It’s every Liverpudlian’s dream to pull the famous red shirt and play for their heroes at Anfield.
For most of us, it remains a fantasy lived out vicariously through the terraces or five a side pitch but every generation or so the stars align just right and enable one lucky soul to make it from the Kop onto the hallowed turf of L4.
Tommy Smith, Terry McDermott, John Aldridge, Steven Gerrard and latterly Trent Alexander-Arnold are all among those who have lived out the boyhood desires by playing for Liverpool and written their names into the legendary fabric of the country’s most successful club.
But few Scouse Reds have enjoyed the kind of association from Kopite to European Cup winning skipper to training pitch and dug out leader as Phil Thompson.
The Kirkby lad also went on to captain his country but his contribution over decades to the club he has always and still very clearly loves bears comparison to anyone who came before or after.
Although very much associated with Kirkby, Thompson was actually born in the Kensington area of Liverpool in 1954 before the family moved out to the overspill town which he credits in moulding him into the man he went on to be.
“It shaped me very much”, he told LFC History years later in a wide-ranging interview looking back over his stellar career.
“It was a tough area, really tough area. You had to stand on your feet, have your own mind and stand up for yourself.
“It was a very young town and football was the only thing you had. There wasn't any other sports. Everybody played football 24-7.
“It shaped you like that, you had to compete with some fantastic players. Being quite skinny, I had to have more drive and determination than the next fellow, so it shaped me very much my early days.
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“My dad was an Evertonian and once I started playing for Liverpool he turned but he was a merchant seaman so we didn't see him a lot of the time, he was away.
“So we followed my mum, she was a massive Red and as a youngster her and her twin sister used to stand right next to the dug-out and they were there week in and week out. She was very passionate about her football and very much Liverpool, so we followed in her traditions.”
It was thanks to his mum that Thompson’s first taste of Anfield came on one of the old ground’s most hallowed nights when, just three days after winning the FA Cup for the very first time against Leeds United at Wembley, reigning champions Internazionale of Milan were sent packing in the first leg of the 1965 European Cup semi-final with the Kop famously inviting the visitors to ‘Go back to Italy’ to the tune of the famous ‘Santa Lucia’.
It made a big impression on then-11-year-old whose fanaticism for all things Liverpool was taken up a level after being part of what was at the time arguably Anfield’s greatest ever night from his seat in the Kemlyn Road stand alongside his mum.
“That night was so special”, he recalled.
“People had heard about the Kop and it’s reputation through the 50s and early 60s but I think that was the night it truly came of age. Despite it being such a tense game, the wit and humour still came shining through.”
His schooling on playgrounds of Kirkby and terraces of the Kop which he eventually graduated to saw him sign apprentice forms with Liverpool at 15 years of age after a six-week trial and his anxiety over whether he would make the next step up was eased after an unforgettable exchange with the man who was already his hero and would go on to become one of the guiding influences of his career, Bill Shankly.
The legendary Reds boss once said about his young charge, "Aye, Phil Thompson. The boy tossed up with a sparrow for his legs and lost" but he clearly immediately had the young Scouser pegged straight away as one of the new breed he could build his second great Liverpool side around.
“All the young lads wonder whether they would turn professional, it’s always a very difficult time”, Thompson recalled.
“They would always do it on your seventeenth birthday. My birthday is January 21st.
“This was December and I had been injured. You had heard all these stories about Shanks, if you were injured he didn't want to know. We didn't have people to give you rehab in those days and you were left to your own devices.
“I had a groin injury and was just walking around the B team pitch. Shanks came over to me and I thought 'He's going to give me a b******ing here.' He said: 'How are you, son? Are you sleeping well? Are you eating well?' 'Fine, boss', I said.
“Then he said: 'Your birthday is January 21st.' My eyes lit up that the great man wasn’t just talking to me, he actually knew my birthday. I thought he was going to send me a birthday card.
“He said, 'I just want you to know not to worry. We have been more than pleased with how you have performed. Just to put your mind at ease, we will be signing you as a professional on your 17th birthday.'
“You can imagine that I couldn't wait to get home and tell them. It was a fantastic and a big, big day.
“Liverpool was my life. The team was your life and Bill Shankly was your life - those were the two things that you lived for. Shanks' words just made you feel special, made you feel proud to be a Liverpool fan.
“Every day your mum, your dad, your brothers and sisters would ask, ‘What did Shanks say today? Did you see him?’
“Life is all about timing and he was sent for us. We believe that, as Merseysiders, we are special people anyway and this guy was here to help bring us out of the doldrums and make us a world super power.”
Thompson’s emergence in the early 1970s came at just the right time for Shankly with the Scot in the process of breaking up his first great Liverpool team - which had gone trophy-less since 1966 - and he made his debut at 18 on Easter Monday 1972 away at Manchester United coming on as substitute for John Toshack.
It was a baptism of fire but the street smarts he’d learned on the streets of Kirkby served him well when he immediately came up against the great George Best, who years later would become a friend and punditry colleague on Sky Sports.
“He was moving towards me with the ball and I offered him to nutmeg me on the halfway line”, Thompson told the Mail years later.
“He tried to slip the ball through but I closed my legs, the ball ricocheted off my skinny shins and off I went.
“I never got tired of talking about the nutmeg. The number of times he would say, ‘Not that one again, Thommo! Not that one!’
“I must have bored him silly about it. But he was just fascinating. A fascinating man. A wonderful guy. He just loved being with other football people.”
That would be Thompson’s sole appearance of the 1971/72 campaign in which Shankly’s young rebuilt side came within a late harshly-disallowed goal at Arsenal away from bringing the title back to Anfield but the following year saw him just about reach the required figure of 14 league games required for a championship medal as Liverpool ended a seven year trophy drought with a league and UEFA Cup (the club’s first ever European trophy) triumph.
It would be the following campaign when Thompson, initially used as a midfielder, truly established himself at the heart of the Liverpool defence where he would remain for much of the next decade but his increasing involvement in the climax to that 1972/73 season saw him earn his place in one of the campaign’s most decisive moments on merit and his memories of it, articulated powerfully to BBC when discussing the Spion Kop before its demolition in 1994, provide telling insight into the raw passion he has always held for LFC.
Don Revie’s Leeds United arrived at Anfield on Easter Monday with Liverpool knowing a victory against one of their main rivals would all but seal the club’s long-awaited eight league title. Thompson had begun the season on the bench and, after making seven straight starts over Christmas and New Year, had been in and out of the side but had started the Reds’ previous two games ahead of the showdown with the Yorkshire club.
“It was such a memorable day for me”, Thompson remembered.
“I was only 19 and Bill Shankly had picked me ahead of Brian Hall at the time when I was just an up-and-coming lad. I’d played quite well the week before and I was the side I’d like to think on merit.
“We stayed in a hotel overnight and I remember coming to the game along Anfield Road with the nerves and butterflies really going.
“And I can remember, you could say to settle myself down, starting to sing just to myself on the coach sitting there alongside the window You’ll Never Walk Alone. It sounds daft and everything and I don’t often relate it but the passion was burning so much inside me, I was nearly crying.
“I was looking out the window and thinking ‘all those people, they’re all looking at me here’. I got a great buzz singing it and it gave me great belief to go into the game.
“And as it has happened we played magnificent on the day, I was burning, burning with desire and pride and during the game which we won 2-0 I remember going through a tackle with Allan Clarke and I really did.. block tackle.. just went right through him and carried on and I remember the Kop mid-game breaking out in song with my name.
“Usually a lot of the time during the game you don’t always hear things from the crowd but I heard that and that was the first time I felt I belonged. I was buzzing and I had a fabulous game, just so pleased to be part of that team at that time, at 19 which is such an impressionable age.”
Further silverware would arrive a year later when Thompson, playing his 51st game of the season at just 20, helped keep a clean sheet in the FA Cup final against Newcastle at Wembley as the famous old trophy went to Anfield for only the second time and the young defender’s actions before the game highlighted further just how much he was living his and his family’s dreams.
Now a first time regular, he had already adopted a little family tradition of waiting for a quiet moment in play to give his brother Owen who was still standing on the same spec of the Kop they once had together a wave - “the lads used to say to me ‘how the hell can you see your brother when he’s in there among 26,000 people?’ but I’d say ‘eh I know where I stood’. I could look straight up and pick him out” - and he showed his fanatical love for the Reds was seeping out of every pore by helping his mum make banners for the big game at Wembley that he was going to be playing in.
“Do you see people ever doing that now?”, he asked.
“Steven Gerrard, maybe Jamie Carragher might do, but there's me and my mum. We've got a big sheet on the floor. We made two flags and we are putting on all the tape. 'Shanks' Red Army.'
“That will never ever happen again. I felt great pride in doing these flags for my brothers to take down to Wembley. That was fantastic.”
Shankly’s shock retirement that summer saw a brief transition period as Bob Paisley stepped up from the boot room to take charge and Liverpool finished as runners-up to surprise champions Derby County in 1975.
It would be the only full season Thompson played at Anfield which would finish without a trophy however as the softly-spoken north-easterner build on the foundations his predecessor had laid to establish the Reds as the pre-eminent force at home and abroad with the Kirkby defender’s presence at the heart of the back four indicative of the iconic Scot’s legacy and under-rated tactical nous which could sometimes be lost amid his force of nature personality.
“I was always a midfield player", Thompson revealed.
"I was more defence-minded as a midfield player and every now and again if the reserves were short Ronnie Moran played me at centre-half.
“When Larry Lloyd got injured and he was out for quite a while, Bill Shankly said to me: 'I want you to play centre back for the first team.’
“People always say it was the Dutch who invented 'Total Football'. I say it was Liverpool. Emlyn and myself were not centre-halves like Big Yeatsy, big Larry Lloyd just as a stopper. It was now a totally new ball game.
“It was Ray Clemence rolling the ball out to me or Emlyn and we pass it and we go across one side, we go across the other side. We'd probe and pass. We used to keep the ball for fun in those days, it was always keeping possession. People couldn't get it off us for minutes on end.
“Bill Shankly was very forward thinking. When I played my very first game when I came on as a substitute against Manchester United at Old Trafford, Tosh had come off injured and Bill Shankly said to me: 'Play behind Kevin Keegan', so it would give us a bit of strength in midfield.
“So I was like "number 10" as people called. This was very forward thinking. Not many people had gone for that sort of role. It was quite modern and up-to-date in how he saw his tactics.”
Shankly’s final European Cup campaign in 1973/74 had seen Liverpool knocked out in the second round by Red Star Belgrade after being beaten home and away and convinced the Boot Room sages a different, more methodical approach would be required to succeed on the continent. Alongside Thompson and Hughes’ more thoughtful approach in playing out from the back, Paisley’s shrewd acquisition of young talent like Phil Neal, Terry McDermott and Jimmy Case meant after that initial fallow debut season for the new boss, the platform was now set for a period of dominance never before seen in English football.
Thompson was central to the Reds repeating the league and UEFA Cup double of three years earlier in 1975/76, missing only one league game and scoring the crucial semi-final aggregate winner against Barcelona which sealed the Reds’ spot in the two-legged European showpiece final against Belgian side FC Bruges, capping a tremendous year of personal success by making his first full England appearance against Wales.
A third championship medal in five seasons followed in 1977 although a cartilage injury meant Thompson missed out on the club’s maiden European Cup triumph against Borussia Moenchengladbach in Rome but he would not be denied a year later and played a crucial role in Paisley’s side retaining the trophy against Bruges at Wembley by clearing off the line a late chance the Belgians had to force extra time after a mistake by his new, young central defensive partner Alan Hansen.
With skipper Emlyn Hughes coming towards the end of his Liverpool career at left back, Thompson’s consistency and authority made him a natural candidate to take over the captaincy although Paisley initially handed the armband to Kenny Dalglish for a few games.
“All the players were absolutely astonished”, Thompson revealed.
“Alan Kennedy, Terry McDermott and everybody were saying to me 'We can't understand why he hasn't made you captain.' I was gobsmacked. Kenny was captain for about 5-6 games and then we were playing Arsenal at home and Bob said: 'I'm changing the captain. Phil is going to be captain.' I was so pleased and thrilled. I can always remember Phil Neal's words to me: 'Tommo, that shouldn't even had been an issue. There is only one person who has the divine right to be captain at this moment in time and that's you.'
“On that day we were playing Arsenal at Anfield. I went down the steps at Anfield, touched the sign.
“I came up the steps. I go out on the pitch, straight over to the edge of the penalty area. What I had in my mind was that my brother, Owen, was on the Kop. I was looking for my brother.
“I hear everybody laughing. Clapping first and then laughing. I am thinking: 'What's going on here?' I am waving to my brother and I turned round and the players were still in the tunnel. They allowed me to walk out on my own. They were killing themselves laughing.”
One of Thompson's first jobs as club captain was to receive the 1979 league championship trophy after one of the Reds’ most dominant ever title wins and he repeated the trick a year later after being ever-present before in 1981 going down in history as the first Scouser to lift the European Cup when Liverpool beat Real Madrid in Paris to secure a third continental crown in five seasons.
It was the pinnacle of an already outrageously decorated career and Thompson showed he had never lost touch with his roots by making sure the good people of Kirkby got to share in his success as well by taking the most prestigious trophy in club football back to his local pub, The Falcon.
“People always ask me ‘what is your best memory in football?’ and this was it for me”, he admitted.
“I was fortunate enough to captain my country but nothing comes close to being skipper of Liverpool in ‘81.
“Being a Liverpool lad, leading my club up those steps was extra special. It was Roy of the Rovers stuff.
“Playing Madrid didn’t worry us because we had so much confidence in our own ability. We were the top dogs at the time and we knew that if we played well then we would win.
“The all reds had beaten the all whites and we were the kings of world football. The celebrations were fantastic. With the final being just across the Channel the fans had travelled in their thousands.
“People always say to me ‘is that stuff really true about you taking the European Cup back to the pub? It’s become legendary and it certainly happened.
“When we won the League Cup earlier that season we had left the trophy on the coach and it had gone back to the depot. So when we got home from Paris, Peter Robinson (Liverpool secretary) told me as captain I had to make sure the European Cup was taken care of.
“I didn’t need to be asked twice. After the parade I put it in the back of my Capri and went straight to the Falcon where I ran the Sunday league side.
“There was a big party going on and the trophy was perched behind the bar – we had a great night. There was a queue for the phone with everyone telling their mates to come down.
“The following morning Peter rang me about 9am and asked me where the cup was. I was still in bed and through bleary eyes I could see it sitting on the cabinet in my bedroom.
“I’d told everyone to come back to the Falcon for 11am and bring their kids so they could have their picture taken with the trophy.
“I couldn’t let them down and stayed true to my word. I eventually got the cup back to Anfield about midday.
“I don’t think the press were too happy because they had been waiting around for three hours but Peter never said anything about it.”
Yet barely six months later Thompson was left devastated when, after a poor run of form both for himself and the team, Paisley took the captaincy off him and gave the armband to Graeme Souness.
It had an immediate impact with Liverpool winning 19 out of the last 20 league matches to secure the title yet again also retaining the League Cup with victory over Spurs at Wembley, while Thompson made the England squad for that summer’s World Cup in Spain starting every match.
But the way the Liverpool captaincy was taken from him and the identity of the man who took it over rankled deeply with Thompson and appeared to form the basis of a long-running feud which would have long-term consequences.
“The period when Bruce Grobbelaar had just come to the club and Ray Clemence, who I had a great understanding with, was the most difficult time I'd had as a player", Thompson admitted.
“Bob thought the captaincy was part of it. In fairness he had a point. I took all the responsibility on my own shoulders. Every time there was a goal being conceded I wouldn't allow anybody else to take the blame. It was my fault.
“He said I was placing too much pressure on myself. I was disappointed because I felt Graeme Souness in the background was pushing for the captaincy himself.”
With Liverpool struggling in 12th position, 3-1 home defeat to Manchester City on Boxing Day 1981 marked by high profile errors by Thompson and Grobbelaar led many in the media to declare the Reds’ unparalleled period of dominance over, with the Daily Mirror describing the Anfield empire as ‘crumbling’ and even the Liverpool Daily Post suggesting it might be time for Paisley to step down.
Souness said in his 1999 autobiography and detailed by the Athletic that he believed Thompson’s attitude towards him changed following the 1981 pre-season tour to Ireland when late into a private function where trays of beer were supplied on the club’s account, Thompson suggested the Scot had married his first wife because of her moneyed background and he responded by throwing a pint of lager over him as well as a punch with the pair being separated by team-mates without the captain being able to retaliate.
Souness claimed he was surprised to be offered the job ahead of Neal and Dalglish both of whom he believed were ahead of him in the pecking order, insisting it was “never my style to go and ask for somebody else’s job” and believing Thompson had lost the job himself a few weeks earlier after giving Paisley ‘a mouthful in front of the lads’ after the manager had reacted to Liverpool’s 3-0 defeat to Flamengo in the Intercontinental Cup final in Japan by asking his skipper whether the captaincy as proving too much for him.
With talk rife among the squad and audible to Thompson that he was about to lose the armband, he confronted Paisley and had his worst suspicions confirmed.
“I asked Bob, 'Who's going to be the new captain?' And he said: 'Well, I'm not...'
“I said: 'It's Graeme f***ing Souness isn’t it, I know it anyways.'
“Bob choked on his words, which I was disappointed by.
“But it had the desired effect. It gave me a huge boost in my esteem to prove Bob wrong. At that point we were 18 points behind in the 12th place in the League and we went on to win the League.”
The pair’s professionalism and desire for success enabled them to put their differences to one side with the league title and League Cup both being retained again in 1983 but their days as team-mates were numbered.
Souness would depart for a big pay packet with Italian side Sampdoria after lifting Liverpool’s fourth European Cup against AS Roma in Rome to complete a unique Treble that season after the league title was retained for the third successive year and the League Cup for a fourth.
And that would prove to be Thompson’s final full season as a Liverpool player although injuries meant his only appearance was the Wembley Charity Shield defeat to Manchester United right at its outset and, with Mark Lawrenson now established alongside Alan Hansen at the heart of the back four, he moved on loan to Sheffield United and completed a permanent move to Bramall Lane in March 1985, retiring at the end of that season at the age of only 31.
His deep links to the club still saw him train at Melwood twice a week and within a year he was back on the staff, Kenny Dalglish - now installed as player-manager - offering him the chance in the summer of 1986 to manage the reserves after dispensing with the services of former playing great Chris Lawler who he felt had been too quiet and not forceful enough.
That was something Thompson was never likely to be accused of and it gave him the opportunity to channel what iconic Liverpool coach Ronnie Moran, still on the staff himself at the time, had seen in him right from the start and eventually follow in his footsteps.
Moran, who died in 2017 after a near half-century of service to LFC, had spotted Thompson's potential and character from the very first morning he arrived as a nervous teenage apprentice, saying “Sometimes you can instantly spot players who are going to make it all the way to the top. You could see it in him right away.
“His attitude was right, he was positive and he wanted to win. He was the Liverpool prototype, who did the right things without being prodded along all the time. You don’t make them, they make themselves."
Thompson himself made it abundantly clear how much of influence Moran was on him, not just during his playing career but as he was finding his coaching feet as well.
“Ronnie was my mentor and he was very very hard at times, but it was the Liverpool way.
“Never pleased and always demanding. He pushed me and pushed me. Ronnie was fantastic. I played in the B-team with Ronnie, I played in the A-team with him, I played in the reserves with him and then we moved on to the first team. He was a tough demanding coach. We could win 5-0 on a Saturday and on the Monday morning we'd go in and Ronnie Moran would be barking out the orders.
“Everybody says: 'Are you never happy?' It was the right thing to do. You didn't rest on your laurels. You've won the League championship. You get b****r all for last season. That's gone, that's finished.”
Thompson carved out a similar ‘sergeant major’ role and reputation for himself amongst the young players over the next half dozen or so years, with Robbie Fowler remembering just how much of a tough taskmaster he could be, saying “He was a coach who would push youngsters to see how tough they were and a lot of the young lads coming through despised him for it. I'm amazed he never got properly sparked out there."
The return of Thompson’s old foe Graeme Souness as manager in April 1991 following Kenny Dalglish’s shock resignation two months earlier i nitially saw the Scot be “quite content to let him (Thompson) get on with his job while I concentrated on mine”, the new boss stressing it never crossed his mind he might have a problem with him.
Souness, according to Thompson, had reassured him he saw him as his new Ronnie Moran but the truce did not last long.
With one of the changes Souness introduced being contract negations for all staff including coaches coming under the manager’s authority rather than the club secretary’s as had been the case at Anfield for years, a dispute soon emerged after Thompson had been to see Peter Robinson over a pay rise.
And after further issues over Thompson’s at times ferocious manner with the club’s young players, who Souness was increasingly having to rely on due to injuries and poor recruitment, and with Academy director Steve Heighway, events towards the end of the Scot’s tumultuous first full season in charge brought matters to a head.
Souness’s need for a triple heart bypass operation meant Ronnie Moran would be in caretaker charge for the final weeks of the campaign and, with some fans calling for the Scot to be sacked after selling his story following his illness to the S*n newspaper, still reviled on Merseyside after its repugnant and unfounded lies following the Hillsborough disaster only three years earlier (their ‘Lover-pool’ front page exclusive featuring Souness and his then girlfriend celebrating Liverpool’s FA Cup semi final replay victory over Portsmouth was published on 15 April 1992), Thompson - a potential candidate to take over - was accused of attempted to ‘promote’ himself in the power vacuum left by Souness’s absence.
Souness also alleged it had got back to him that Thompson had bad-mouthed him in front of Manchester United staff following’s Liverpool late-April win over Alex Ferguson’s side which had clinched the title for Leeds United and, having returned to work to sit on the bench for the Reds’ FA Cup final victory over Second Division Sunderland, sacked him the week after the Wembley triumph.
Thompson took the club to an industrial tribunal following his dismissal before reaching an out-of-court settlement, later expanding on what happened from his perspective in his 1999 autobiography ‘Stand Up Pinocchio’ and the suggestion he had been fired for his supposedly harsh treatment of young players.
"I couldn't accept this. Yes, they got the verbals at times, but I had a great relationship with them. I felt they needed to know how to take criticism and still be positive. If they were ever to progress into the first team with Ronnie, they would know what a tongue-lashing was.
"The chairman was sitting at the head of the table with Graeme Souness next to him. He said: 'Phil, we have had a discussion and chatted about the situation. We are all in full agreement that we have to back the manager's decision over this.'
"I said: 'Fair enough, but what is the reason for my dismissal?'
"They said: 'We will give it to you in writing.' I said that the reason the manager had given me for my sacking was that I was shouting too much at the younger lads.
"I added that I was not accepting that as the real reason. I said: 'You know and I know that this is personal. It is wider than this and you are not going to tell me.'
"I added: 'I would like to thank you for all the help you have given me. I have had a wonderful time as a player and a coach. I've done things with dignity and always done my job as well as I can.'
"The chairman said: 'You have done your bit. Thank you for your efforts.'
"Graeme Souness did not look up as I went out of the room.”
Twelve months later Thompson said he learned from former team mates Alan Kennedy and David Johnson that his alleged comments to Manchester United assistant boss Brian Kidd about Souness after United’s April 1992 defeat at Anfield were the supposed real reason for his departure.
"Whether I had said those words about Graeme, I don't know. However, Brian is said to have told Alex Ferguson, he told Everton coach Archie Knox who told manager Walter Smith. Walter, of course, had been with Graeme at Rangers.
"The suggestion was that this was the route by which Graeme picked up on my supposed words. Whether they were misconstrued, I don't know, but Alan and David relayed this chain of events to me.
"I was always behind him and supportive of him while I was a coach. Even if I did say those words, surely a rollicking would have been enough. Why did he have to give me the sack?
“What I do know is that it caused me tremendous personal grief and affected all of my family, not least my sons.
"I always think back to the Monday after being told by Graeme that he wanted me out and having to tell the boys.
"The older one said 'why?' and I said: 'I don't know.' He said: 'Does that mean you won't be going back and coaching the players?' I said: 'No, that is the end of it', and the two of them started crying. They were hugging each other and sobbing and I vowed at that moment never to talk to Graeme Souness ever again.
"Even now my wife Marg says: 'You were good team-mates. Why can't you sit down with him and ask if he got it wrong?'
"I just have these pictures in my mind of my boys being so broken-hearted and the answer is: 'No, never again.’”
The pair would eventually speak again at the funeral of long-serving Liverpool secretary Bryce Morrison in 2009, by which time Thompson had returned to Anfield for a successful coaching spell alongside Gerard Houllier.
After a number of years as a television pundit with Sky Sports, Thompson was immediately identified as the perfect man to assist the Frenchman - the club’s first ever overseas manager - when he took sole charge after the brief and ill-fated joint-manager experiment alongside Roy Evans in the early months of the 1998/99 season.
Coming back to Anfield was a dream come true for Thompson who had only dared dream such an opportunity might come his way after the acrimony of his departure six years earlier.
“One morning I get a phone call just out of the blue from Peter Robinson. He said: 'I'd like you to come to a meeting.'
“’When?' I said, 'Right now. Do you know where the Chairman lives?’, he replied.
“When I got up to the chairman's house they were all sitting there. They said, ‘We’ve spoken about what we need, and we need some discipline brought back into the club.
“We need somebody who can stand up to the players and be strong. Somebody who’s got Liverpool’s DNA in them.
“We would like you to be assistant manager.'
“I felt absolutely thrilled. Imagine, assistant manager of Liverpool? It was just a dream come true."
With the Liverpool in need of modernising as the Premier League era took hold, the combination of Houllier’s visionary approach to diet, fitness and tactics along with Thompson’s passion and knowledge of the club proved very effective once their methods began to take hold with the Reds winning an unprecedented Treble of cups in 2001 as well as qualifying for the Champions League for the first time.
The long-overdue return of major silverware to Anfield didn’t lessen Thompson’s desire for success and combustible nature which came to the surface before the following season had even begun.
A training ground row with Robbie Fowler led to the striker being banned for weeks as Thompson recalled to Paddy Power’s From The Horse’s Mouth podcast last year.
“Gerard and I had strict rules about bags of footballs and when and what they should be used for during training sessions.
“No one was allowed to take any balls out until we had done our warm-up and were starting our session.
“This day, we’ve done the warm-up and all the balls are on the sideline. We were just waiting for Sammy Lee to say what we’re going to be doing. As this is going on, I’m walking across the goalline and I’m about a foot away from the post.
“Next thing I know this ball flashes past my nose and misses by a couple of inches.
“I turned around and shouted, “Who’s just done that?” and everyone is looking the other way. I shouted again, “Who’s just done that? You know the rules, who was it?” and Robbie Fowler said, “It was me”.
“So I said to him, “You know the f**king rules” and added “what if that had smashed a player’s nose, then we’d have a problem wouldn’t we?”
“Suddenly we are walking towards each other and we’re squaring up and he said “F**k off big nose” and I was furious.
“Gerard Houllier arrived on the scene then and asked, “what the hell is going on here?”. I told him Robbie was out of order and that he knows the rules. So, Gerard separated us and after training he got the staff and players in to ask them what happened.
“Houllier then called a team meeting and told Robbie “everyone knows the rules including you Robbie. You are not playing until you apologise to Phil.
“That was part of the discipline. After about two weeks of it I asked Gerard if I could go to Robbie and square it, but he said, “No, it’s not about you now. It’s not even about Robbie. It’s about the football club now. If we back down now, we’ve lost all our credit in the bank. We’re not doing that.”
Fowler eventually did apologise and by mid October 2001, Thompson suddenly found himself really in the hot seat when Houllier suffered a life-threatening heart problem which required an 11-hour operation and months of recuperation away from football.
“Being caretaker manager was something new for me. It was also quite exhilarating”, Thompson admitted to CoachesVoice.
“I was in charge for six months. For three or four of those, Gerard was too ill. I would walk to his apartment after matches, and talk to him about the game. He’d either watched on TV or listened on the radio. He’d ask what the team was going to be that week. ‘Gérard, forget it’, I would say. ‘Concentrate on getting yourself better.’
“Gradually, as he started getting better, we started feeding him little bits of information. After four or so months, we’d tell him what the team would be – but it wasn’t until the last month that we would allow him some input, because we didn’t want him to be stressed.”
Thompson kept the Reds in contention for trophies both at home and abroad before Houllier returned to the dug out for a pivotal Champions League match against Roma which Liverpool won to qualify for the quarter-finals.
The Frenchman famously said his side now lay ‘ten games from greatness’ but they fell to unfancied German side Bayer Leverkusen in the last eight of Europe and finished second in the Premier League to Double winners Arsenal despite a then modern era club record points tally of 82.
Despite a promising start to the following campaign, the Frenchman seemed to have lost something after his illness and although there was another League Cup win in March 2003, he was sacked as manager the following May after only managing a fourth place Premier League finish.
Thompson also departed but looks back with fondness and pride at how they helped take Liverpool into the 21st century while putting the club back on the European map.
"One of the greatest moments of my life was when we come together in 1998”, Thompson said after the Frenchman’s passing in December 2020.
“Just to be in Gerard’s company was an absolute treat. So loyal, so passionate and extremely fierce.
"So many wonderful times, bringing smiles back to peoples faces. 2001 should never be forgotten.
"Since we finished, at the end of every conversation we had, I told him I loved him and would always be grateful for him giving a wonderful partnership.”
Houllier offered Thompson the assistant’s job when he returned to management with Aston Villa in 2010 but he turned it down meaning his involvement with the game since has been confined to regular television work for years with Sky Sports and more recently LFC TV where his passion, knowledge and sheer love for Liverpool and the game of football shines as brightly as ever and still bears out the words he wrote in his testimonial brochure back in 1983, “It’s difficult to explain what it means to a Liverpool supporter to come out of the Kop and enjoy so much success with his boyhood heroes. They don’t write Roy of the Rovers stories like that.”
