“You’re second to me, and then it’s Stevie [Gerrard],” laughs the ultimate Kop legend Ian Callaghan, as we reference the extraordinary Liverpool record that will never be broken.
There was a brief moment during my Anfield career I wondered if I might reach Callaghan’s tally of 857 Liverpool games. In the end, I was short by 120, and still wonder how any player could excel so long at the highest level.
“I was lucky with injuries, and as Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley used to say when naming the team that it was a case of ‘same as last season’,” he smiles.
In Callaghan’s case, that applied over 18 incredible years, during which he was a teenage prodigy under Shankly, a member of England’s World Cup winning squad in 1966, and mainstay of Paisley’s domestic and European triumphs from the mid-1970s.
Today, we are discussing how Shankly passed the baton to Paisley in the immediate aftermath of Liverpool’s last Wembley meeting with Newcastle United in the 1974 FA Cup final, and there is a realisation it all sounds eerily familiar.
“It’s interesting how history can repeat itself isn’t it, Jamie?” he says, referencing how the charismatic, iconic coach in Shankly moved aside for the quieter, less outspoken replacement.
The longer this season has progressed, the more comparisons between Jürgen Klopp handing the reins to Arne Slot have echoed the transition from Shankly to Paisley. Despite Liverpool’s Champions League defeat in midweek, it is my belief the team will be stronger next year. Phase one of the Slot masterplan is winning with Klopp’s players, and there is a ceiling for improvement like that which Paisley masterminded when he added the likes of Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Alan Hansen to his line-up.
“When you look at what he did for the club, Jürgen was a bit like the Bill Shankly figure for a lot of supporters of this generation,” Callaghan agrees.
“You have that manager who comes in, builds the club up again and wins trophies, but then the next manager is the one who sort of benefits in some way. Bob went on to win a lot more trophies than Bill. I don’t know how successful Arne will be, but the club is in a very strong position right now to keep competing every season.
“I don’t think we can expect Arne to win the same number of trophies as Bob. That’s a bit much to ask. I’d settle for the first one on Sunday and then the second one by winning the league. That would be a fantastic start.
“Everyone at this club will tell you it’s the league that is the most important and we’ve a great chance. This is the strongest league in the world, we’re in an unbelievable position for a manager in his first season, taking over players who were already here rather than building his own team. You just want it to keep going.”
Callaghan’s unique contribution to Liverpool’s emergence as a global superpower is too often overlooked. He is the ultimate home-grown icon who can provide eye-witness, on-field testimony of the most consequential games of the Shankly and Paisley era.
He made his debut six days after his 18th birthday at the start of Shankly’s reign in the old second division in 1960, and became a critical part of the side who became champions in 1964 and won Liverpool’s first FA Cup in 1965. For England, he broke another record, the gap of 11 years and 49 days between international caps another mark unlikely to be eclipsed.
Callaghan left Liverpool with five league titles shortly after winning his second European Cup in 1978. And in that decorated career, he was booked just once.
“Pat Partridge, a Geordie ref,” he says, still gutted. “It was the 1978 League Cup final replay against Nottingham Forest and I challenged Peter Withe. Never a yellow card.”
Sunday’s League Cup final means Liverpool and Newcastle head down Wembley Way together for the first time in 51 years, a 3-0 win for Shankly’s men which a generation of our supporters have replayed thousands of times with the BBC’s David Coleman’s iconic commentary lines as revered as the winning goals.
“Newcastle were undressed. They were absolutely stripped naked,” is a classic line as Kevin Keegan destroyed the club where he would later be idolised as player and manager.
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“It was probably one of the most one-sided finals ever,” Callaghan recalls. “I think what most Liverpool fans remember about that final is Malcolm Macdonald was all over the press in the days before saying he was going to do all sorts to us. He never got a kick.
“Bill kept the message very simple; get the ball, give it the nearest red shirt and keep moving. That’s what we did and it worked.
“I’m not sure either side was considered a big favourite going into the game. The clubs had won the same number of major trophies at that point in their history. Obviously they went in different directions afterwards.”
Now 82 and employed by the club in the Anfield legends lounge every matchday, ‘Cally’ soon realised what an era-shifting moment in Liverpool history the 1974 final was. Shankly delivered the bombshell news of his resignation a few weeks later.
“The funny thing about that game is I travelled down to London alone with the boss on the Thursday before the game,” recalls Callaghan, his reference to Shankly typical of how all of us ex-footballers see our former ‘gaffers’.
“I won the Football Writers Association Player of the Year award that year, and they had the dinner two days before the final. It’s funny to think back because I’m getting ready for one of the biggest games of my career, but two days before that I’m worrying about standing in front of all these famous footballers who were sitting on the top table. My heart was pumping and I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to give a speech.’ It was as nerve-wracking as playing the final.”
Did spending time with Shankly offer any inkling he was thinking of leaving?
“No, not at all. It was a few weeks later during pre-season we all found out,” he said.
“My wife and daughters and I were going to the Lake District for a few days, we’re about to leave and the phone rang in the hallway. My wife, Linda, says to me, ‘Just leave it, Ian. We’ve got to go.’ But I thought, ‘No, you never know who it’s going to be. It could be important.’ And that was the call. The boss had resigned. He was finished. I couldn’t believe it.
“Over the next few days in the Lake District, I just had supporters coming up to me asking why he’d gone. I never really knew his reasons.”
And so, a charismatic coach who had rebuilt Liverpool after years craving the major honours moved on, leaving behind what many wrongly presumed an ‘impossible job’, as they would 51 years later.
“Bob was a very different type of character, Jamie, yeah. Personality-wise, Shankly was always happy in front of the camera. Bob was a very shy man. He was a very quiet man. We were all thinking, ‘What’s going to happen?’ But then after 20 trophies in nine years, we found out, didn’t we?” says Callaghan.
Despite all the league titles and European trophies – Callaghan was also twice a Uefa Cup winner – it is the club’s “firsts” that give him the greatest pleasure.
“Winning the FA Cup for the first time in 1965 was huge for us,” he says. “To be in the team that made history for Liverpool Football Club was special. That was the first time many of us played at Wembley. Then it would be being part of the side that won the European Cup for the first time in Rome in 1977. Those two stand out.
“Funnily enough, the one injury I had prolonged my career. I had a cartilage injury and when I came back, Bill said he couldn’t see me as an outside right any more so moved me into central midfield. It was like another career. That’s why I could go on so long. I pinch myself to think I was in those teams so far apart. I just consider myself fortunate to have played in great teams under two of the greatest managers.”
What would Shankly and Paisley make of the current team?
“I can tell you my favourite. It’s got to be Mo Salah. He plays in my position, outside right, but in a very different way to me. I didn’t cut inside on my left foot,” he says.
“My God, when you look at Anfield today compared to when I was first here… the change is unbelievable, really. It is lovely for me to have played through the start of those changes, and for now to be able to come to the games and see the modern players. When I think back, it is amazing to see where the club is today.
“I think the new generation of players and supporters will always appreciate where it all began. We’ve had great players and managers, but everyone knows Bill Shankly built the foundations of this football club. He was the great man of Liverpool.”
That’s true, but pioneers like Callaghan belong on the same pedestal as the club pursues its 52nd major trophy on Sunday.
