Jamie Carragher: The one-club defender who has lived and breathed Liverpool

AT lunchtime on Saturday, Jamie Carragher is scheduled to play his 600th game for Liverpool at Portsmouth. Sportsmail's Andy Townsend and four of Anfield's big names pay tribute to the remarkable one-club defender who has lived and breathed Liverpool since he was nine years old.

RAFA BENITEZ'TO BE at one club for such a long time and to play 600 games is absolutely amazing and shows the passion and commitment.
'Before I came here, I watched a lot of games and was analysing




'He wanted to be a central defender and he was keen to learn; you can see that he has improved and improved every single year. He is a top professional.


'That is the difference between him and other players. Some have different qualities but he analyses, he reads the games well and he can adapt to different situations.
'It can be difficult for defenders to get recognition. For strikers and midfielders, it is easy because everyone can see their goals. With defenders, you tend to see only own goals and mistakes getting highlighted.

'But, during the time I have been here, Carra has done really well. He is one of the best defenders in England.'

STEVE McMANAMAN'

MY FIRST real memory of Carra was in the team that won the FA Youth Cup in 1996. He was a great character. With that voice you could hear him a mile away. It was extra special for me and Robbie Fowler to see him come through as it was another good young local lad.

'Over my period in the team, he must have played in four or five different positions but his attitude was impeccable.

'He was always eager to learn but, equally, Carra was never afraid to mix it with the older lads and he would put himself about in training - people always talk about his tackling.

'To get to 600 games in this day and age is an outstanding achievement; it shows how well he has looked after himself and why he has been at the top of his profession for such a long time - that he can still play three times a week is a testament to his ability

DIDI HAMANN'

HE'S a fearsome competitor, and was always a hard worker from a young age. There were other players blessed with more talent and Jamie had to work for it. Although he started in the first team at 18 or 19 it's amazing that he's reached 600 games.

'When I went to the club he was playing right back, left back, centre midfield, anywhere he could get a game.




'After Rafael Benitez took over he transformed Jamie into one of the best centre backs in the Premier League. Benitez took his game to another level, and there haven't been too many better centre halves in England during his career.
'You soon realised how much the club meant to him


IAN RUSH

'WHEN I was coaching the strikers at the club under Gerard Houllier, I used to see Carra. He's a great basic defender who doesn't do any fancy stuff. His commitment is second to none.

'You don't get many defenders idolised by Liverpool supporters but he is. He'll throw his body in anywhere to stop the opposition and, if the ball needs to go into the stands, he'll put it in the stands.

'There's just so many defenders in the Premier League who cannot defend. They have plenty of skill on the ball but they cannot defend.

'Carragher's one of the oldfashioned ones. You need a mixture of both. Don't forget, he started out as a striker at Liverpool!

'But the move from right back to central defence a few years ago was great for him. At centre back, he is fantastic. He's one of the greatest defenders Liverpool have ever had.'

ANDY TOWNSEND'

HE made his full debut against Aston Villa when I was there and I think the impression he made on me is best described as a vicious assault!

'He walloped me six feet up in the air in a game Liverpool won 3-0 at Anfield. What you always recognised when you played against him was that he was a genuine competitor. If you conjure an image of him it is not of someone gliding along majestically, it is of someone with his hands on his hips gasping for his last breath and then lunging into a tackle to deny a goalscoring opportunity.

'He has not been the most cultured or skilful centre half, far from it, but in terms of effort there have been very few as giving as him.

'But Carragher is as good a club player as you will find and I have long admired his attitude.'He has lived the dream for many Liverpool lads, and he deserves all the credit he gets.'

The Carragher file

Date of birth: January 28, 1978.

First game: Middlesbrough (a) January 8, 1997; lost 2-1 League Cup.

First goal:Aston Villa (h) January 18, 1997; won 3-0.

Liverpool career: 599 games (578 starts), 52,094 minutes on pitch,
7 goals, 4 own goals, 73 yellow cards, 3 red cards.

Honours: FA Cup 2001, 2006; League Cup 2001, 2003; Community Shield 2001, 2006;
UEFA Cup 2001; Champions League 2005; Super Cup 2001, 2005;
FA Youth Cup 1996.

England honours: 34 caps (27 Under 21 caps).

Did you know?: Liverpool have kept clean sheets on
Carragher's 100th, 200th,300th, 400th and 500th appearances.

Liverpool still labour in the shadow of Bill Shankly

In the tapes he made with John Roberts for his autobiography, Bill Shankly's voice suddenly leaps to great oratorical heights when the talk moves round to the abject state Liverpool were in when he joined in 1959. The exchange would haunt the Kop as they gather to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Shankly's arrival during tonight's home game against Wigan.

"The facilities weren't good enough for the public of Liverpool," Shankly starts. "The ground wasn't good enough for the public of Liverpool. The team wasn't good enough for the public of Liverpool. And there was nothing good enough for the public of Liverpool. Nothing at all. There was only potential. But I knew the people of Liverpool were like the people where I come from. They've got fervour in them – and they've got pride."

Skin-tingling rhetoric has not been a feature of the Rafael Benítez era. Nor could a Spaniard working in England in the mass-media age hope to match Shankly's mastery of comedy. But there is plenty in the diagnosis from 1959 to stir uncomfortable thoughts in the Anfield crowd after a run of three wins in 15 games. No new stadium in sight; a team not good enough to survive the Champions League group stage or penetrate the Premier League's top six; no obvious "potential" if corporate debt keeps bearing down and the summer brings an exodus of stars.

At least boardroom conflict spans all five decades. In his recently republished memoirs Liverpool's spiritual father remarks that the directors' room where he had to fight for funds was so dark and gloomy that he called it "the morgue". He told Jimmy Melia in there: "Watch you don't trip over the coffins."

Benítez, who adopts the posture in press conferences of a captured airman being interrogated by the enemy, is not devoid of wit. When the Guardian was interviewing Jamie Carragher at the club's Melwood training ground, Benítez breezed past and called to his defender, "English lessons?" ‑ a joke aimed at the defender's deep Scouse accent.

Levity, though, is in shorter supply on Merseyside this week than Manchester United bedspreads. Liverpool have lost as many games this season (10) as they have won and tonight's Shankly retrospective will intensify the spotlight on Benítez, especially as Ian St John, an idol of the 60s, said after Sunday's home defeat to Arsenal: "Don't ask what Shanks would have made of it. I dread to think, and the timing of it makes me feel even more sad." Graeme Souness, another Anfield aristocrat, had claimed his alma mater were heading for "meltdown".

Nostalgia's balm will doubtless soothe the congregation when nine Shankly family members and 15 players from his pomp (1959-1974) parade on the pitch at half-time and a mosaic evokes a time when the man from the mines of Glenbuck spotted special virtues in the Liverpudlian identity. Socialism, loyalty, unity and sober endeavour were the principles Shankly harnessed when he arrived to find Melwood "a wilderness" where "there were hills, there were hollows, there were trees, there was long grass", and where a passive acceptance of mediocrity was the norm until a change in culture provided the money to buy Ron Yeats and St John.

Older Kopites will recall a day mentioned by Kevin Keegan in his autobiography: "I'll never forget the game soon after he [Shankly] had retired when he turned up at Anfield and stood with his beloved fans in the Kop. The first we players knew about it was when we heard the swelling chant from the supporters, 'Shankly, Shankly, here he is, here he is'."

Keegan's hero broke through with the league winning sides of 1964 and 1966. The next wave won the 1973 title and the FA Cup in his final year, with Tommy Smith, Emlyn Hughes, Keegan and Steve Heighway. Since he walked into his own wilderness of aimlessness and regret 35 years ago, when pathos splashed the script, Liverpool have been led by three Boot Room graduates (Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Roy Evans), two Anfield superstars (Kenny Dalglish and Souness) and two A-list European coaches who imported French (Gérard Houllier) and then Spanish cultures.

Each has been viewed inevitably as an inheritor of the Shankly tradition. The name is kept alive, too, by political resistance. The movement against the US owner-speculators, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, marches under the "Spirit of Shankly" banner, and the most emotive landmarks at the stadium, after the Hillsborough memorial, are the Shankly Gates and statue, which bears the epitaph: "He made the people happy."

This is the challenge all Liverpool managers are landed with: to be a brilliant comedian, statesman, team-builder and moral patriarch. Tommy Smith remembers Shankly rejecting a player after he had tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease during his medical. "I'm not having a philanderer here," he erupted. "This is a family club. Send him back."

The ultimate accolade is to be compared favourably to Shankly. The stamp of doom is to be dismissed as a vandal to his legacy. The cult is explained by Brian Reade in 43 Years With the Same Bird – A Liverpudlian Love Affair. Reade writes of Shankly: "In the lean years we stood by him, refusing to doubt that he would turn things around. In the early Seventies, when the trophies came flooding back, we ditched mere adoration and worshipped him like a pagan god. He started something unique in football: the manager as idol. A tradition Liverpool fans respect to this day under Benítez [the book was published in 2008].

"Look at the huge liver bird flag that spreads across the Kop shortly before every kick-off and you'll see, down either side of it, not drawings of the greatest strikers over the years, but the managers. Listen to the songs sung about Benítez, as they were about Houllier, and you will hear a crowd reaching out to its leader, demanding a communion between the dug-out and the stands. It's a cry to be loved, a request for the man who holds the club's destiny in his hands to recognise his flock. And it dates directly back to Shankly. Imagine how that must have felt for Houllier and Benítez." St John wrote: "Shankly once said that his power over the fans made him feel like Chairman Mao."

Loyalty ingrained 50 years ago has bought Benítez and Houllier precious time, but today's Liverpool side have already endured as many Premier League defeats (six in 16 outings) as they did in the previous two campaigns combined. Shankly built the club from the bottom up. Under Benítez, Liverpool are cracking from the top down. Shankly's shadow falls across him, as it will the next man in.