SO, now I can reveal it was all my fault.
Lauren Dalglish must be 30 now. Sorry, but I’m afraid that fateful journey you made in your father’s arms was down to me.
Anfield, April 1988. Liverpool 3 Manchester United 3. A cracking, crackling match full of all of the highly spiced ingredients that have made this the derby fixture to eclipse mere cross-city frictions.
Alex Ferguson is holding court just outside the old Boot Room. The late and lovely Tom Tyrrell of Piccadilly Radio is hanging a quivering microphone under his nose while Fergie spits his infamous “managers leave here choking on their own vomit, biting their tongue, afraid to tell the truth” diatribe into it.
I figure that Kenny Dalglish should know what is being said before he goes in to face the press, so I tiptoe down the corridor to his office and report in. Before I know it, the Liverpool manager is standing outside his door cradling six-week old Lauren telling us, “you’ll get more sense out of her”.
A year later, Ferguson was one of the very first football people to contact Dalglish offering whatever support he needed from United in the wake of the Hillsborough tragedy. That is how rivalry works in this game. But should it?
There is something horribly hypnotising about watching those pictures of Chelsea fans abusing Raheem Sterling last weekend. So baseless, so disdainful, so damned close. Is that what football does to us? Is that what it can do to me?
I’ve spent the week sympathetically nodding my head in agreement with all of the sage words written and said about football’s pressing need for greater tolerance and perspective. The media, of which I am a part, is under particular scrutiny. About time too.
And yet as we prepare for Jose Mourinho to bring his cheery disposition to Anfield for another round of predictable mind games, I think back to the sheer silliness of two future knights of the realm exchanging petty insults 30 years ago. Two men for whom I have the deepest respect. Two men who go back decades together. Two men with bags of class. As Fergie famously said, “football, bloody hell”.
The racial overtones surrounding Sterling’s ordeal are very disturbing, but I can’t help but feel that football tribalism was at the core of that incident. The precise detail of the shocking vitriol being showered on the player has been contested but the same fans would never have shouted such filth at N’Golo Kante or Willian. Its roots are in “us” and “them”.
Sterling probably starts to hear boos and whistles as soon as the Manchester City coach turns off Queens Drive towards Anfield. They come with the territory of leaving one club for another.
Never mind the 50 million quid Liverpool pocketed for his restlessness, there was a bitter taste of betrayal about the move. Aidy Ward, unsolicited interviews, too ill to train… There will be some truth in there somewhere and we can each believe the bits that reinforce the conclusions we have already jumped to.
Sterling was very good for Liverpool and vice versa. He would fit perfectly into the current team and the mood that Jürgen Klopp has fostered. But football doesn’t ever forget… Or it doesn’t forget what it wants to remember. Sterling is an ex. When a heart breaks, it don’t break even.
The weird thing about last weekend’s vile encounter is that Sterling’s ballsy response has maybe engendered some understanding and sympathy for what it must be like to be on the receiving end of such personal abuse from total strangers. Nobody in their right mind can pretend there was an ounce of banter about it. It was just full-on hateful hostility, and for no good reason.
We all draw different lines in the sand as to where “a bit of stick” begins and ends. There will be plenty of it flying around on Sunday. Football is escapism and when we care about our teams as much as we do, all kinds of simmering emotions escape when the tackles and the cards start to fly. From time to time, they boil and spill over into something football can do without.
Sir Kenny and Sir Alex are not the kind of men to have many regrets but I somehow doubt they will look back on their distant altercation of 1988 with anything other than a wry smile about where football can carry us when it matters as much as Liverpool v United does. I should have kept my big mouth shut.
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Terrific piece – would love to read more of your work here.
Really enjoying Clive´s pieces. And apart from the quality of the writing, there´s the added joy of being able to read them in his voice, and decide where you go for the emotional stress in each sentence. Great addition to TAW.
i hate sterling with a passion but not because of the colour of his skin,because im a lfc fan and its my right to hate who i want.i would never bring race into it.u cant call sterling racist names and love the black players at ur own club.so in summary i cant stand the lad but only for football rivalry reasons.i also own my comments by not hiding behind a false name.
If minority players perform well for their clubs, then they are loved yb their fans. If they dont, then it can turn quickly into racial hatred.
I agree with the above comments, I like reading Clive’s pieces as well. This one felt incomplete, maybe I want more.
I don’t know what the Chelsea fans were going on about in the corner. I can’t lip read so I couldn’t figure it out from the video.
I wonder what the black supporter near them was thinking or maybe heard?
I wonder what people shout out at MMA, boxing, American Football, Rugby matches for example when they get really excited or mad about something?
You can definitely abuse the player’s mothers, fathers, family and kids as well as issue death threats, wish them terminal diseases and use male or female body parts as an alternate reference in front of little children, but racist remarks are the only bit that seems to bring out the world in crisis in 2018.
Not that I’m advocating racism or racist remarks, being a minority in the USA, I just think Clive is right when he refers to football as tribal competition.
I think the majority of us all want to belong to a group whether it’s race, religion, classes, political party, etc. A football club is no different.
What about racial prejudice?
“From slaves to royalty, Meghan Markle’s upwardly mobile family.” ala the Daily Mail.
Back to football — I wonder if racism can ever be eradicated from these tribal events?
I wish it could be, but I don’t think it ever will given the various compounding circumstances (Clive mentions), that leads to events such as Sterling’s episode at Chelsea recently.
Still, I pity the children around these fools.
Sterling leaving Liverpool, whilst I wasn’t happy about it, particularly his agent role in all this, at least we got decent money for him. Unlike Macca and Owen.
He’s a good player and if we’d of sorted his contract out when we should of then he’d still be with us.
Anyways while rival supporters can boo him and call him a greedy bastard (even though we’d all take the money if we had his skills) the rascism aimed at him is pathetic and he’s right to call out the media’s role in all this. Fair play to the lad for that.
As for Man Utd, I have a lot of friends who follow that team. Come Sunday I despise all their fans and all their players. However rivalries should be kept healthy. To me, this Sunday they are just another team who stand in the way of us and the 3pts we need.