WHATEVER David Beckham or Michael Owen achieve at Real Madrid, they will be hard-pressed to match the feats of Steve McManaman. Often dismissed as a dilettante in Britain, his two European Cup wins and two Spanish championships make him a more successful export than John Charles, Kevin Keegan, Liam Brady or anyone else you care to mention when it comes to putting medals on the table.
Anyone who believes that the former Liverpool winger piggy-backed Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and Luis Figo to win those honours should read El Macca, the story of his four years at the Bernabéu. McManaman was winning trophies before those three superstars swept into the dressing-room and he witnessed first-hand the downside of the club’s obsession with gal ácticos.
It is a policy that appears to have been abandoned with the appointment of José Antonio Camacho as coach and the summer signing of two centre halves — Walter Samuel and Jonathan Woodgate — on top of the bargain £8 million purchase of Owen. Not a moment too soon, according to McManaman, whose account of last summer ‘s pre-season tour to the Far East goes a long way to explaining a disastrous and trophy-less first season for Beckham. Contractually committed to fielding the galácticos in every match of a trip that was ludicrously taxing and commercial, Real exhausted their best players even before the Spanish season had started.
“It was so divisive, the very opposite of the team-building operation a pre-season should be about,” McManaman said. “There was no problem between the players but you can see how the atmosphere changed in certain players’ relationships with the club. We were judged not on our worth to the team but on our worth as a marketing tool. At the Tokyo Dome we literally went out, jogged round the field a few times and waved to people. Some of the lads went inside, some put on a five-a-side game incorporating as many tricks as possible. We had well and truly morphed into the Harlem Globetrotters of football.
“In the Far East, a lot of the lads said they were desperate to leave. The Disneyfication of Real Madrid had gone too far.
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(Fernando) Morientes knew he could be playing well but Ronaldo would always come back as soon as he’s fit enough to kick a ball no matter what.”
McManaman was among those to depart, heading to Manchester City as soon as the tour was over, but his memories of Spain are overwhelmingly positive. Playing in central midfield, he was a key member of the side in his first two seasons and remained a favourite of supporters even when the arrival of Zidane and Figo pushed him to the margins.The book also includes a chapter on an England career that concluded more than two years ago with the last of McManaman’s 37 caps. Valued by Terry Venables, mistrusted by Glenn Hoddle and misused by Kevin Keegan, he initially thought that he might thrive under Sven-Göran Eriksson. He is hurt by the suggestion that he is too nonchalant for the Swede’s taste.
“The way my England involvement petered out, the way Eriksson rang me in the middle of a weekday morning when he knew I’d be training and left a message, that was a bit hurtful,” he said. “I’d have preferred it if he’d rung me and said: ‘Look, Macca, I can’t have you in the team because I just don’t think you give a monkey’s.’ At least then I could have said:
‘I do give a monkey’s’ . . . I have been left with that question mark.”