The Big Interview: Every week we bring you a fresh take on what’s happening right now. Below, former Ireland international Stephen Hunt shares his memories of past battles and gives his thoughts on the current Liverpool team.
PURGATORY IS OVER and football fans can see the pearly gates. Yet when they peek through the railings tomorrow evening at 6pm, it will be at an empty stadium showcasing the dubious talents of the footballers from Sheffield United and Aston Villa.
A heavenly image?
For many it will be. Winter was long, spring worse. Fans have suffered an interminable wait. “Been looking forward to this day for ages,” says Stephen Hunt, now an agent but once a star in football’s best-selling show.
In the history of the Premier League, seven teams can call themselves great. One of those has yet to win the title although that will change over the next couple of weeks. Another is Guardiola’s Manchester City who return to our screens tomorrow evening for their date with Arsenal. Then you have Manchester United’s hard-nosed double winners from 1993/94; the upgraded United model who won the Treble in ‘99; Arsenal’s Invincibles; Mourinho’s Chelsea Part 1 and the United of Rooney, Ronaldo and 2008.
The rest, to steal Eamon Dunphy’s catchphrase, were ‘good not great’. As he thought about all this over the weekend, Hunt’s mind was drawn back to another discussion involving Dunphy and his close friends, John Giles and Liam Brady, way back in 2007.
This was the season when Hunt’s Reading were an earlier version of the Wolves and Sheffield United sides we have seen in this campaign; proof that you didn’t need the deepest pockets to survive in the world’s toughest league. Yet this was also a time when Hunt came to appreciate what it took to be on the highest tier. Reading’s elevator stopped before the top floor.
“United blew us away,” the former Irish international says. “Scholes, Giggs, Neville, Ferdinand – they were all superb players, winners but also hard workers. They’d follow runners; put the tackles and the blocks in; do the unglamorous stuff, the marking and all that.
“You’d think you were in with a shout of getting a result, be 1-0 down, then bang. The ball would go to Cristiano Ronaldo sitting in the pocket, seemingly doing nothing, then he’d explode into action, tear in from the wing, score. Game over.”
Yet for Giles, Brady and Dunphy this wasn’t enough. Sitting in the RTE studio, they dissected Ronaldo’s game with a forensic eye. Great players weren’t petulant like Ronaldo, they argued. Great players tracked back. From a distance of 13 years, Hunt takes a different perspective.
“Once in my career – just once in 21 years – was I ever told to stay upfield and not track back,” Hunt says. “It was a clear instruction from the manager (Steve Coppell) and the lads took the piss out of me relentlessly once he said it. Like, a big part of my game was about having a serious work ethic. But the manager’s thinking was that by waiting upfield, we could do something on the counter.
“And on this day we did just that. I scored. I went mad too with the celebration – a crazy mixture of a Robbie Keane cartwheel mixed with a bit of Fastino Asprilla. And that came down to relief. By being handed freedom, the manager was giving me confidence, and also a responsibility. I kind of knew I had to deliver. There was pressure. And I enjoyed that.
Now, think about the trust Alex Ferguson was handing Ronaldo. I only got that freedom once in my career. Ronaldo gets this when he’s 22, in a team full of veterans and winners. What does that say about Ferguson’s vision for the player he’d become? The fact he didn’t track back was deliberate. I should know. We paid the price when he played against us.”
Everyone did the following season, Ronaldo scoring 42 goals, Wayne Rooney coming close to his peak, Carlos Tevez adding a mix of snarl, sweat and swagger to their forward line. A genuinely great side? Hunt is in no doubt.
“We always felt we had a chance,” he says. Even against United, Arsenal, Chelsea? He hesitates. “I’d like to say yes but probably no. Like, my record against Arsenal – six games, five defeats, one draw – is appalling.”
His record against United and Chelsea – just one win in 17 games – isn’t much better. “Look, the great teams have a mix of things. United were schooled winners. There was just such a mental toughness about them, mixed with the class of Ronaldo or Rooney. Personally, the team I feared most was Arsenal, because they could just tear you apart. Everything seemed planned. You couldn’t cope against them. We played 4-4-2 and it was suicidal. They always had time and space.”
Matches against Ferguson’s United and Mourinho’s Chelsea were closer but still miserable. “They always found a way of winning.” Not just at Reading but at Stoke on a Monday night; at Bolton, Blackburn and Burnley.
They were serial winners. And look, those Premier League medals were won in a global league. They earned it the hard way. The teams who won the league 25 years ago were winners of a Five Nations championship. The league has changed. It’s better.”
And – after three months in hibernation – it’s back.
We’ll get another look at Pep’s City tomorrow; Klopp’s Liverpool on Sunday. Each team, Hunt insists, can call themselves great.
“If Pep’s City are a better version of the Arsenal teams I played against, capable of beating teams 6-0, 7-0, then this Liverpool team is more like the Chelsea side that Mourinho built in that 2005-07 era; reliable even when they’re having a bad day, possessors of talented, creative players but first and foremost, a really adaptable, pragmatic side,” he says.
“Like Liverpool can hammer great teams like Barcelona – but they can also mix it. When I was playing, the big phrase was ‘can they win at Stoke on a Monday night?’ Well, Liverpool can win any night of the week against anyone.”
You just couldn’t have imagined anyone saying these words in October 2015 when he arrived at a club who had won just three of their 11 games that season. West Ham had beaten them 3-0 at Anfield; they needed penalties to knock Carlisle out of the Capital One Cup; Norwich City and FC Sion both went away from Liverpool with a 1-1 draw.
Now look at them; Champions League finalists in 2018, Champions League winners in 2019, soon to be crowned Premier League champs in a matter of weeks, possibly days.
“I’m sure he (Klopp) has a cold side too but what really impresses me about the man is the way he can park his professional persona and then deliver a deeply personal message. Like, he was nine points away from ending their 30-year wait when the league stopped. Now part of him was entitled to feel aggrieved, at the very least unfortunate. Yet, look how he reacted, think about what he said.
He took football out of it. ‘People are dying, football doesn’t matter,’ he said. That’s leadership. It’s sensitive; it’s caring; it’s right. He’s an impressive man, not just a superb manager.”
So, Hunt says, is Guardiola. “There’s a bravery to his team’s tactics, this willingness to really have a go at teams, to expose their defenders to so much space. Yet they coped last year and the year before, firstly, I’d say, because of Vincent Kompany’s leadership which has been missing this year and secondly because they’ve aged.
“Look, I was never the same standard as those players but I did play in the same league and I know how much of a difference a year can make in Premier League football. One minute you’re flying, you’re fast, you feel able to take players on. A year later, if injuries kick in, you’re just not as quick as you once were. That full back you used to take on; you can’t get by him anymore. Those tracking back runs you used to do; you’re just not as fast at getting back. A time comes when you realise you just don’t have the legs to do it anymore at the level you used to.
“For me personally, the loss of fitness led to a loss of confidence. I can’t speak for some of the City players but looking at them from a distance this year, they just seem more vulnerable defensively. They need freshening up.”
And yet, when he’s picking his list of great teams, they’re in exalted company.
“Time will be kind to this Manchester City side. The fluency they achieved; the excellence of their play, the positivity of their attacking, they’ll go down – as will Liverpool – as two of the Premier League’s greatest.”
