To this day people ask whether Toxteth was the making of me. I’m not sure what to make of that. Up until I got my first flat in the Albert Dock I never lived anywhere else, so it’s not like I can compare my childhood home with another place. I grew up in a maisonette on one of the main through roads, Windsor Street, and when I was about ten or so we moved to Hughson Street, off Park Road. There was me, my older sister, Lisa, our Anthony, who was a few years younger than me, and, later on, our Scott came along.
Our Lisa was the best big sister you could wish for (and still is). She wasn’t one of those bossy older siblings who’s always telling you off and putting you down. Lisa was more of a mate when we were growing up, then, as we got older, she was someone I could always talk to, full of good advice. And, as much as I loved Everton, our Anthony was Liverpool mad. Born in 1980, he was getting into footy just as King Kenny was building that incredible, all-conquering team of John Barnes, Ray Houghton, Peter Beardsley and John Aldridge (and soon Anthony would soon have someone closer to home to cheer for, too!).
The world of my childhood spanned from the recreation ground on Upper Warwick Street to the youth club on Park Road. That was me, right from the first whistle – a normal, outdoorsy, football-loving Toxteth lad. All my family lived in and around Liverpool 8 and I loved growing up there.
Toxteth of course became world-famous (or infamous) after the riots of July 1981 and, like a lot of inner-city areas, it has had its problems over the years. Scousers often describe themselves as ‘North Enders’ or ‘South Enders’. Jamie Carragher and Steve McManaman are pure North End, but I’m from the sophisticated South End of the city. Toxteth and Dingle, known to locals as Granby or Liverpool 8, is the area that stretches from the Maternity Hospital on Upper Parliament Street down past the Anglican Cathedral, all the way to the River Mersey and along as far as Princes Park. The river and the sea played a huge part in developing Toxteth as an area and as a community. From the grand old merchants’ villas around Belvedere Road and Princes Drive to the dense terraced streets of the Dingle, Liverpool 8 always had a mix of housing and the broadest mix of peoples – Irish, Jamaican, Filipino, Ghanaian, Welsh, Nigerian, Somali … All of these nations and many, many more made Liverpool 8 their home, adding a certain something to the local flavour.
The Toxteth I grew up in was a tough, busy, multicultural community – tight-knit and, I suppose, a bit suspicious of outsiders. But ‘community’ is what it was and is, and this is where I’m from. I think what interviewers are driving at when they ask me about Liverpool 8 is this assumption that the place was so rough and so poor that I must have been desperate to get out. Far from it! I had a dead normal, happy childhood. At no stage did I feel impoverished or neglected, or whatever. I always had the best footy boots, always had a smile on my face, and in every way I can think of, I was just another normal kid who lived for football. But where those reporters are spot on is that the streets I grew up on, and their equivalent in London, in Manchester, in Belfast, Newcastle or Glasgow – time and time again, these are the streets that breed footballers. You look at Raheem Sterling or Dele Alli today; Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney; Gazza, Paul Ince, Alan Shearer from my time; Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, going all the way back to Jimmy Johnstone and Georgie Best … There’s a pattern there, isn’t there? These are all working-class boys from the inner-city streets or sprawling new towns and council estates and they all badly, badly want to be footballers. There’s no Plan B to fall back on. They want it, and they want it like mad.
That was me, too: inner city born and bred, and football mad. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a born footballer, but footy was pretty much all I ever thought about and the only thing I did from the day I could walk. Some might say I never got much faster than those toddling days, but boy, did I want to play! As it happens, I did have a bit of trouble with my mobility as a kid. It’s a common enough thing, but I was born with a ‘clicky’ hip, which is just a minor design flaw that, these days, would be spotted at birth and treated with a correctional brace. Mum took me to see various doctors and consultants over it, but the consensus was that nature has a way of righting these things. I actually grew up walking with a slightly uneven gait for those first few years, though it sorted itself out before primary school. I also had asthma as a kid but neither that, nor my hip, could keep me indoors. There was the Rec, a patch of land right opposite our maisonettes – it was turned into an all-weather pitch when I was about eight and I used to be out there with a ball, morning, noon and night. I truly believe that everything that happened later can be traced back to that little scrap of green (or brown, when the rain came down in the winter) turf. Over the years, I’ve spoken to a lot of players who come from a similar background and they all have a similar tale to tell. Each and every one of us was out until all hours with a ball glued to our feet, playing wherever and whenever we could, until there was no one left to play against or with. I remember this feeling of sadness, almost akin to betrayal, when the last of my pals said they had to go home. I lived right opposite the rec, so there was always my mum or my sister or someone to keep an eye on me – but I never wanted to come in.
Over the years people have asked, how do you manage to strike a ball so cleanly, so hard, with so little back-lift? I think the answer is out there on that scruffy patch of land, day in, day out, trying little things. I would punch through the ball in different ways, transmitting the power from different parts of my legs. None of it was scientifically thought through, it was more a case of trying to entertain myself, seeing what would happen if I hit the ball on its side, or with the side of my foot instead of my instep. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, look at the way it swerves when you hit it like that!’ And, over time, if you do something often enough, it definitely gets easier – it becomes another arrow in your quiver. So, when there was no one else to play with, I’d be just as happy practising all these things by myself, doing turns against imaginary opponents, knocking the ball against the wall, trapping it, slotting it, chipping it, and so on. Even when I was eight or nine, I’d be playing against lads of 14, 15, 16 and I could always hold my own. I was very small and nippy, and even though they were all bigger and stronger, it was hard for them to get the ball off me. I mean, I was never lightning quick – certainly not over 20, 30 yards – but I was fast in and around the goal area. Over five or ten yards, I was quick in my head as well as with my feet, and that is key to scoring goals. And, for as long as I can remember going way, way back, I always, always scored goals.
Right from those days playing scratch games, I would be ‘first pick’. When you all line up – whether it’s a game during break at school or one of those long, hot games in your summer holidays – I was always the first to be picked. That’s not me being big-headed; the other captain, whichever team didn’t get me, used to have a weed on, like – ‘We’ve got no chance, now.’ So, I had an idea I was a good player, right from an early age. I’d also be on the receiving end of some rough treatment, which is another litmus test of whether you’re starting to get a name for yourself – kind of a backhanded compliment. Most of the time I’d just bounce off the tackle or, if they got me, I’d jump back up and carry on. Nothing really bothered me. Over time I learned to anticipate the wild tackles and either ride the challenge, jump it or change direction. After a while that just becomes another part of your armament as a player – knowing what’s coming and how to avoid it or absorb it.
Years later, as part of my pro licence I did a thesis on the question of Nature or Nurture: are the very best players born with exceptional natural talent, or can we coach players to an elite standard? My argument was, whereas a degree of natural ability gives a player a head start, it is practice, practice, practice that takes you to the very highest level. Messi aged seven, dribbling a tennis ball in and out, left foot, right foot, in and out. Beckham staying behind after training solely to practise free kicks. And there was me and my dad, Bobby, out on that field on Upper Warwick Street, doing routines. Everyone used to tell me (and Dad told me enough times!) that he was a very good player himself. He played in midfield for Nicosia in the South Liverpool league and came up against some cracking teams and some very good players. My dad never had any ambitions other than enjoying the game, playing and watching, but he knew his football inside out. He could see from a very early age that I had talent and he, more than anyone, made sure that I put in the hours and worked like mad, honing that natural ability.
In the summer months there used to be these big games of footy where everyone from all around our area, all ages and sizes, mucked in. There was a big Somali community by ours and the Somali lads loved a game – so much so that they’d often come straight from prayer, still wearing their formal dress and their best shoes. I would be playing in these games that seemed to go on all day, 20-a-side, and even at that level I would score some unbelievable goals. Dad saw, right from the start, that I might just have what it takes to be a player. He saw that I could accelerate from a standing start and weave in and out of players and get a shot away, so he’d work with me, again and again, concentrating on my strengths but also any weak points. For example, I was quite small in those days, so he’d make sure that I’d practise my headers – ‘Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you won’t get chances with your head, so let’s make sure they count,’ he’d say. And I’d run in from the left, then the right, with him chucking the ball in at different speeds and angles, forcing me to adjust my body shape, or my starting position, or just to react quickly to a half-chance.
One thing my dad was adamant about was that I had to be comfortable on both feet. I was a natural left-footer, I would dribble, shoot, pass – everything was on my left foot, which was always seen as a big advantage in those days, but Dad had me out on that field working on my right peg. It’s not like he had to force me, by the way – I wanted to do it, I wanted to be as good as I possibly could be. But, at first, I was that walking cliché of the player whose other foot is just for standing on. It felt really uncomfortable to me, even the basics of trying to kick with my right foot at all – let alone hit it with any power, direct the ball or even score! The best way I can describe it is that it was exactly like a right-hander trying to write their name with their left hand – completely awkward and alien. But my old fella knew full well that, with work, with practice, with routine I would start to ‘feel’ the ball with my right boot as well as my left.
We’d start first of all by just doing volleys and loopers with a smaller, heavier practice ball. I’d bounce the ball in front of me and then either clip it on the half-volley or clear it as far and as hard as I could. That’s what I mean by looping the ball – it was a clean strike, like a goalkeeper’s clearance, hitting the ball from underneath, getting the best contact and as much distance as I could. This technique was just a very effective way of getting a good, strong connection and a more natural kind of instinctive feel for the ball with my right foot. Over time, with practice, it began to feel much more natural until, eventually, I didn’t think twice about using my right boot.
With everything we know today about sports science and so on, we’re much more aware that the brain responds to repetitive behaviour patterns. If we do the same thing again and again, the brain will eventually absorb that routine, almost like a bar code if you like, processing the info so that eventually a function becomes ‘second nature’. That was the basis of my Nature or Nurture paper, and that was me, day after day, night after night, out on that field with my dad, hammering that training ball – left foot, right foot, right foot, left. Neighbours walking past must have thought, ‘There he is again, little Robert Ryder – same old drills, over and over. Give the poor kid a break!’
But it never felt like that to me. For me it was never a chore, it was something I wanted to do in order to get better. It just seemed obvious: if you want to improve and take that next step, you have to work at it. So many of the goals I scored over the years, honestly, I scored them in miniature out on the recreation ground – in fact, my first ever goal in an England shirt was a direct replica of one of those right-footed ‘loopers’! I’ll tell you about that one later, but there was a different sort of loop through the Schools and Youth football system to navigate first, before the limelight started to flicker …