They say it was the 1974 Dutch World Cup team who invented 'total football', but we started playing it earlier

Thursday 26 May 2005. It’s half-time in the Champions League final. A disjointed Liverpool are down by a massive three-goal deficit to AC Milan at the Ataturk Stadium, Istanbul. You can get a massive 350/1 on the exchanges for a Liverpool victory.

Live on Sky, the experts are virtually unanimous in their verdict. ‘At 3-0 you’ve got to say it’s game over,’ states Andy Gray matter-of-factly. A shell-shocked Richard Keys asks Phil Thompson, ‘But just what is Rafa going to be able to say to the players?’ Thompson stops for a moment. His famous nose twitches under the studio lights as he reaches deep into his soul for the answer.

‘You’ve gotta believe!’ he bites back. ‘If you don’t believe, you may as well pack it in now!’ The rest, as they say, is history.

Kopping the lot

Thompson’s career reads like a screenplay. Born and raised in Liverpool’s tough Kirkby district, he stood with his brothers on Anfield’s famous Kop until the age of 15. Aged 16, he signed for the team he loved as a £7-a-week apprentice. Legendary manager Bill Shankly took him on full-time at 17, turning the defensive-minded midfielder into a modern, mobile centre-half. On his debut against Manchester United at Old Trafford, his first touch was to dispossess George Best and launch a counter-attack.

Thommo was to eventually become captain, carrying off an amazing stash of silverware: seven league titles plus one FA, one UEFA, two European and two League Cups. He kept fit Rocky-style running up and down the Kop in moulded football boots. He boozed hard; he defended harder. Thommo never lacked commitment, belief or emotion – perhaps the very qualities that describe him best.

‘Football is all about emotion,’ he says. ‘I understand that. People from Liverpool are always very emotional about football because of all the things that’ve happened. I’ve always been and will always be a fan.’ In fact, before the 1973 FA Cup final against Newcastle United, he helped his brothers paint banners on the kitchen table before heading to Wembley and lifting the trophy after a 3-0 win.

‘It makes me giggle thinking about it,’ smiles Thommo. ‘I can’t see Stevie Gerrard doing it, can you? Maybe Jamie Carragher might! But those were different times. In a way we were just normal lads who took our football extremely seriously. We could mix with the fans in a way players can’t now. Once I was late for a parade of the Cup and got a lift in an ice-cream van. After we won the European Cup, I took it back to my local. All the kids had their pictures taken with it.’

Sure, Thommo’s silverware speaks for itself, but how good was the team he played in? ‘Well, I came together with Emlyn Hughes in 1974 after Larry Lloyd went down to a thigh problem,’ explains Thompson. ‘That meant we now had two ball-playing centre-backs. They say it was the Dutch World Cup team of that year who invented “total football”, but we started playing it even earlier.’

But desire for innovation meant there was a marked lack of sentiment when it came to clearing out old talent in place of new blood, and with the arrival of Alan Hansen, Mark Lawrenson and others, Thompson left Anfield for Sheffield United in 1985.

The move to South Yorkshire was to prove short-lived. Thommo retired and set up Phil Thompson Pine DIY. But in July 1986 Kenny Dalglish brought him back to the club as reserve team coach. It was a role in which he excelled.

The whispering game

‘I’d played in the reserves and won trophies with them,’ explains Thommo. ‘I saw the importance of generating players for the first team – people like Steve Staunton. We worked hard, developed a lot of talent and won the Central League title.’

Which made it all the more strange when in 1992 Graeme Souness sacked him almost immediately. For two years, Thommo didn’t know why. Rumours of a Scottish conspiracy emerged: Manchester United assistant manager Brian Kidd had supposedly heard him bollocking Liverpool players at Old Trafford, told Alex Ferguson who relayed the message via Archie Knox to Walter Smith at Rangers and back to Souness. Unbelievable, we suggest.

‘But true,’ insists Thommo. ‘Of course I’d been shouting at young lads – that’s part of my job! Why he didn’t bring me in and have a chat I don’t know. In Souness’s defence, he was an ill man at the time, though. The irony is I was pleased with his appointment. I protected him over his Sun article [published on the third anniversary of the Hillsbrough disaster in 1992, in which Souness was pictured kissing and smiling with his girlfriend on the day fans were mourning the loss of 96 supporters who had died in 1989. The interview came in the wake of Souness returning from successful heart surgery, as well as the club’s recent victory over Portsmouth in the FA Cup semi-final] even though I knew he’d made an error of judgement. I said he was in Scotland and didn’t realise the strength of feeling towards The Sun in Liverpool’.

Thompson’s Liverpool career – incredibly – was revived a third time in 1998 when Gerard Houllier took over from ‘Uncle’ Roy Evans. The Frenchman had only met Thompson for 15 minutes, but realised he needed a respected local hero to instill discipline into an effete, underachieving team.

‘You could say it was a risk Gerard picking me,’ he says, ‘but the club knew I could do the job.’

Was it true, we ask, that Paul Ince once told him he ‘didn’t do running’? ‘Yes,’ answers Thommo, still visibly rankled by the self-proclaimed ‘Guvnor’. ‘And there are too many stories like that; £50 notes being burned on the back of the bus, people like Stan Collymore not turning up for training days in a row, Neil Ruddock eating chips on his exercise bike. Roy was led on too much by the Ince power thing, but we weren’t. If the players didn’t like me, I didn’t care.’

Foul play and Spice Boys

And then there was Robbie Fowler. An immense, natural talent on a Shevchenko scale. But a loose cannon who mock-snorted goal-lines, told Thommo to ‘fuck off, big nose’ and was sent packing to Leeds.

‘Deep down he’s a nice lad,’ says Thommo. ‘If only he’d apologised. His career wasn’t going the way it should. He couldn’t handle being third choice behind Michael (Owen) and Emile (Heskey). The situation blew up. Gerard took the advice of staff and players – it was a question of discipline.’

Houllier and Thompson’s work at Liverpool was far from bad. The team finally shed its ‘Spice Boy’ image and started winning again. They lifted a treble of FA, League and UEFA Cups in 2000/2001 and another League Cup success in 2003. In the 2001-02 season, they finished a creditable second place in the Premiership, with Thommo briefly taking over the managerial reins when Houllier suffered a heart attack in October 2001.

On his return to the club following his illness, Houllier gambled on the transfer market – and lost in spectacular fashion. He spent £3.7m on Bruno Cheyrou, £4.3m on Salif Diao and £12m on El Hadj Diouf. None of them was successful at Anfield and the 2002-03 season saw Liverpool finish fifth, fail to get past the Champions League group stages and then flop in the UEFA Cup. The club bade adieu to Thommo and Houllier.

‘We made some good signings and some bad,’ says Thommo. ‘Some I had input into, some I didn’t. We had massive problems with Diouf. He’s a nice guy, but there seems to be some kind of chip missing. Then again, some people say Vladimir Smicer didn’t deliver. Too many players didn’t live up to the billing.

Once a Red, always a Red

‘The last transfers really killed us though,’ he concedes. ‘They didn’t perform, and they cost us our jobs. Even worse, though, we took a lot of stick about our playing style from a lot of people who make money out of being connected with Liverpool. They were happy to criticise from the sidelines and the media – but me and Gerard got stuck in and tried to do something.’

Today, Thommo has resumed his media career with Sky. He views his Soccer Saturday panel as ‘his team’ and his job as ‘therapy’, but his life-long passion for the Reds remains unabated, regardless of personal history. He applauds his Anfield successor Rafael Benitez and calls the triumph in Istanbul ‘the best Liverpool game ever’. And he reckons the Reds are a definite each-way bet this season.

But, we ask the high priest of Scouse, what about next season? Can Benitez really bring the league title back to Anfield after a 17-year absence? ‘Well, there’s the small problem of Chelsea,’ smiles Thommo, knowingly. ‘But like I said that night in Istanbul – you’ve got to believe...’