Another in the Galácticos series as five times European Cup winners and 18 times English League Champions, Liverpool, take to the field against the backdrop of the club's crucial first leg tie against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu with Steven Gerrard captaining his heroes. He is the only member of the current crop of players worthy of a place in the all-time XI according to the good people of the Independent, although his team-mates can console themselves that far greater players than them, including Roger Hunt, Emlyn Hughes, John Barnes, Ian Callaghan, Alan Kennedy, Phil Thompson, Terry McDermott and Tommy Smith, have failed to make the team.
Ray Clemence
Goalkeeper
Liverpool 1968-81, 666 games
In 1984 the great British abstract painter Howard Hodgkin painted a canvas he titled Clean Sheets. It is a rectangular mass of green that steals the watcher's gaze, the only distraction being a fleck of vivid red. While Hodgkin was born in London (which rarely precludes one from being a Liverpool fan) and has demonstrated little interest in the beautiful game, there is a convincing case to be made that his painting must have been inspired by the great Ray Clemence (pictured here in 1972) and the picture of hulking impermeable green he created in the minds of opposing strikers throughout the 1970s. The title alone gives the game away, in the course of winning 12 major trophies and playing 665 times for the Reds, the former deck-chair attendant from Skegness kept a bleach-inspiring 335 clean sheets.
Phil Neal
Right-back
Liverpool 1974-85, 648 games, 60 goals
For football fans that reset the Julian calendar to year zero when Sky invented the Premier League, Ryan Giggs appears to have defined the word longevity. Not so, he is merely adding his ball-and-socket-popping hips to a list of greats which includes the Liverpool right-back and serial European Cup winner, Phil Neal. By the time Bob Paisley shoplifted him from fourth division Northampton Town as a 23 year-old, he already had 187 league games under his belt. He went on to make 648 appearances for the Reds, including appearing in a club-record 417 consecutive games between 23 October 1976 and 24 September 1983. His 60 goal tally for the club was boosted by an unerring accuracy from the penalty spot that made Shearer's efforts look more like a Southgate.
Alan Hansen
Centre-half
Liverpool 1977-91, 623 games, 13 goals
Hansen cares about the art of defending with the zealousness of a craftsman who has attained perfection in his chosen arena. Captaining the club to the "Double" in 1986 was the pinnacle of an Anfield career that also saw Hansen pocket three European Cup winners' medals; eight league titles, two FA Cups and four League Cups. Like so many of his 'dream-team-mates', his Liverpool career began after being plucked for a pittance from football's nether regions, in Hansen's case, Scottish side Partick Thistle. His meticulous analysis of defending is a freeze-framing of processes that, in his own mind as a player, were calculated and solved in an instant. As with all elite athletes he played a different game: slower, with more choices, more options but, most importantly, more solutions. Spending money to preserve that art is a demonstration of all that is good about public service broadcasting.
Mark Lawrenson
Centre-half
Liverpool 1981-88, 332 games, 17 goals
If Hansen's game was based on an economy of movement, Lawrenson's game was based on dragging out every last ounce of energy from his rechargeable legs. Lawrenson had a reputation for versatility but he had one natural home and that was beside Hansen at the heart of a defence that made Midas look like Elton John. His big money move from Brighton to Liverpool in August 1981 cost Bob Paisley £900,000, nine times more than he almost paid for the pacy defender three years earlier. He made up for any lost time by picking up 10 major trophies, including the 1984 European Cup and five league titles. Strikers feared the adopted Irishman's persistence almost as much as his love of man-and-ball sliding tackles and, all these decades later, his natural home remains right beside Alan Hansen.
Alec Lindsay
Left-back
Liverpool 1969-77, 248 games, 18 goals
Bill Shankly said Alec Lindsay "could peel an orange with that left foot of his" and it is on the strength of this appendage that Bury-born Lindsay takes his place at left-back. Shankly signed him as a midfielder, played him in the reserves as a striker and the club had already accepted Alec's transfer request when he was given a last shot at the first team by playing at full-back. What he lacked in pace he compensated for with a prophetic reading of the game and he played a large part in dragging the club out of the shadows of St. John, Yeats, Hunt and Callaghan and to the league title and Uefa Cup in 1973 and the FA Cup a year later.
Billy Liddell
Left-wing
Liverpool 1938-60, 537 games, 229 goals
Billy Liddell spent his entire career at Anfield and made a then-record 534 appearances for the club. He had all the silken attributes associated with speedy wingers but he also possessed the one attribute the breed normally so painfully lacks - Billy had brute force. That force synchronised with his technique and powered his left pendulum in the act of scoring 228 goals, to add to the countless he made over his 23-year Liverpool career. He was first spotted as a teenager by Matt Busby and after joining Liverpool as a youngster went on to win the admiration of another legendary manager, Sir Alf Ramsey, then plain Alf and a Tottenham right-back: "I always knew I was in for a hectic afternoon when I was marking Billy. The only way to try to hold him was to beat him to possession of the ball. Once he had it, he was difficult to stop."
Graeme Souness
Centre-midfield
Liverpool 1978-84, 358 games, 56 goals
Once described as "a bear of a player with the delicacy of a violinist", in management Souness' attitude could be summed up as 'treating a violin with the delicacy of a bear'. But that should not obscure his immense abilities as a footballer and his woolly mammoth presence at the heart of the great Liverpool side of the late '70s and '80s. Like others in this side he captained the club to glory by moulding sides into his own character, most notably lifting the league title in three consecutive seasons between 1982 and 1984. He also won two other league titles, four European Cups and four League Cups during 358 appearances for the club.
Steven Gerrard
Centre-midfield
Liverpool 1998-present, 471 games, 111 goals
The hereditary blood line that pumps through the veins of Liverpool legends is continued today by Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard. Carragher's limitations with the ball at his feet leave him warming the bench; Gerrard has no limitations. He replaced Veggard Heggem when making his debut, an illustration of the side's very significant late nineties limitations. It was no coincidence that the first time his injury problems allowed him to play a full season, in 2000-01, Liverpool lifted three major trophies: the FA Cup, the League Cup and most memorably beat Alaves 5-4 in the Uefa Cup final. If Gerrard never again rescues Liverpool from 35-yards in the last minute of a must-win game, he will forever be associated with dragging them back from 3-0 down against AC Milan in the 2005 European Cup final. A feat of mind over body as he willed his legs to stride further; his feet to make passes with greater accuracy; and his head to make crucial contact with John Arne Riise's 54th minute cross (pictured), all in his 49th game of the season.
Kevin Keegan
Right midfield
Liverpool 1971-77, 323 games, 100 goals
He played with the heart and honesty of a journeyman pro but the skill and impudence of a footballer who had it all. For the sake of balance, Keegan takes up a role on the right-side of midfield, the position he was playing for Scunthorpe United when Bill Shankly signed him for £35,000 in 1971. As Shankly soon realised, Keegan's audacious gifts were better suited to a free role behind John Toschack. The only regret for the Kop fans who reveled in his pop star status was that his stay was cut short when he moved on to Hamburg at the end of the 1976-77 season. In 323 games he scored 100 goals and his parting gift to Liverpool was winning the penalty that sealed the club's first European Cup.
Kenny Dalglish
Forward
Liverpool 1977-90, 515 games, 172 goals
Liverpool had just won the league and the European Cup when a 26 year-old Scottish striker was brought in to wear Keegan's No.7 shirt. 515 games and 172 goals later the No.7 shirt was worshipped as Dalglish's alone, first by David Johnson and then Ian Rush and always by the fans. His boots dripped with goals, from scoring the only goal of the European Cup final in his first season to munificently providing Ian Rush with most of Liverpool's goals. The Crown Prince of the Kop was always likely to be coronated but managing the team to the "Double" in 1986 while still a player, bestowed on him the divine link to God yearned for, but not achieved, by characters including King James I and King Louis XIV. Such high esteem is never likely to diminish in the eyes of fans who celebrated eight league titles, two FA Cups, four League Cups and three European Cups during the King's time at Anfield.
And here is the rest of it.
Ian Rush
Forward
Liverpool 1980-87 and 1988-95, 660 games, 346 goals
They don't make them like Ian James Rush anymore. There was no striker in the English game better with his back to goal in the opposition penalty area and none more deadly at deflecting daisy-cutter crosses past bewildered 'keepers. Signed by Bob Paisley from Chester City as an 18-year-old with an eye for angles, a stuttering start to his Anfield career was made fluent through his partnership with Kenny Dalglish. Most opposition clubs were happy to see Rush finally leave Liverpool for the last time in 1995 but none quite so much as Merseyside rivals and Rush's boyhood club, Everton. In 36 games against them he netted 25 goals, including strikes in two FA Cup final victories in 1986 and 1989 and, on 6 November 1982, he fired four past the great Neville Southall at Goodison Park as Liverpool ran out 5-0 winners. In his first ten seasons with the club they never finished outside the top two and when he did move on to Leeds his final tally was 346 goals in 660 games.
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