The life of a footballer often seems impossibly glamorous to those of us on the outside.
The money, the fame, the lifestyle, actually getting paid for doing something millions would happily part with their own hard-earned cash to be involved in… who amongst us hasn’t whiled away the hours when growing up (and even afterwards) dreaming about it?
Of course, as in many aspects of life there is often more to it than meets the eye and - while a sense of perspective is necessary given the amount of suffering across the country and around the world these days - there is a growing understanding that wealth and adulation is not necessarily a barrier to experiencing the stresses, strains, anxieties and problems which go hand-in-hand with the human condition.
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While ignorance will probably never be truly eradicated, there is gradually becoming less of a stigma in discussing mental health issues and there is an irony that one of Liverpool’s more high-profile players of the Premier League era has been rightly praised for speaking out in recent years about his own struggles while one of his team-mates who arrived at Anfield only months before was mocked and derided for doing the same in less enlightened times.
Jason McAteer lived the dream of countless youngsters growing up on Merseyside by pulling on the red shirt of his beloved Liverpool but he had to take the scenic route to get there. Growing up in a renowned Birkenhead boxing family and already football-daft from an early age, being taken to Anfield as a special treat by his season-ticket holding uncle and getting a close look at his hero Kenny Dalglish only deepened his passion.
Times were tough in the late 1970s and early 80s with McAteer’s father an electrician at Cammell Laird but the shipbuilding industry being in decline and his mum working numerous jobs to keep food on the table and make sure the family wanted for nothing, even making her young son a home-made Liverpool kit which wasn’t to the specifications the Reds-mad youngster wanted even if he didn’t admit it to her at the time.
“We still have the photograph of me standing there with my arms folded in this home-made kit with a bloody big badge stuck underneath my shoulder”, McAteer revealed in his book, Blood, Sweat and McAteer: A Footballer’s Story. “It may have looked a bit ridiculous but that was me mum all over. She wanted me to be happy and have the same Liverpool shirt I’d seen my hero King Kenny wear. I wasn’t happy about it and cried my eyes out in my room the night she gave it to me because it wasn’t the real Liverpool jersey but I didn’t tell her. I was cute enough to know not to hurt her feelings. She had done her best and that was how we got by.”
A less-than-perfect shirt was never going to stop the young McAteer endlessly kicking a ball around the streets of his home town and his abilities soon saw the energetic midfielder represent both Wirral Schools and Merseyside Schools although the chance of an apprenticeship at the FA’s Centre of Excellence at Lilleshall never materialised much to his disappointment, nor did whispers of interest from Liverpool and Everton after unproductive trials at Manchester United and Tranmere Rovers. By his late teens, McAteer was plugging away in Sunday league football while studying graphic design at college and working part-time in the Sportsmans Arms pub opposite Tranmere’s Prenton Park ground when a chance encounter behind the bar got him a run-out for Marine reserves where he became a regular but continually found his route to the first team blocked at the Crosby- based club managed by the legendary Roly Howard (who was also Kenny Dalglish’s window cleaner), a local legend whose longevity in managing them in 1,975 games over 33 years won him a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
McAteer’s big break came in 1992 after almost two years with Marine reserves when an outstanding performance against Bolton Wanderers reserves - watched by Trotters manager and former Liverpool European Cup hero Phil Neal - prompted the-then Third Division side to prize him away from non-league with one of the more unusual transfer deals.
“I was playing for Marine and I wasn’t on any sort of contract”, McAteer recalled. “Phil Neal contacted me and said he wanted me and advised if I signed a deal with Marine, Bolton would have to pay to get me but if I didn’t I’d be free to leave for Bolton. Marine found out about Bolton’s interest and all of a sudden they offered me a contract worth £100 a week. I was advised again not to sign it, and I went on trial with Bolton. After three or four days Bolton offered me a contract and I went back to Marine and said I’m leaving. They kicked up a fuss so as a goodwill gesture Bolton gave them £500 and a bag of balls. And, as a big storm had taken the roof off the Marine clubhouse the week I signed for Bolton, they used the £500 to get a new roof. So my value then was a bag of balls and a roof.”
He made a winning debut against Burnley in November 1992 and 21 appearances as Wanderers finished runners-up and were promoted to the second tier although was only a squad member and did not feature as Bruce Rioch’s side stunned Graeme Souness’s Liverpool by knocking the FA Cup holders out in a third round replay at Anfield. McAteer played a prominent role the following season however as Bolton underlined their increasing cup pedigree by knocking out three Premier League sides to reach the FA Cup quarter-finals ; Everton (at Goodison, after a replay), Arsenal (at Highbury, also after a replay with McAteer scoring in both matches) and Aston Villa all falling by the wayside before Oldham Athletic ended their dreams of Wembley.
They would be rekindled the following campaign in the best possible way for McAteer but not before he incredibly found himself playing in a World Cup at the age of 23 and while still representing second-tier Bolton. His growing reputation as one of the best young midfielders in the country and his eligibility due to family on his father’s side from County Down attracted the attention of Republic of Ireland manager Jack Charlton and, after making his international bow against Russia in March 1994, McAteer featured in all four games the Green Army played in that summer’s tournament in the United States, producing a pinpoint cross for John Aldridge to head home in the group-stage defeat to Mexico in Orlando.
Much to his bemusement, McAteer found himself left out of Bolton’s first seven games of the following campaign but it was all part of his mentor Rioch’s masterplan given the young midfielder’s summer exertions to recharge the batteries and ensure there was petrol in the tank for what proved to be a marathon season at Burden Park which ended in promotion to the Premier League after a dramatic 4-3 after extra time play-off victory over Reading, the Trotters’ second trip to Wembley of the campaign. Victories over Ipswich, Sheffield United, West Ham, Norwich and Swindon had already taken them to the League Cup final where much to McAteer’s delight their opponents would be a Liverpool side managed by Roy Evans and on the up again after Graeme Souness’s departure the previous year. With newspaper speculation beginning to link the midfielder with a move to Anfield, the chance to compete against his boyhood idols - and some of their players who McAteer had become friendly with through international duty and nights out in the city - only added to the sense of occasion for him which, despite going down to a 2-1 defeat thanks to Steve McManaman’s brilliant brace, proved a memorable day.
“I actually felt like this game was a trial, more than anything, it kind of surpassed the fact we were at Wembley in a major cup final”, he said. “I felt more pressure at it being 'a trial' and it actually being against Liverpool, coming up against Phil [Babb], Jamie [Redknapp], Steve [McManaman] and Robbie [Fowler]. It was a really nervous affair for me and I'd only been to Wembley once before – to watch Liverpool in the 1989 FA Cup final - and I was having a few phone calls from them at the time asking about my position, what was going on and if I fancied coming to Liverpool, which made me laugh!
"What I always remember from that game at the end was when I was on my own clapping the Bolton fans, Macca came over to me with the cup and I remember him saying, 'Don't worry, you'll come to Liverpool' and gave me the cup. I managed to get my hands on it and lifted it up to the Liverpool fans celebrating, then I quickly handed it back. Afterwards I thought, 'Oh no, I'm going to get in trouble!’”
Bolton’s preparations for a first top-division campaign in 15 years would be thrown into turmoil only weeks after their Wembley triumph over Reading when manager Rioch walked out to join Arsenal and the transfer rumour mill, which was already linking McAteer with moves to Manchester United, reigning champions Blackburn Rovers - now managed by Kenny Dalglish - and Everton, went into overdrive during the summer with the assumption being the Gunners boss would want to bring the dynamic young midfielder he had plucked from non-league obscurity to north London with him. McAteer would indeed receive a phone call from his former boss and was flattered to be told he - along with Dutch forward Dennis Bergkamp and Brazilian left-back Roberto Carlos - were the three players he wanted to turn Arsenal squad into title contenders but it wasn’t followed up with an official approach and events quickly escalated to leave the in-demand midfielder with a decision to make much closer to home.
Bolton’s young, Liverpool-born defender Alan Stubbs - a passionate Evertonian - had also been a key figure in the Trotters’ rise and was attracting the attention of the leading clubs too. One morning in early September 1995, he and McAteer were driving to training with Trotters defender and former Anfield reserve Mark Seagraves when the midfielder received a phone call from his agent Ian Rioch, the recently-departed former manager’s son.
“He was also Alan’s agent”, McAteer recalled, “and he just said ‘turn the car around, Bolton’s chairman has just agreed a fee of £9million to bring you and Alan to Blackburn. Head to a hotel on the East Lancs road, Kenny Dalglish and Ray Harford are waiting for you. So I went into a meeting with Kenny, who was my idol growing up, and we discussed how the team were going to play and all that and then my agent’s phone rang. He stepped outside and when he came back in he said ‘Look Kenny, that was Bolton. They have agreed a £4.5m deal for Jason to Liverpool. We’d like to go and speak to them.’ I was just staring at Ian, wide-eyed and feckless.
“Kenny knew that if I left the room and I went to Anfield I was going to sign for Liverpool so he put a bit of pressure on. He said ‘If you leave the room now the deal is off and if you don’t sign I won’t sign Alan Stubbs either’ but I said I have to go and speak to Liverpool. I knew it must have been killing Alan but he didn’t think twice about it and told me I had to walk away from Kenny and talk to Liverpool. He knew probably better than I do what the club means to me and said if Everton came in for him, he’d do exactly the same and I’d be just as supportive. It was an incredible gesture and tells you everything about Alan.”
Within hours McAteer was at Anfield with his agent to discuss terms and was flattered when sitting inside one of the club lounges as the early autumn evening drew in to see the stadium floodlights being turned on, not that he needed any reminder what a special place Anfield was.
“My feet hardly touched the ground all day and my head was swimming. I thought I was going training when I left home that morning! I looked out at the floodlit pitch and joked to my agent they were running up the leccy bill just for me. Roy and Peter Robinson brought us to the home dressing room then down the tunnel and past the This Is Anfield sign. I wanted to reach out and touch it but told myself to wait until I’m a Liverpool player and do it properly. Roy sold a good story not that he had to. He was looking to initially play me wide right in front of Rob Jones and saw me as Jamie Redknapp’s long-term partner in the centre of midfield for when Barnesy lost his pace.
“I asked to be excused from the meeting while the contract details were sorted out. They put me on twelve and a half grand a week, nearly four times what I was on at Bolton, but it could have been a pay cut for all I cared. Nothing was stopping me signing that contract. I left the suite and went for a walk. As my future was decided, all I wanted to do was walk down the corridors and look at all the photos of all the Liverpool greats down the years, players and managers - Shankly, St John, Hughes, Heighway, Keegan, McDermott - even Kenny.. these were my heroes.”
He returned to the meeting to hear the news he craved - everything was agreed and, after a medical the following day, he would be signing up to be a Liverpool player for at least the next four years. Amid the joy - and mild frustration he was going to be able to sign that night - there was though an awkward task he had to complete first.
“My agent told me I had to ring Kenny to thank him for the opportunity even if I couldn’t take him up on his offer at Blackburn. I really didn’t want to do it but my agent made me and Kenny was a bit in my face. He said, ‘I hope you enjoy playing in Southport’ and I said ‘Why’s that?’ and he said ‘because that’s where the f****** reserves play’. My head went as my hero was battering me. I just told him I wanted the chance to do what he did and play at Anfield. I was a bit distraught to be honest when I hung up. I never expected my idol to talk to me like that. I only ever wanted to play for Liverpool because Kenny Dalglish did. All my life, all I ever wanted to be was Kenny Dalglish in a red shirt. Now the only person who wasn’t happy my dream was coming true was Kenny Dalglish although thankfully I met him a few months later when I was in the first team and we shook hands and he wished me luck so there were no hard feelings.”
The formalities were duly completed the next day and McAteer - wearing a smile as big as the Mersey tunnel which would now be part of his daily commute - was unveiled before the assembled media with Evans speaking of his delight, having earlier in the summer broken the British transfer record to bring in Nottingham Forest striker Stan Collymore for £8.5m, at having added more young talent to a squad already boasting the likes of Fowler, McManaman, Redknapp and Jones alongside experienced pros such as Barnes, Rush, Wright and Michael Thomas.
"We cannot guarantee Jason a first team place”, the Reds boss warned. “But obviously I have confidence in Jason’s ability or I would not be spending that kind of money on him. We have been chasing him for the past two years and have had to be patient. It is marvellous from my point of view that another top player has chosen to come to this club. That shows how far we have come in two years. It is also a reflection of the type of football we play, not just at senior level, but right through from the youth team."
Perhaps understandably given the emotion of his move, Evans did not involve his latest acquisition at the first opportunity as Liverpool that weekend slipped to their second league defeat of the season away at Wimbledon and the Reds’ new midfielder made his debut from the bench seven days later ironically against the team he’d spurned, Blackburn’s poor defence of their title continuing as three goals in the opening half hour from Redknapp, Fowler and Collymore condemned them to what was already a fourth loss of the campaign and a place just above the bottom three. McAteer made his first Liverpool start the following midweek against Sunderland in the League Cup, assisting Michael Thomas for the clincher in the Reds' 2-0 win, and by mid-October found himself in the side for good and pressed into service as right wing-back with injuries in the squad necessitating Rob Jones’s switch to the left flank.
A handsome home 6-0 victory over Manchester City (who had been beaten 4-0 at Anfield in the League Cup only days before) took Evans’s men up to third in the table but the month concluded with a shock home UEFA Cup exit to Danish minnows Brondby and was the precursor for a nightmare November which saw four defeats and highlighted some of the frailties which would curtail Liverpool’s season and ultimately the manager’s reign, one of the losses being at home to Everton where McAteer operated in his preferred central midfield slot due to an injury suffered by Jamie Redknapp on international duty but was unable to stop Joe Royle’s ‘Dogs of War’ controlling the middle of the park and winning 2-1.
A resounding victory over Manchester United in mid-December - who Liverpool had been unfortunate not to defeat at Old Trafford earlier in the campaign when drawing 2-2 in a match overshadowed by the circus of Eric Cantona’s return following the Frenchman’s nine-month ban for kung-fu kicking a Crystal Palace supporter - heralded a return to form, with McAteer installed back on the right flank and starting to feel like he was establishing himself, a process only enhanced with his first goal for the club weeks later in a 7-0 FA Cup third round rout of Rochdale.
“Beating United is always special and it’s the day the Kop seemed to really take to me”, he recalled. “At last I felt like I belonged but more importantly like I’d come to terms with what was expected of me with Barnesy and Mickey Thomas together in the centre in the ‘quarter back’ roles, Macca in a free role behind Robbie and Stan, and me in front of the three centre backs wide on the right. Roy reckoned my energy made me a natural for the role and a lot of our work was about buying into the Liverpool philosophy, playing as a team and knowing what the guy on the ball was going to do with it.
“The Rochdale goal was one of many in an easy enough win for us but to me it was the most important goal in the history of football. Mickey Thomas put me through and I smashed into the corner of the net, right in front of the Kop. My family were all over on the right and I swear I could see them celebrating with me as I turned away after the goal. The Kop started chanting my name and it was special, I was the proudest man in the world thinking this would never end and I’d be there forever. Liverpool for life.”
McAteer’s personality was no doubt a factor also in helping him settle almost seamlessly into his new surroundings. The rebranded Premier League was now in its fourth season and, with the increased money and media spotlight, was ushering in a new breed of player many of whom were as comfortable on a catwalk as a football pitch. Liverpool’s talented youngsters were rapidly becoming as well known for their flair off the field as on it and McAteer was among those keen to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them which ultimately saw them labelled with the unwanted moniker of ‘Spice Boys’, the Birkonian arguably having a greater claim to the title than most having briefly dated one of the actual Spice Girls, Mel C.
“David Beckham was doing the same with Victoria but because United got results, it didn’t matter”, he said. “Mel and I lived separate lives so it wasn’t something that was sustainable. I was off playing football and she was touring the world. We barely saw each other. Then it ended.”
McAteer’s daft-as-a-brush persona also put him at the heart of the things, earning him the nicknames ’Trigger’ and ‘Dave’ after the slow-witted Only Fools And Horses character but mostly the latter as Rob Jones had already laid claim to the former after being regarded by team-mates as not always the sharpest tool in the box.
"Sometimes I don't think before I speak - like the time I went into a Dublin pub and asked if they served Guinness. I once bought a pizza and was asked if I wanted it sliced into four or eight. I said just four because I couldn't manage eight slices and I’ve never lived down what happened at Bolton when a teammate asked if I could pass him the ketchup and I asked ‘the brown or the red?'
“I was thought of as not being the brightest and being on the other side of thick. But when you’re making your way in an industry and you’re trying to fit in, having arrived late into the game, you try to find a place, a way of being accepted. I always had the ability to make people laugh because I never took myself seriously. I liked to have fun. I wouldn’t be afraid to do or say something silly. I’ve got quite broad shoulders when it comes to stick and I have the ability to give it back too.”
Liverpool’s improved festive form continued in the early months of 1996 and, though their 20-game unbeaten run would come to an end in late March on Stan Collymore’s fractious return to Nottingham Forest, they bounced back the following weekend by beating Aston Villa at Old Trafford to reach the FA Cup final with McAteer putting the crowning glory on a 3-0 win by notching from close range to set up a Wembley showdown with Manchester United. Three days later, Newcastle United - who had been 12 points clear at the top of the Premier League in January - pitched up at Anfield now three points behind Alex Ferguson’s side after a series of defeats but with two games in hand and desperate to re-establish their championship credentials.
They would be beaten 4-3 in an epic encounter with McAteer’s devastating crosses from the right flank creating two of the Reds goals, the three points putting Evans’s men only five adrift from the top of the table and suddenly in with an outside shot of the title - and the Double - themselves. Such lofty ambitions were put firmly into perspective after an abject defeat at relegation-threatened Coventry only days later with McAteer’s recollections offering a telling insight into that promising but ultimately flawed Anfield era.
“We just didn’t deal with the s***y side of the game”, he admitted. “We looked too far forward, not at what we needed to handle there and then. It was always the future: the harder game, the more glamorous game. It happened too many times for it to be a coincidence. Coventry, for example. We had Everton ten days later and everyone was thinking about that. We figured out ability alone would be enough to see us through against Coventry. In our heads, the game against Coventry was already won and Everton was the focus because if we didn’t win that one, our rivals would take confidence from seeing us struggle. There was nobody really saying, ‘Yeah but we’ve got to deal with the immediate task in front of us’. We needed players that were more streetwise, who would put the brakes on and stop us from going gung-ho and trying to score two and three when we were already winning 1-0 ; ones that would say, ‘Sit in here and grind it out for twenty minutes and go home 1-0 winners’. United did that regularly.”
And they would do so again at Wembley where, having already clinched their third league title in four seasons, Eric Cantona’s 86th minute winner from a poorly-defended corner decided a dreary FA Cup final remembered still for the cream-coloured suits Liverpool’s players had turned up in which for many remains the enduring image of a talented side which never fully lived up to its promise.
“The funny thing about all that Spice Boys stuff is we used to bump into the United players all the time when we were out”, McAteer said. “David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, loads of them. They were doing exactly the same things as us but they won the 1996 FA Cup Final and we lost it. Maybe if that game had gone the other way it might have been different but it didn't. From then on it was always about us being the bridesmaids, wearing the white suits, the pop star girlfriends and all that stuff. But when it came down to it all we were doing most of the time was going out for meals. We weren't out going mental or anything like that. So I look back on that as a bit of a sad time because we knew how much it was hurting us when we weren't winning things and how much it still hurts us to this day, but the Spice Boys thing means there is a different perception of us and that isn't fair. Everyone brings up the white suits but a white suit doesn't win or lose a football match. The flip argument to that, of course, is that was Ferguson's team talk done for him but at the end of the day we were four minutes from extra time. They were as bad as us and the game could have gone either way. The thing is if you wear dark suits and lose like that there's no big fuss but if you've worn white suits the accusation is you've been acting like playboys or whatever.”
Bolstered by the arrival of Czech Republic attacking midfielder Patrik Berger who had starred at Euro 96, Evans’s side shrugged off their Wembley disappointment to begin the following season well and led the Premier League at the turn of the year to foster hopes Anfield’s wait for a first league title since 1990 could soon come to an end. But a shocking collapse at Chelsea in a fourth round FA Cup tie in which Evans’s side led 2-0 at half time showed the tendency to crumble under pressure had not been eradicated as did a repeat of the 4-3 epic against Newcastle in early March when only injury-time winner headed home by Robbie Fowler salvaged the points after the Reds’ had blown a three-goal lead. McAteer’s only goal of the campaign would come later that month when he rammed home a penalty rebound at Highbury for what proved the decisive goal in a heartening victory over fellow title challengers Arsenal but, despite league leaders Manchester United on several occasions dropping points most notably when being beaten at home by strugglers Derby County on the first weekend of April, Evans’s men choked and eventually finished fourth in what had largely been a two-horse race, also exiting Europe limply to Paris Saint- Germain having reached the Cup Winners Cup semi-finals.
“Not winning the title was a mentality issue more than anything else,” McAteer insisted. “It was a collective team mentality, it's not about blaming any individual. Jamo took a lot of criticism but it was a mentality that we didn't have that United perhaps did. We were by far the better team on the eye that season, we didn't concede that many goals despite the defence taking a lot of criticism, and our attack was as good as United, Newcastle and Arsenal had that season. But we lost games against the smaller teams – Coventry at Anfield was the famous one, but we also lost to Wimbledon, Sheffield Wednesday and Aston Villa – and that comes down to mentality. United also had a manager who knew how to win the title whereas Roy didn't have that experience. For as much as he'd been here, it's different when it's on you to make decisions. Ferguson just made more right ones than Roy.”
Evans reacted to criticism of Liverpool’s soft centre by bringing in self-styled midfield ‘Guv’nor’ Paul Ince from Inter Milan and also largely abandoned the three centre-halves and wingbacks system, reverting to a flat back four. McAteer began 1997/98 on the bench and, although he had won a regular place in the side back by November, a broken leg suffered against Blackburn at the end of January caused him to miss the bulk of the second half of the campaign, returning in the final weeks to blast a brace in a 5-0 win over West Ham. It helped Liverpool secure a distant third spot to Double winners Arsenal but despite the emergence of teenage striker sensation Michael Owen, they had never at any point looked like title contenders and, with much of the promise of the previous two seasons having evaporated, the growing feeling that change at the club was needed became ever more palpable.
Sure enough, just days after France’s World Cup 98 victory on home soil, Liverpool announced the technical director behind their triumph - Gerard Houllier, who had spent time on Merseyside in his youth as a teaching assistant at Alsop High School in Walton - was to become joint-manager alongside Evans. It was appointment which shocked many inside and outside Anfield, with McAteer’s first interaction with the Frenchman indicating the winds of change blowing through the club would not be favourable for him after Houllier asked the multi-capped Eire international if he had ever played for England.
“I think he arrived with this attitude stemming from the Spice Boys tag and I just wanted him to get to know us first and make his own mind up”, McAteer said. “The way Houllier was speaking, it was as if we were on the verge of relegation and were a gang of lads on the Club 18-30 circuit. A year before he arrived we’d gone as close to the title as any Liverpool team since 1990. A huge rebuilding job wasn’t necessary. There was no need to go and spend nearly £100m on foreign players and get rid of the young internationals on the books. Roy had helped the development of six players who went on to win full England caps. Under Houllier, the promotion from within all but stopped. He was the worst kind of survival manager who tried to solve all problems with a chequebook.
“The stats and winning the treble will always suggest that he went down the right route but even though I knew football was moving and needed to change in some ways, as soon as Houllier walked in the DNA of the club changed. We were a really good bunch of lads, we were close, there was a brilliant team spirit and there was some fantastic talent and he came in to change things, ruled with an iron fist and one by one we left. All of this stuff about having been a Liverpool fan who'd watched them on the Kop, I just wasn't buying it. I thought he was telling everyone what they wanted to hear while behind the scenes he was changing the club's DNA and moving it away from what it had always been. The club was still run very traditionally in the way that it had been in the 30-40 years previous. I just thought he did it too soon and, yes, I resented him for that.”
McAteer would start the first two games under the new set-up - a win at Southampton and draw at home to champions Arsenal - but soon found himself out of the side with Norwegian summer signing and right back Vegard Heggem being preferred as the Reds, who were top of the league in early September after winning three of their first four matches, began to drop down the table. With tensions beginning to reveal themselves between the joint managers and the players increasingly unsure over the division of roles, McAteer - who openly admitted he was in the Evans camp - was stunned when the boss who had brought him to Anfield only three years earlier confided in him ahead of a crunch UEFA Cup clash away to Valencia about his problematic relationship with Houllier.
“‘Do you know things are bad between us?’, Roy asked me. Of course I did, we all did. He looked and sounded like a broken man. He wanted to play me against Valencia but Houllier was having none of it, insisting I be dropped and Patrik Berger start in my place. Roy apologised for dropping me and told me he longer had the stomach for this constant battle with Houllier who he felt he couldn’t fight with any more. ‘I’m not going to do it, I can’t do it Jason’, he said.
“It was f****** horrible. I was upset I wasn’t playing but I was more upset about what Houllier had done to Roy Evans, my manager, the man who had brought me to this great football club. Houllier was supposed to be there to tell me the news alongside Roy, that had been the deal, but he left Roy to do the dirty work on his own. I was so hurt for Roy, so worried about his behaviour. He looked like a man with no fight left.”
Liverpool would that night in eastern Spain produce arguably the finest result if not performance of the ill-fated managerial partnership, scoring twice in the final ten minutes to secure an unlikely 2-2 draw which took them through to the next round on away goals. The gloss was somewhat taken off by a late flare-up which saw both Paul Ince and Steve McManaman red carded by French referee Gilles Veissière which led to further ructions in the dressing room afterwards.
“A lot of the lads lost respect for Houllier that night”, McAteer claimed. “We’d played badly in the first leg at Anfield and everyone expected us to go to Spain and get trounced. We conceded a goal late in the first half and went 1-0 down at the break. In the dressing room, Houllier just stood there open-mouthed like a stunned goldfish. He did not know what to say. He was lost for words. It was really embarrassing. Roy could sense what was going on so took control and calmed everything down. He got the belief back in us. In the end we went through on away goals despite being down to nine men at the final whistle after a couple of skirmishes with their players. We weren’t happy with the referee’s performance. Most of us were a bit hyped up because we thought all the decisions had gone against us.
"We were in a celebratory mood but in the corner of the room Houllier was there rinsing through the kits. Roy asked him what he was doing and Houllier told him that he wanted to give a set of shirts for the French officials. Roy went crazy and told him to f*** off because they’d nearly cost us progression. Houllier then changed his mind and announced they were for the French players in the Valencia team. Roy didn’t change his stance and again told him to do one. Moments later, Houllier chucked the kit down and stormed off in a huff.”
Despite their unexpected European progress, there was no uplift in Liverpool’s domestic form and within a week after successive home defeats to Derby County and Tottenham in the League Cup, the Reds squad were summoned to Anfield on their day off as Bill Shankly’s former Boot Room boy brought an end to his 35-year association with the club to leave Houllier in sole charge.
“Roy was in tears and so was I”, admitted McAteer. “He’d first reported for duty at Liverpool Football Club as a fifteen-year-old kid, been at the club man and boy and done every job there is but now he was out the door. Houllier stood motionless alongside him, ice cold. There was no hint of remorse, no suggestion he’d had anything to do with breaking this great Liverpool man. No compassion and no feeling. He was in sole charge of LFC now and I think he was made up. He’d won the battle and now he could prepare for war. We were all gutted for Roy. We wanted him to stay. Nobody wanted Houllier in the first place.”
With the new manager now having free reign to implement the cultural changes he wanted, McAteer’s already-difficult relationship with the Frenchman worsened when he was overheard while on international duty slating the new Anfield regime to team-mate Niall Quinn by a journalist who ran the story. The inevitable confrontation with Houllier on his return to Melwood made it clear his days at Anfield were numbered and when the manager informed him in January the club had accepted a £4m bid from Blackburn he knew he had no alternative but to go even though - much to his surprise - the Frenchman said he didn’t want him to depart.
“I didn’t want to leave and made that absolutely clear to him but also made him well aware I was not prepared to just stay and pick up my money while sitting on the bench. I would not cheat the club or the supporters like that. He said he understood but couldn’t make me any promises and didn’t beg me to stay. I went to meet Blackburn and I was an easy date, prepared to take the first decent offer that came along I was that desperate to get away from Gerard Houllier. The deal was done within minutes of talking to Brian Kidd. And a part of me died.
“For the first time in my life I was treating football as just a job, a means to an end, a way to make money. The romance of my move to Bolton, the magic of my transfer to Liverpool, it was all forgotten. This was cold and clinical, just business. I was a commodity and selling myself to the highest bidder. The first question at the press conference to announce the transfer was why I am leaving Liverpool and I just looked the guy in the eye and broke down in tears. I couldn't answer him and didn’t want to answer him. I was making the biggest mistake of my life and was stuck with it now. I could have seen Heggem off at Anfield. I could have proved Houllier wrong and seen him off the premises as well but I didn’t. Instead I ran away and took a pay cut on the twenty-five grand a week I was on at Liverpool, down to eighteen grand a week on a four-year deal. Next morning, I went back to Melwood to collect my boots. Jamie hugged me and I burst into tears again. The tea ladies sent me on my way and I cried all the way home.”
McAteer was unable to prevent Blackburn being relegated at the end of his first half-season with the club but helped them regain Premier League status two years later and, shortly after scoring the goal against Holland which confirmed the Republic of Ireland’s place at the 2002 World Cup finals, joined Sunderland for £1m. He again suffered relegation from the top flight with the Black Cats and, with injuries beginning to take their toll, was released at the end of his contract in May 2004 after defeat on penalties in the promotion play-offs to Crystal Palace. Now 33, he was offered a one-year deal at Leicester City but failed the medical and talked his way into a player-coach deal with Tranmere where he was made club captain and in his first season again suffered play-off heartache on penalties when Rovers were beaten by Hartlepool United, announcing his retirement shortly after the Birkenhead club released him in May 2007.
McAteer would return to Prenton Park for a brief spell as assistant manager to former Liverpool team-mate John Barnes in 2009 but before then suffered a serious bout of depression which took him to the brink of wanting to end his own life. Now recovered, “happy and thankful”, and remarried with another child, he works in the football media and features regularly for Liverpool’s in-house television channel for whom in 2018 he made a powerful documentary examining the impact of mental health problems in football and wider society, titled ‘Through The Storm’.
“I felt I had a bit of a duty to speak out and tell the truth”, he explained, “but it was speaking for a lot of other former players of my generation who were finding it difficult to finish playing football. I was living a bit of a lie saying everything was okay at the end of my career, that I fell into the media and all the time on my hands was brilliant, when really it wasn’t. Pre-season starts, the phone isn't ringing and there's nothing there. You're not going in the next day, your friends aren't there. I got really messed up. My head was up my arse and I was spiralling out of control. Depression takes a hold of you and you don't realise that you're in this world. You think it's the norm. My private life had gone downhill. I'd split up with my partner who I'd had a child with. I wasn't waking up in the house and they were there. I was in a downward spiral and I started missing my son more and more.
"I remember one particular time I was driving through the Mersey tunnel to get my son Harry, to pick him up from school. I just thought 'I could just end this all now... I could absolutely quit on everything'. Then Harry's image came into my head. How would he take it? Or an oncoming car? Who would be in it? Would it be a mother or kids? What would be the impact of that? Before I knew it I was at the end of the tunnel. I was processing stuff enough like that to not do it. I went to see my Mum. She opened the front door and I burst out crying. She knew I was struggling. Mum got me to talk to a counsellor, a friend of hers who knew me, and I poured everything out.
"I always say depression is kind of like being dropped in the middle of the woods and someone saying to you 'right, you have to get out'. You just cannot get out of this forest. It just feels endless. There's a big loneliness and a void when you're going through something like that but there's also that bravado, that sense in football that whatever it is you don't own up to it. If you wear a plaster cast on your arm, or have stitches across your eye, people will come up to you and ask how you are. When you are suffering depression, no-one knows what is going on. In fact, in the company of others you present yourself in such a way as to make everything seem fine. You’ve got to tell yourself and accept you’re a mess, you’ve got to admit that or else it’s not going to work. You’ve got to get help, you’ve got to be honest with those trying to help you and tell it as it is and they will guide you, they will bring you through it.
“You do come out the other side and you do become stronger.”
- This weekend sees World Suicide Prevention Day - if you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, help and support is available right now if you need it (see below). You don't have to struggle with difficult feelings alone
Samaritans – for everyone
Call 116 123
Text 85258
Email jo@samaritans.org
Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) – for men
Call 0800 58 58 58 – 5pm to midnight every day
Visit the webchat page
Papyrus – for people under 35
Call 0800 068 41 41 – Monday to Friday 10am to 10pm, weekends 2pm to 10pm, bank holidays 2pm to 5pm
Text 07860 039967
Email pat@papyrus-uk.org
Childline – for children and young people under 19
Call 0800 1111 – the number won't show up on your phone bill
The Silver Line – for older people
Call 0800 4 70 80 90
Zero Suicide Alliance
ZSA is a collaborative of NHS trusts, businesses and individuals who are all committed to suicide prevention in the UK and beyond. Watch their free 20-minute suicide prevention training clip here
