Every time I hear the name I let out a little sigh.
Maybe it’s out of nostalgia, maybe out a sense of missed opportunity, or maybe because as a player he meant different things to different people.
If you were around in the glory years of the 70s and the 80s there’s a chance you associate McManaman with the failure of the 90s. Perhaps you see him as a symbol of a fall from grace. The player who screwed us over with one of the first big Bosman transfers. Not as good as Barnes but more high maintenance. White suits and contract disputes, not to mention having a barney with Grobbelaar. Not as easy to warm to as Fowler. Fowler who’d shown support for the dockers and thrown Evertonian taunts back at them. Perhaps more importantly, McManaman left of his own accord whereas Fowler looked to be pushed towards the exit.
If you were a child of the 90s however McManaman was something different. He – along with Robbie Fowler – was the brightest spot in a barren decade. A player very much of his time, he looked as much as though he should be playing bass for Cast as he did turning up for Liverpool. My rose-tinted view of the mid 90s is of poor defending, routine humiliation for English teams in Europe, and of brilliant wingers. I wonder if the players were around now whether I’d think of it so fondly, but at the time there was Giggs and Kanchelskis at United, Ginola at Newcastle and Kinkladze at City (hell, even Ruel Fox had a good month or two). McManaman was the most exciting of the lot.
Before Ginola was dancing his way through the Barnsley defence, waiting for every southern journo to give him awards because he played for one of the North London II, McManaman was gliding across half the pitch at Parkhead, sending defenders the wrong direction with a simple turn of the hip to equalise in the last minute. Years before Giggs was being reinvented as a central midfielder to wide-spread acclaim for being the 5th or 6th best player in the best team, Roy Evans had moved McManaman there and given him the freedom to destroy teams. Real Madrid then gave him the opportunity to play there in European Cup finals. … But enough about them.
Steve McManaman signed professional terms with Liverpool on February the 19th 1991, 3 days before Kenny Dalglish resigned as manager. His debut would come the next season under Graeme Souness, but perhaps the brightest moment early on in McManaman’s career was the 1992 FA Cup final. Wearing what was then Barnes’ number ten shirt, McManaman was named man of the match and created the opening goal for Michael Thomas with a piece of skill that show everything there was to come.
After using his strength and pace to get round the first man McManaman turned inside the 2nd and chipped the ball in between 2 other Sunderland players and into Michael Thomas’ path. McManaman, at the time just 20, had taken four opposition players out of the game with his brilliance on the ball.
Over the next few seasons McManaman would show in glimpses his ability. The destruction of a very poor Swindon team at the Country Ground stood out. One of my first memories is watching Liverpool and McManaman tearing apart Crystal Palace (at what my memory is telling was some sort of quarry ) on the opening day of the 94/95 league season. McManaman speeding away down the left, starting inside his own half, cutting inside a couple of hapless Palace defenders before curling the ball past Nigel Martyn.
Later on in that season came what I would consider McManaman’s best game in a Liverpool shirt, against Bolton in the 1995 League Cup final. When I was doing research for this I found out that Sir Stanley Matthews said of the performance that “"He reminds me of me when I was playing."”, and that he wished there were more of McManaman’s ilk at the time. Perhaps it’s fitting that like Matthews; McManaman had a Wembley final remembered after him (although maybe not quite so widely remembered… ).
McManaman scored twice as Liverpool won the match, picking up his 2nd and final piece of silverware with Liverpool.
The first was what today would probably be described as a ‘Messi’ goal. It was the type of brilliance McManaman was capable of. McManaman, by this time playing in the central role that Roy Evans had moved him to, picked up the ball behind Bolton’s midfield line and began to run at their back four. Fowler, and Rush in particular, ran Bolton’s defence inside, until they were so condensed you could’ve got them to fit inside a phone box – a fatal mistake. With the ball tied to his feet McManaman across the back line to the right in a mirror image of the type of goal you see Messi score with such regularity nowadays. Bolton couldn’t cope with his pace running with the ball. Having taken it around two players, McManaman then nutmegged the covering defender when it looked as though he’d ran out of space, before finishing under Branagan in the Bolton goal. The goalkeeping was extremely weak, but don’t let that take away from the quality of McManaman’s dribbling. It was the quality of running with the ball that was missing from Anfield since McManaman left right up until Suarez arrived, although at greater pace than the Uruguayan.
McManaman’s 2nd goal was arguably even better.
With the ball played into space down the left channel McManaman drifted wide and picked up the ball, carrying it nonchalantly at first he slowed down Bolton’s right back Scott Green, who by this time had cover on the inside from future red Jason McAteer. Green tried showing McManaman down the line, and he duly obliged, firstly attempting to speed away from the defender, shaking Green’s attempt at a grab off and cutting inside the fullback in to the box. A quick feint threw the Bolton centreback with embarrassing ease before McManaman curled the ball into the bottom of the far corner. This time the finish did the brilliance of the build up justice.
Scott Green was substituted immediately afterwards. In fact, if you look back at footage of the goal, you can see what looks suspiciously like him pulling up having done his hamstring, after McManaman cut inside him. It wouldn’t be a surprise, they couldn’t handle him.
The ability McManaman had whilst running with the ball was exceptional, his balance – it’s worth remembering that McManaman was 6ft and especially in his earlier years, rather lanky – was frightening. Defenders were constantly on the wrong foot defending against him. A better dribbler there wasn’t in the league. More balanced than Giggs, quicker than Ginola, better on his weaker side than either.
As time goes by the Arsenal defenders of the ‘90s have turned into Baresi on meth, but McManaman had them on ice. Martin Keown, spoke of as perhaps the best man marker in England over the last couple of decades was routine sent the wrong direction as McManaman scored twice when Liverpool beat Arsenal at the start of the ‘96/97 season. Picking up the ball in the centre, always behind the Arsenal midfield, McManaman spent the 2nd half routinely running at Martin Keown and toying with the missing link. For the 2nd goal McManaman, with Dr Zaius on a string at this point, ran straight at Keown, attracting 3 Arsenal players to the ball, McManaman backheeled to Barnes to send him through on goal. Barnes drive was saved but the ball deflected back to McManaman to score a deserved 2nd goal.
Of course McManaman was known more for his creation than his goalscoring abilities. If ever a match summed up Liverpool during the era with McManaman at his best it was the classic Newcastle game. It featured a typically McManaman moment as he set up Fowler’s 2nd goal. By the time McManaman had released the ball to Fowler, perfectly matched to Robbie’s run, he had 4 Newcastle defenders surrounding him, all too concerned he would dribble it past them without the obscene amount of cover. In the build up to Collymore’s first goal he was the one who played McAteer the ball to cross. McManaman had the perfect attacking platform, a constantly overlapping fullback on either side, and two devastating strikers ahead of him in Collymore and Fowler. It gave him the platform to show his devastating ability running with the ball. The Newcastle game exposed the other side though, and showed why McManaman never won more at Liverpool. James’ flapping and suicidal ventures out of goal, Ruddock the lummox being ‘megged in the 18 yard box. The ease with which tease could play through the midfield, and the difficulty we had with the offside trap.
Like Gerrard and Carragher a decade later, I think some fans have taken the blame for our title drought and placed it at their door as the big players in their respective teams, rather than look at the pitiful lack of quality that surrounded them.
McManaman did eventually play in a team that had similar quality to himself (and indeed better in some cases), and it does need to be mentioned. I don’t want to get into what happened. I’m too young to remember whether McManaman forced the move, or if he felt obliged after the club had agreed to sell him to Barcelona the year before. It doesn’t really interest me to be honest. But with McManaman we have to mention the time abroad. Perhaps it’s that he was such a success that it’s held against him.
Players have left Liverpool previously and since, but few if any have gone on to have a better time of it. Fernando Torres may have won a European Cup since leaving, and Michael Owen may have won a league title, but their own contributions were so laughably limited in both cases that it would be comically lacking in self-awareness if either tried to claim a part of the success. That said, having seen little Mascot Mickey in his full kit, ready to celebrate the league, self-awareness is not something you can accuse Mustache Mike of being blessed with. Neither is dignity, charisma or ambition. I digress…
McManaman went to Spain and returned four years later as England’s most successful foreign export. He returned having secured Madrid’s first win in Barcelona for a decade, chipping the ‘keeper in a European Cup semi-final. He had scored (a wonderful volley) in a European Cup final.
He came back from Spain with two league titles and two European Cups, and a scissor kick volley that put Di Canio’s to shame. His recognition domestically was reserved to calls for him to solve England’s ‘problem left’ position.
Maybe his success is held against him. We like to think we get the best out of players and then they move on. McManaman was more successful elsewhere than at Liverpool.
A depressing thought that may be, that doesn’t take away for me from the lad I always wanted to be when I played football in school. One of the players of the 90s that arguably wouldn’t have been out of place in the years previously, and a player of whose ilk we have sorely missed since.
