Carra: My Autobiography (4 page)

I wanted to win too much. This isn't a bad quality, but at such a tender age it must have seemed a bit strange. Most ten-year-olds will play the match, go home, watch telly eating a bag of crisps and forget about it the next day. I'd think about a defeat for days. Instead of enjoying my football, I was too intense. The 'winning is the only thing' philosophy was poisoning me. There were times I was substituted for being too aggressive towards my teammates. The influence of watching all those adult amateur league battles had sunk in too deep.

By the start of my second year at Bootle Boys, the age rules meant I was playing alongside lads in my own year. It became even clearer to me how much better I was, and it wasn't a responsibility I carried well.

We played Wirral first game of the new season, a team that included David Thompson, my future Liverpool teammate. I'd decided I wanted to play centre midfield so I could dictate the play much more. It was 0–0 at halftime, so the manager ordered me back upfront and I scored a hat-trick in a 3–0 win. My central midfield career was over, temporarily at least, after forty-five minutes. I was a striker for the rest of the season.

I was talking a great game on the pitch, and usually playing one too, but I was stinking places out with my behaviour. On my Anfield debut playing for Bootle Boys, I scored at The Kop end, but Heighway pulled me after the game and slated me for not being a team player. 'You need to start appreciating your teammates,' he said. It was the second key warning of my novice career, and it hit me as much as my dad's flying boots.

The opposition felt the heat of my anger too. As Bootle's best player, I'd often be targeted by opponents, and if I ever felt I was being provoked, I rarely bit my tongue or controlled my temper. Yet again, the conduct I'd witnessed standing on the sidelines had been embedded into my repertoire. The Sunday League was always a scally zone.

At the start of my Merton Villa career we'd regularly lose 7–0, but we improved every season. Medals began to arrive, and personal recognition came with them. Soon we were the best team in the Bootle and Litherland District. We also won a national tournament held in Southport and moved into the stronger Walton and Kirkdale League, playing the best sides in Liverpool.

Our rivals were a team called Pacific, who had a player everyone recognized as a top prospect, Jamie Cassidy. Jamie would have been a certain Liverpool regular if he hadn't suffered so much with injuries. He damaged his cruciate and broke his leg just after breaking into the reserves, and never fully recovered. Their striker, John Murphy, also went on to score lots of goals for Blackpool. They were a formidable side, and they beat us to the league title, but then we met each other in the Sunday League Cup Final.

That game, held at the Long Lane playing fields in Fazakerley, meant as much to me when I was twelve as the moment Andriy Shevchenko fluffed his penalty in the 2005 Champions League Final. We won 5–4, and I scored twice. As Everton midfielder Stuart McCall presented the trophy, I revelled in a collective sense of achievement. Good as I was, it had needed a monumental team effort to win that cup. I was proud of the whole side's efforts, not only my own. Another box in the 'things to do to become a top footballer' had been ticked.

After McCall handed me my medal, I just muttered 'Thanks' and walked back to my seat. If he'd wanted to chat longer, I could have listed all his playing statistics, how many goals he'd scored, and maybe even offered a bit of advice on what more he could be doing to live up to the standards of the great midfielder he'd replaced, Paul Bracewell – a player who inspired my gelled haircut at one time. This is because when I wasn't playing football, I wanted to be reading or talking about it.

Every youngster in Liverpool likes to keep a stack of magazines under the bed for some quiet late-night entertainment.
Shoot
was my choice. Its arrival every Saturday morning was pencilled into my mind's diary. I'd collect my order from the newsagent and read every sentence. I wasn't interested in pinning posters on the wall, but in finding out any detail about every top player. I'd keep each edition for years, so I'd always have a private library for later reference. Today, I'd test my memory for games and goalscorers against anyone in the country. I studied results, fixtures and players in such depth I'm now able to answer many football trivia questions instantly. If I wasn't a footballer, I'd have gone on
Mastermind
, my specialist subject '
Shoot
magazine during the 1980s'.

One edition from spring 1988 still traumatizes me. I was convinced Everton had signed Ian Rush from Juventus because he was on the cover of
Shoot
wearing the blue kit. I ran home shouting to everyone, 'We've signed Ian Rush!', only to read the article and discover it was an April Fool joke. I wasn't laughing, and graduated to the more mature
90 Minutes
shortly after.

If I ever met one of the professional players featured in the pages of
Shoot
, I wasn't as surprised as some youngsters would have been because I was lucky enough to become accustomed to it. I was training twice a week at Liverpool, at the Vernon Sangster Leisure Centre – which is due to be demolished to make way for the new stadium on Stanley Park – and was used to seeing the likes of Dalglish and Everton's manager Howard Kendall on the line during schoolboy games, watching their own sons. Kendall's presence would always prompt me to try to find an extra yard. Liverpool had spotted me, but privately it was Everton I still hoped to join.

At the age of eleven, I was given my chance.

Ray Hall, who ran Everton's School of Excellence, had actually been pursuing me for some time, and eventually I allowed my heart to rule my head and accepted his offer. We only signed annual contracts at Anfield, so at the end of my second season I informed Steve Heighway my Liverpool career was over and my spiritual home awaited.

Hall was excited by his new signing. A day before my first training session he called my mum to ask her the name of my favourite player.

She didn't know. 'I think it's Tony Cottee,' she said.

The following morning I arrived to be met by a smiling Hall.

'I know who your favourite player is,' he said.

'Graeme Sharp?' I replied.

Hall's face turned white. He'd brought me Cottee's shorts as a welcome gift. I wasn't exactly gutted, but I wasn't performing cartwheels either.

My dad warned me leaving Liverpool was a mistake. He had no intention of stopping me joining Everton; all he said was there was no reason to leave Anfield. Within a few months I realized he was right. I loved Everton, but there was no comparison in terms of the coaching, organization and standard of players, and the glory days of the mid to late eighties were over. At Liverpool, everything was focused on passing and moving. When a player tried to pick up the ball, Heighway would shout at them like they'd committed a cardinal sin. 'Are you a goalkeeper, lad?' he'd yell. 'Put that down!' I missed working with him and wanted to go back.

I asked my dad to approach Heighway and ask if there was a chance of a return. Thankfully, Liverpool agreed. I signed my first longer-term contract when I was fourteen, on schoolboy forms.

Phil Thompson was waiting for me at Anfield when I went there to put pen to paper. 'You'll never be as good as your arl' fella,' Thommo said. He probably still had the bruises from meetings between Kirkby and Bootle twenty years earlier.

The only time I've left Liverpool since that day was to head to Lilleshall, the FA School of Excellence for players between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. Heighway tried to stop that happening. 'I don't want you to go,' he said. 'I know you've got to, but I believe you're the best fourteen-year-old in the country and I want to coach you here. They'd better not ruin you.' But this was my first opportunity to test myself against lads from across the country and in Europe. Besides, winning a place at Lilleshall was a huge accolade.

Any doubts I had about my abilities were quashed as I packed my bags and headed south for the final selections, after making the cut at the North-West trials, held in Preston. I was in competition with future internationals like Frank Lampard. I made the squad of sixteen, Lampard didn't.

By winning a place, I felt I had everything I needed to realize my ambition.

Lilleshall was the perfect grounding for a young professional. It was like being at boarding school, but I loved every minute. They were two of the best years of my life. I suspect it was harder for my family than for me during this time. Going away from home was exciting. Other than holidays or away matches, I'd not spent any time outside Bootle. But to see me wave goodbye at fourteen, even if it was only for a while, wasn't easy for my mum. Top footballers often get a bad press because the supporters only see our wealthy lifestyle, but there are sacrifices to be made to get to the top. There's no doubt some lads find it tougher than others, and homesickness is a problem, but I didn't see Lilleshall as a hardship. I missed my family too, but never so much I wanted to leave. I saw it as character-building. It helped me grow up quicker because you had to look after yourself rather than rely on your family to do everything for you.

The venue itself was superb. It was like living in luxury. It was a two-mile drive from the gates to the front door. I thought I was arriving at a mansion.

As far as I was concerned, I was joining a specialist school for footballers. We had to attend lessons and do all the usual school stuff, but we also trained with the best coaches every day and were all given our first taste of international football while we were there, so there was always something to look forward to.

After it was shut down, critics argued it was too elitist, focusing too much on a select group to the cost of others. This doesn't make sense to me. The fact I could go from a Bootle Sunday League side to Lilleshall proved how fair the scouting system was, while even those who didn't get in didn't necessarily suffer from having to stay with their clubs. What Lilleshall guaranteed was that the most highly rated youngsters in the country were given every chance to progress, and if any of those went on to represent England, as I did, it was a success. Ray Clemence's son Stephen and Gavin McCann were the other players in my year who went on to play at the top level. My Liverpool teammate and former rival from Pacific Jamie Cassidy was also there. We shared digs. He's responsible for my now being known as Jamie rather than James. To my family and friends, I'm still James, but during my spell at Lilleshall, Steve Heighway would refer to the 'two Jamies' away from home, so at Liverpool it's stuck.

Our eyes were opened to the standard of player elsewhere, but also to the financial differences between the Scousers and others. Me and Jamie were proud of our YTS contracts, while others were telling us about being paid as much as £10,000 in signing-on fees. In every sense, this was a taste of a world beyond Liverpool, which broadened our horizons.

By the end of my first year there I couldn't wait to go back. Steve Heighway had other ideas. Lilleshall played Liverpool towards the end of year one and I didn't play well. 'That's it, I'm bringing him back here,' Heighway told one of the coaches. 'They're ruining his game.' I heard this news later. He was wrong, though. I'd simply had a poor match and there was nothing to worry about. I was progressing at least as well as I would have had I stayed on Merseyside.

I was overlooked for England Schoolboys, but made my international debut representing Lilleshall at Under-16 level, partly because the aptly named nononsense Keith Blunt was manager, and he seemed to take a shine to the street fighter from Liverpool.

Yorkshireman Blunt was my type of boss. It was he who convinced Heighway it wasn't necessary to take me out of Lilleshall. He coached Joe Cole later, who told me how when he tried a Cruyff turn in the centre circle he was met with a scream of disapproval. 'Stop!' cried Blunt in his Brian Glover-inspired accent. 'We won't be having any of that nonsense here, lad.'

I was one of the smallest players in our group, but what I lacked in height I compensated for in spirit. I heard a few years later Wayne Rooney was shown a photograph of me standing beside Marlon Broomes, a six-foot-tall defender who's played for a host of First Division clubs, and asked, 'Which of these do you think became an England international defender?' Marlon dwarfed me, so the point was made: there's an obsession with physique at a young age, but it's no indicator of where a career can go.

Coaches like Blunt saw my attributes, although my language gave him the opportunity to indulge in a form of physical torture. There was a rule that anyone caught swearing had to do a lap of the pitch. Suffice to say, I ended up resembling a marathon runner. The Bootle Tourette's syndrome was no help to me: I cursed every misdirected shot or pass. I might as well have been wearing spikes rather than boots. I couldn't be bothered with the school lessons either. I was only interested in football. Michael Owen attended Lilleshall a couple of years later and told me the headmaster would discipline the players by shouting, 'We're not going to have another James Carragher here!' Michael, or Mo as I'll refer to him, said that by the time he met me he thought I must have been some kind of nutcase. My legend went before me, and it had nothing to do with football. I was even banned from the final graduation ceremony, or the 'caps day' as it was called, after a scuffle with a classmate on my last day of school. My dad ordered me to turn up anyway, daring them not to let me join in. No one said a word and I received my cap, presented by Jimmy Hill, with the rest of the players.