Nothing has the power to both age and rejuvenate the soul quite like football. Buried amongst the eulogies for the great Jamie Carragher, who has- just to clarify- neither died nor retired just yet, that much is evident. Tributes for fading legends cascade forth, and it seems the man destined for the Premier League glue factory may yet paddle there on the tears of our collective inner child.
Nearly every man or woman who has held the dream of being a footballer, at some point has to make peace with it. It is just one of football’s many ageisms. The next might be when your idol retires, or indeed realising they are younger than you are. For others, it is watching children being paid in a week what you earn in a year. For those with kids of their own, I can only imagine a whole other set of depressing benchmarks to give your exuberance a kicking.
And so Carragher, fit as a butcher’s dog but now greying at the temples, must have stared into the pitying eyes of his new master Brendan Rodgers and feared that last car ride. ‘Where’s Jamie gone?’ asks Steven Gerrard. ‘A long holiday’ replies Brendan as he bangs the mud off his shovel.
Sportsmen are offered no tonic to age. Even with a heady cocktail of steroids, lies, and the color yellow, Lance Armstrong found his supply of career-Botox finite. For footballers, the Transfer Deadline shines a particularly unflattering light on the crow’s feet of the senior pro.
Around him, Jamie has team-mates almost young enough to be his sons. Had he a little of the Raheem Sterling to him, perhaps grandchildren. One wonders if watching Phillipe Coutinho arrive at Melwood, Carragher questioned whether Liverpool had signed Terry McDermott’s niece. The times they are a-changin’, and in Coutinho and Carragher Liverpool have two players so diametrically opposed, Carragher could kill and eat the slightly-built Brazilian and it’d be written off as food chain justice.
Yet, Carragher’s well-practiced at outlasting arrivals at Anfield, so it’s unlikely that the latest waif with a step-over was what hurried him towards his slippers. He perhaps instead cast fearful glances towards the players leaving Premier League clubs this January, and it was that which led him to call ‘time’.
As he sat there on ‘Deadline Day’, in one of a thousand identical tracksuits, eating his signature dish of plain pasta, I have no doubt Carra flicked over to Sky Sports News curious to see how things were unfolding. For a man who reclines cosily every year knowing the carousel does not let you get on at Bootle, Jim White slinging dimebag rumours would be extra repellent. And when Peter Odemwingie began circling the Queens Park Rangers car park like Collymore on GHB, Carragher was left with only the decision he made. The grim reality of free agent wilderness will hail the retirement of even the bravest of legends.
It will be an emotional procession to retirement, but Jamie I do offer you some solace. Some years ago, in the most time-honoured of ‘wool behaviour’, I popped into the club shop. Struggling to choose my favourite piece of eye-molesting merchandise, I spied none other than Jamie himself at the counter. Of course, I was awestruck.
‘The man is a mountain, go into the dressing room and walk around him’ Shankly said of Ron Yeats, and my mind took the same tour of Jamie. Everything about him was as imagined: that red-faced pre-temper; the wiry frame like six feet of knuckle; pleasantness blended with Scouse agitation. Meeting him is a silly little moment that will stay with me forever.
Why was Jamie there? He was picking up baby-sized home kits with ‘Dad 23’ on the back: one of the cutest damned things you’ll ever see. These days you can see his son James in an almost full size version playing for one of the youth teams, and that really feels like a fact that should age a guy.
And yet it doesn’t. Earlier in the week, Steven Gerrard’s goal against Manchester City brought sadness at the prospect of extinction, but it also reignited the joy of every other goal of his I have burned in my memory. It was strange to know there wouldn’t be many more like it, and yet the goal itself brought all sorts of clichéd childlike wonder, and I felt just that one moment meliorate my entire football soul.
Football gives with one hand, and takes away with the other, but you can bet your life it’ll give it back a moment later. You’re only ever one rewind of the clock away from your next rejuvenation, and that even goes for the immortal Jamie Carragher. So I say to Jamie: don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of moments for you to feel young again. In the meantime, just enjoy a few months of growing old: you've earned it 'Dad 23'.
