at Melwood, largely due to the presence of one player in particular.

  ‘Steven Gerrard was sliding into tackles as if it was a game and he was playing Manchester United in the FA Cup final. He was the first at running and his passes always hit the mark. The level of commitment was clear: he was the example of the standard you had to meet every day. Otherwise you wouldn’t be good enough to play for Liverpool.’

  His first season, as he describes it, was like a ‘dream’. The team spirit amongst Liverpool’s players was fostered by results on the pitch and then reinforced on the golf courses of Merseyside. Each week, between eight and ten of the players would enjoy a round together, with Gerrard and Pepe Reina acting as the organizers and others like Daniel Agger and Dirk Kuyt usually following. Kuyt, an unconventional Dutch forward, was fashioned as a winger by Benítez and, according to Riera, he played golf as he played football: ‘a strange swing but the ball usually appeared on the green’. Riera moved on to the same luxury housing estate as Reina and Fernando Torres and he formed a close bond with Reina and his wife Yolanda. When the couple’s second son Thiago was born, Riera became the godfather. Riera’s relationship with the goalkeeper grew on the drives to Melwood, sharing lifts. Reina was superstitious and would pay a visit to the same petrol station before games even if his car did not need filling up. ‘If it needed four pounds, that would be his excuse. He did not want to change anything: same dinner, same socks, same underpants. Pepe’s mad.’

  Riera says Liverpool’s players were individually of the highest level. What defined the strength, though, as they scored four goals against Manchester United, another four against Real Madrid, before five against an emerging Aston Villa side, all in the space of twelve days, was the organization of the team.

  ‘Everyone knew what to do. Everyone knew their job. We played the same way in every game. I remember watching the video of our victory in the Bernabéu. We looked like machines – robots! The movements, they were the same time after time for ninety minutes plus injury time. I was against Sergio Ramos and Arjen Robben: world-class players. Robben touched the ball only a couple of times in the game. This was because of Rafa’s plan. Everything was done before the game. He came to us: “Robben, if he does not get the ball, we have no problems.” I had to stop Ramos. So I chased him all night.

  ‘From the outside, the journalist might say: “Riera – he did not play well. He touched five balls; he did not give the assist for the goal.” My job was to stop the pass from Sergio Ramos to Robben; it had to be delayed for as long as possible. I was running, running, running all of the time. I know this game was not my best creatively. I could not say I enjoyed it. But it was so satisfying, leaving the pitch as a winner in the Bernabéu. Not many teams do that. We did. We had some great players. But the team mattered most. Benítez takes the credit.’

  Off the pitch, conflict was never far away. By this point the club had been sold to Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett, but the relationship between the two men had broken down, while trust issues lingered between Benítez and Rick Parry, the chief executive. It could not have been easy for Benítez, managing Liverpool and reaching quick conclusions with important decisions. Yet it was his choice to try to sell Xabi Alonso in the months before Riera arrived. Though the midfielder stayed, by the summer of 2009 – after Liverpool finished second in the league behind Manchester United – Alonso was ready to go.

  ‘You lose a player like Xabi and it is like losing almost 50 per cent of the creativity,’ Riera says. ‘You lose a player who is strong in the dressing room, who is well respected by everyone, but also someone who makes it easier for everyone else to play to their levels. He gave balance, tempo, aggression and rhythm to the team – everything. [He was] a perfect player for Liverpool, the way we were playing.’

  Wingers are often criticized in England for not influencing the game consistently. Benítez demanded that Riera stayed wide and assisted the left-back behind him. His contribution in an attacking sense would be determined by the service he received.

  ‘For wingers to be effective, a lot depends on the middle of the pitch: the balance and identity of the players. These guys need to understand your movements and when to play faster, to be able to give you the ball in a situation where you can create for the next person. Xabi was intelligent and had a quick mind. He gave possession very fast, so I was one against one rather than two against one.

  ‘In that first season, we had Xabi who could do this. We had Mascherano, who was aggressive. We had Stevie, who could release Fernando [Torres]. The spine was so powerful, so quick and so creative. When Xabi left, everyone missed him. The base was gone, the first pass.’

  Riera cites the departure of Sami Hyypiä as being significant as well. The Finnish defender was Liverpool’s captain before the responsibility passed to Steven Gerrard. After a decade of service, Hyypiä was disappointed in Benítez for not telling him face-to-face that Philipp Degen, a new Swiss right-back, was being selected ahead of him in his Champions League squad. Although Hyypiä was registered again after qualifying for the knockout stages and performed strongly in key games, the rejection made him consider his options and eventually he decided to join Bayer Leverkusen.

  ‘Sami was very strong in the dressing room, another leader, trusted by everyone,’ Riera adds. ‘Another one: gone.’

  Benítez was promised more money by the owners to improve other areas of the squad, and had that money materialized he might have made better buying decisions to enhance the squad. It was his decision, however, to replace Alonso with Alberto Aquilani, an Italian with a dubious fi
tness record, someone who arrived on Merseyside with an injury.

  ‘People like to analyse football using statistics and theories. Often, success and failure is determined simply by the standard of the player: how you buy and how you sell, and the consistency within the squad,’ Riera says. ‘From a position of strength, change as little as possible, only buy. In the first year, everything was perfect: players, atmosphere and the organization. The feeling amongst the group was more important than talent or quality. But three players [including Álvaro Arbeloa] were allowed to leave. It took time for the replacements to settle. Maybe they never settled. The mood changed.’

  Liverpool’s decline was swift. An expected title challenge did not materialize and as 2009 became 2010, they were struggling to qualify for the following season’s Champions League, having been knocked out of the present one at the group stages. Riera was out of the team.

  ‘It was a special moment because it was before the World Cup in South Africa. I was not playing. Rafa was trying other players in my position. The trust wasn’t the same as it had been the previous season. I wasn’t sure whether I was being left out of the team because of my efforts in training and in the few games I played in, or for other reasons. I went to Rafa and said, “Rafa, I don’t want any favours from you but if I deserve to play, please put me on the pitch.”’

  Riera’s frustrations spilled over on the training pitches of Melwood. Left behind while Liverpool played an away game, he was involved in a fight with Daniel Pacheco, the twenty-year-old forward. Riera describes it as the ‘standard’ thing that happens when frustrations and emotions are running high. Pacheco was a friend of his but he’d said something that upset him in the aftermath of a pass being short.

  It was the start of what he says was a ‘strange’ period. Marginalized from the team, he gave an interview on Spanish radio. What Riera insists was a constructive evaluation of the season came across as a stinging attack on Benítez, with only a few words from a longer discussion being released, thus allowing the comments to be taken out of context.

  ‘They asked me a question about Rafa’s commitment to training. I told them he was not there every moment of every day because his office overlooked Melwood and he could see from there if he really needed to when we were doing physical sessions and the fitness coach was at work. They made a headline out of that: Rafa is not there every day.

  ‘Of course Rafa was angry with that and I could understand why. I went to him and apologized, explaining that my words had been twisted. Rafa is a very strong character and he did not accept my version of events. He was under pressure and a situation like this only increased his problems.’

  Riera describes his relationship with Benítez before the confrontation.

  ‘Not really close, not really far away – it was somewhere in the middle. You are OK if you accept the situation and see it like Rafa. He wants to control everything. You cannot ask him not to have an opinion on your diet or what you are doing in the gym, because that’s his way: he has an opinion. You have to respect what Rafa likes. If you accept this, then everything is going to be good.’

  Now he is older, Riera believes he is able to see the bigger picture. Back then he admits he did not find it so easy to make concessions – ‘to listen to the reason of others’.

  ‘If you want to work with Rafa, it requires you to be objective,’ he says. ‘You have to realize he is managing not just one person but a group, a team and a club. The expectations on him are massive. He lives and dies by his decisions. That means he can only do things his own way. He cannot afford to make many concessions. Being the football manager of Liverpool, it is like being the prime minister of England or the president of the United States. The pressure never goes away: every second of the day, the pressure is there.

  ‘The problem is, players are selfish. I was selfish. You are desperate to do well. You want to play. You don’t always think that Rafa’s job is more than just about you. I think I have learned a lot of details from Rafa. You realize you cannot make decisions that everyone will like.

  ‘I have to look at myself. I realize now he did not put me on the pitch because I did not deserve to be there. As players, we are selfish. We try to think we have reasons to be angry. But I had no reason at that moment. For sure, he was not doing anything to hurt me or Liverpool. It was one point in my life where I look back and think, Maybe it was me. I did not accept Rafa’s opinion but I did not analyse why Rafa was thinking this way. I did not look at myself. If I had been playing perfectly, would he have put me on the pitch? For sure he would. I did not finish the season playing and I missed the World Cup. Spain won the World Cup. I regret it.

  ‘I do not have anything really bad to say about Rafa. Everyone is different and it would be boring if we were all the same. He is one way; I am another. I have a strong character and sometimes it is not the best way to be. I react so fast without considering the consequences. Sometimes you have to think. Rafa will stop and think – maybe too much.

  ‘OK, maybe I would not go with him for dinner and maybe he does not want to go with me! We have no friendship. But that doesn’t really matter. People always look for the bad things and the criticisms and they make you forget the good moments. Rafa was the perfect manager for Liverpool. We always ask questions about managers: who is the best one? The question should be: which manager is better for your club? Rafa was perfect for Liverpool and I would say Luis Aragonés was perfect for Spain too. I say this because of their intensity and their attention to detail. It is what the people of Liverpool demand and it is what the people of Spain demand. As a player, I never stepped on the pitch not understanding what was expected of me.

  ‘Rafa, he also brought me to Liverpool and for that I am grateful. The first season was probably the best in my career, the most enjoyable. The second? Maybe the worst. It doesn’t mean I only have to look at the bad parts. As a society, that’s what we tend to do a lot.’

  Liverpool’s seventh-placed finish contributed towards Benítez getting the sack in June 2010. By then Riera insists his relationship with the manager had improved and he was confident of getting another chance to prove himself. With Benítez gone, however, his prospects became bleaker with the appointment of Roy Hodgson. Christian Purslow, Liverpool’s managing director, had a list of players he wanted to sell and Riera was amongst them alongside Lucas Leiva, the Brazilian midfielder, and Emiliano Insúa, the Argentine left-back – both Benítez favourites.

  ‘Hodgson, he was clear with us in the pre-season. He said, “I want 80–85 per cent of my team to be English.” Rafa had been there for six years, something like that, so it seemed to me that Liverpool wanted to start again, to follow a different route. Hodgson wanted to start a new culture from the first day. I said, “OK, I respect your decision” but I didn’t agree with it. In football, a mix is good. Sometimes you need something different. I felt I still had qualities to offer the team and the decision was purely based on where I came from.’

  Riera went to Olympiacos, spending a season there, before moving on to Galatasaray.

  ‘I made my Liverpool debut against Manchester United and we won [2–1]. Maybe the noise wasn’t as loud as the derbies in Athens or Istanbul but noise is not the only detail that matters.

  ‘In Athens, I can remember seeing Djibril Cissé shielding himself from stones being thrown by the Panathinaikos fans. You think, If the fans do that to their own players, what are they going to do to us?

  ‘The only time I was scared in my life was when we won the league in Fenerbahçe’s stadium with Galatasaray. We finished the game at nine o’clock and at five o’clock the next morning we were still in the dressing room, hiding. The police told us to stay. People were waiting for us. When we finally got out, it was like a film. For five kilometres until we reached the Bosphorus, the police vans were there: in front of us, behind us and by the sides of the coach. You could see the guns. You could see fire. The Fenerbahçe fans were burning everything: cars and buildings.


  ‘It was the first and the last time the Turkish federation decided to finish the league with a play-off. The game had to be stopped six or seven times. The atmosphere, it was something different. A few months ago, the Fenerbahçe supporters tried to shoot the driver of the Galatasaray bus as it crossed the bridge. They were trying to kill the whole team. This is not normal. OK, as players we are paid a lot of money. But we should not have to deal with this.’

  Riera signed for Udinese on a free transfer in 2014 and these proved to be some of the darkest months in his career. When a photograph appeared in a national newspaper of him in a casino on a match day, it portrayed a player not taking his responsibilities seriously, yet Riera says nothing was really as it seemed.

  ‘It was not on a match day,’ he insists. ‘The club had not selected me or paid me for six months and I wanted to leave because of this. But I also thought the club should honour their commitment to me. When I signed, I did not put a gun to their heads. And they did not put a gun to mine. And suddenly, as if by magic, this photograph appears in the press . . .

  ‘It was a very bad experience. I gave up fighting and went back to Mallorca because it was making me unhappy. I wanted to enjoy my life again.’

  At Mallorca, though, he returned to a club with ‘no clear objective’ under a German owner where ‘football is not the most important thing’.

  Riera reasons that he has moved clubs so many times because of restlessness.

  ‘If you are in the right place and you have everything that you need, why would you want to move? I admire the player that stays his whole life at one club, because it is so difficult. You see so many players and after two or three years their motivation disappears. These players need something else to [help them] switch on again. I see players like Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard in the same way Real Madrid supporters view Raúl or Roma with [Francesco] Totti. I wonder whether the pressure of remaining is actually greater than that of leaving.