There's Only One Jamie Carragher
Feb. 8th, 2013 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99Eurosport's Early Doors article today (http://preview.tinyurl.com/earlydoorscarragher) is wonderful.
As is Jamie Carragher.
I always get his age wrong because I group him with Steven Gerrard when he's really a couple of years older. To the point that he got his first start in 1996. The article touches on a few things, how Carragher is the last link to the old days, the last player left standing who played under Roy Evans who was himself the last of the Boot Room Boys. And I understand you can't really have that kind of thing any more, no matter what Barcelona and Bayern would like to believe, but it was a thing, for many teams not just Liverpool, and now it's an era that's gone.
It's not just the clubs that have changed. Including his training years at Liverpool, he's spent as long playing for Liverpool teams as I've been alive. Carra, Red Nev, Giggsy and Stevie G really are the last of that kind of player, one team men. And that's not a dig at the younger players, times change, but it's something that's being lost, the local connection.
Carragher probably was never a brilliant defender, but he was good, solid and did an honest day's work. And when Liverpool needed it, he threw his body in the way of every football he could. Because that's my memory of that Istanbul final, the terrible first half (for Liverpool), Gerrard coming out at half time and turning the game round by force of will, Vlad the Impaled finally showed his worth and Carragher, doubled over with cramp, somehow picking himself up to get in the way of a shot heading straight for the goal. This wasn't a miraculous recovery, you could see the effort it took him. And he was, in his own dogged way, magnificent.
As is Jamie Carragher.
I always get his age wrong because I group him with Steven Gerrard when he's really a couple of years older. To the point that he got his first start in 1996. The article touches on a few things, how Carragher is the last link to the old days, the last player left standing who played under Roy Evans who was himself the last of the Boot Room Boys. And I understand you can't really have that kind of thing any more, no matter what Barcelona and Bayern would like to believe, but it was a thing, for many teams not just Liverpool, and now it's an era that's gone.
It's not just the clubs that have changed. Including his training years at Liverpool, he's spent as long playing for Liverpool teams as I've been alive. Carra, Red Nev, Giggsy and Stevie G really are the last of that kind of player, one team men. And that's not a dig at the younger players, times change, but it's something that's being lost, the local connection.
Carragher probably was never a brilliant defender, but he was good, solid and did an honest day's work. And when Liverpool needed it, he threw his body in the way of every football he could. Because that's my memory of that Istanbul final, the terrible first half (for Liverpool), Gerrard coming out at half time and turning the game round by force of will, Vlad the Impaled finally showed his worth and Carragher, doubled over with cramp, somehow picking himself up to get in the way of a shot heading straight for the goal. This wasn't a miraculous recovery, you could see the effort it took him. And he was, in his own dogged way, magnificent.
