Apologies for the poor Binny imitation and formatting.
https://www.hs.fi/english/article/What exactly went down with Jari Litmanen at Anfield/1329104873532
What exactly went down with Jari Litmanen at Anfield?
A new documentary film sheds some new light on the life and career of the greatest-ever Finnish footballer. But there are also holes in the story. In January 2001, Litmanen moved from Barcelona to his favourite team Liverpool, where the manager treated him unfairly. Why was this?
By Kari Räisänen
In January 2001, I shook with excitement on hearing the great news: Jari Litmanen was moving to Liverpool on a free transfer from Barcelona! An amazing end to the football season would follow.
I had been a Liverpool fan since the early 1970s.
I remembered how one Saturday evening after sauna I had stared at the television screen to witness Steve Heighway run up the field in his red Liverpool jersey with the ball seemingly glued to his feet. Something clicked, and the life-choice was made.
After this epiphany, Finnish football seemed insipid. Our boys tried hard, but they were slow and clumsy. What I was most ashamed of was the fact that the Finns lacked the most crucial element: the basic on-the-ball skills.
But then along came Jari Litmanen.
The world changes quickly. Now many people can already talk scoffingly about Litmanen’s perennial injuries and his advanced age.
For them I have one bit of advice: power up YouTube, type in the search words Jari Litmanen and be astonished.
In Liverpool, Litmanen received a hero’s welcome.
The team’s manager, Frenchman Gerard Houllier, announced triumphantly that Litmanen was one of Liverpool’s greatest purchases ever.
Litmanen, who transferred to Anfield from the Nou Camp, became an instant favourite among the Liverpool supporters after he revealed that he himself had been a Liverpool fan from a little boy.
The dream, however, soon turned into a nightmare. Instead of delivering sublime thread-the-needle passes to the Liverpool strikers, midfielder Litmanen found himself mostly warming the team bench as a substitute.
There was nothing he could do.
In September 2001, Litmanen scored a magnificent winning goal against Tottenham and four days later he sank Dynamo Kiev in a Champions League game, but after that he was back on the bench.
I cursed Houllier, as I am sure Litmanen did privately, too.
In public, Litmanen appeared calm, but already after just over a year he returned to Ajax Amsterdam, the team where he began his international career.
Liverpool had treated Litmanen so badly that I broke off our love affair. After that I have not really cared one way or the other how the Redmen have played.
Now ten years have passed since Litmanen’s departure from Liverpool. I still do not understand what went wrong. Hopefully I will find out today, for I am about to meet Litmanen.
The dining room of a Töölö restaurant is closed, but a relaxed-looking individual sits at a corner table.
The day has been a busy one. The footballer has met with numerous reporters while marketing a new documentary film - “King Litmanen” - about his life and career.
Litmanen is having a salad, and says he is in a good shape.
It soon becomes clear that the 41-year-old would still like to play football seriously. “But it looks like the season will be over too soon”, he frets.
Litmanen talks for a long time about another Ajax great, Johan Cruyff, who returned from the world stage to Ajax at the age of 33, more or less to wind down his career.
After that he won two more Dutch championship titles with the team.
After that Ajax no longer offered him an extension on his contract. The miffed Cruyff signed with rivals Feyenoord and won one more Dutch Champions' medal before retiring from the game.
In his biography, Cruyff writes that one has to play football exactly as long as one still has the passion for it. Once one quits, there is no coming back.
Litmanen explains that he loves the sport just like Cruyff did.
“I have been playing in extra time already for quite some while. But I still like the game just as much as I did as a little boy”, he says.
Litmanen does not get to play quite as much, however, as he did when he was a junior with the Lahti Reipas team.
At one stage he played simultaneously in three different football teams and one ice hockey team.
After school, Jari Litmanen would rush to the Lahti Arena, where he could spend six hours playing sports.
"My parents tried to curb my enthusiasm and told me that tomorrow would be another day”, Litmanen laughs.
When in public, Litmanen is somewhat reserved, but he has always been keen on talking about football.
A story goes that during one Finnish national squad away trip, Teemu Tainio got so tired of listening to Litmanen’s ranting about the beautiful game that he requested another roommate.
“I started to play because it was insanely fun. It still is. To me, the most important thing is that I am able to make decisions on the pitch that assist the whole team. Succeeding in this is where the attraction and the joy lies.”
”For me, football has been an unbelievable journey of exploration. I have had a chance to live in various parts of the world, learn about different cultures, learn new languages, and I have won a lot, which of course is also important”, Litmanen explains.
“And naturally I have experienced disappointments as well. But that, too, is part of life and part of football.”
Indeed, those disappointments.
In the “King Litmanen” documentary, Litmanen visits his old playing venues, including the famous Anfield in Liverpool. The Liverpool team captain Steven Gerrard hugs Litmanen and remembers how skilful the Finn was in the training sessions.
Gerrard frets that Litmanen did not get to play more for Liverpool, for during those times that he did enter the pitch he also brought something new to the game. Gerrard hugs Litmanen again and makes his exit.
In 1995 Litmanen won the European Champions League title with Ajax. After the game he said that he believed that more such tasty treats would follow.
They never did.
The next season Ajax was beaten in the Champions League final by Juventus after a penalty shootout. Litmanen was the ECL's top scorer that season, with nine goals. He had scored six in the 1994-95 campaign.
As crazy as it sounds, this was the beginning of Litmanen’s downhill slide, despite the fact that after this he also played for Barcelona, Liverpool, and Ajax again.
And of course he turned out for the Finnish national team.
Litmanen recalls one more game.
Obviously it is the Finland-Hungary match in October 1997, a sad rain-soaked 1-1 draw scored deep in the psyche of Finnish football fans, that meant that once again Litmanen missed out on a major international tournament.
After he returned to Amsterdam from Helsinki, Ajax goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar did not say anything, but hugged him tightly.
Many Finnish supporters still remember the Hungary match, although I suspect they would rather not.
The game was already into added time for stoppages and Finland led 1-0.
But, as it happened, Hungary equalised with a corner kick that bounced - pinball-style - off no fewer than five Finnish players before ending up in the back of the Finnish net, and it was Hungary and not Finland that made it into the playoffs for the 1998 World Cup finals.
“It was one of the most shocking moments of my life. This is when I realised what it meant when time stands still. The game was played in torrential rain, and when the ball went in I felt like I was in some bizarre emotional vacuum. I felt the water droplets beating my forehead, heard them hit the ground.”
”So much of Finnish football history was encapsulated in that one moment”, Litmanen says, and twiddles his fork back and forth in his hand.
Finally, the atmosphere seems perfect for getting down to the nitty-gritty and Liverpool and the year 2001.
Litmanen thought that Liverpool really wanted him, for the team had already tried twice before to secure his services. But now the club was just keeping Litmanen on the bench, a player whose weekly salary was in the tens of thousands of pounds.
Litmanen admits that he, too, has thought about this.
First he talks about the differences between the British and the Dutch societies: at Ajax the manager’s door was always open. In Liverpool nobody even dared to think about opening the door.
“I really liked Liverpool. There, however, the manager was the boss and the players simply did what they were told. I never thought that I could go and voice my opinion without this leading to negative repercussions.”
Litmanen says that wherever he goes he still runs into Liverpool fans whose first question is always the same: 'how come you weren't given more playing time?'
In the documentary, Litmanen explains how assistant manager Phil Thompson once told him that he had played a good game but unfortunately could not be given a start in the next match.
“There was something mystical about it, and I never did find out what it was. I always tried to do the job well, but it seemingly made no difference.”
“But - it is just a game, isn't it”, Litmanen declares, and he seems to believe what he says.
Perhaps Jari Litmanen has forgiven Liverpool FC for wasting his time and talents.
I have not.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 28.9.2012
