Former Real Madrid winger Steve McManaman has spoken of his regret at not winning the Champions League with Liverpool.
McManaman came through the ranks at Anfield before leaving for Spain on a free transfer in 1999. It proved to be a good decision from a footballing point of view, with the Scouser twice winning European football’s biggest prize.
But speaking to the We Are Liverpool podcast, Macca has admitted that he’d much rather have done it all with his boyhood club instead.
“I remember sitting, we’d just won the first Champions League [in 2000] and I’d only been at the club what, 10 months. The lads were in the dressing room singing Spanish songs and lifting the president up in air, which I did, but I just felt as if I was a bit of a fraud, because they’re all singing these Spanish songs and I just thought to myself ‘this is just weird,'” McManaman explained.
“I got my phone and I took myself out of the dressing room, went along the corridor, sat on the floor and listened to messages. You [Robbie Fowler] sent me a lovely message about my mother and stuff and I listened to it. But I wasn’t in the dressing room sort of celebrating because I just thought it was all a bit weird.
“I remember thinking ‘I would have loved to have done this with Liverpool’ because I would have been right in the forefront of it all, knowing all the words and really throwing myself into it. And I was very much on the periphery of all the celebrations just because I didn’t understand it.”
Macca holds Madrid regret
This is very honest from McManaman. His time in Spain is usually seen as being such a roaring success, but it obviously wasn’t all like that from the inside.
The 51-year-old doesn’t speak about his experience of winning a second Champions League two years later, mind. Perhaps by that time he’d gotten used to the way things are done in Madrid.
It would have been great if he’d been able to do it with Liverpool, but the truth is that the Reds were nowhere near at that time.
By 2000, it had already been 16 years since the club’s last European Cup win. It would be another five until they shocked the continent and did it again. As Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool lifted ol’ Big Ears in Istanbul, Macca was announcing his retirement aged thrity-three.
There were a few supporters understandably out out by McManaman’s decision to leave for nothing in 1999. But in the years since he has proved that he’s still just as big-a Red as ever. There should be huge pride in what he achieved with Madrid, but nothing can match winning the biggest club trophy of all with your local team.
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