Reds fan Fede ready to make Anfield mark
HE HAS been likened to a young Steven Gerrard, and he grew up cheering every goal Luis Suarez scored at Anfield. But before we ask Real Madrid’s Uruguayan midfielder Fede Valverde about the Liverpool he faces tonight, we should ask him about the ‘other one’.
‘Of course there’s a Liverpool in Uruguay too,’ he says. ‘They play in Everton’s blue but they were champions. They deserved it.’
There’s a club on every corner in football-crazy Montevideo, where Valverde was born and Liverpool Futbol Club — founded in 1915 and named after the port the ships delivering coal had arrived from — is one of them.
Valverde helped beat them 1-0 in 2015 in his first and only season for Penarol, before he made the move to Real Madrid aged 18.
‘Uruguayans tend to support the team that has a Uruguayan in it,’ he explains. ‘At that moment, when Luis was at Liverpool, we supported Luis. I will always do that with a team that has a Uruguayan.
‘That year pretty much the whole country supported Liverpool.’
Tonight they will be backing Real Madrid instead. Valverde (below) is likely to start for Zinedine Zidane’s team. His industry will be needed on the right of midfield to protect a defence missing its two best right backs.
He started in Real’s 2-1 win over Barcelona at the weekend and set up the opening goal. It’s the long-stride, box-to-box brilliance that has provoked the comparisons with Gerrard.
‘I don’t feel like I’m Gerrard,’ Valverde says. ‘He was a hero, an incredible player, with diagonal passes, shooting, bursts forward with the ball. I could spend 24 hours a day watching him play.
‘Lots of people tell me I have some of those traits, but he achieved what he achieved — he’s a world star. I have to concentrate on what I can achieve.’
He is already a full international, alongside Suarez and Edinson Cavani — another top player from a nation of only 3million, where the competitive edge is honed early in the culture of ‘Baby Football’.
‘The first thing they throw you is a ball. I started playing Baby Football aged three and a half,’ Valverde recalls. ‘In Uruguay, even the first division pitches aren’t all grass, so imagine Baby Football. It’s dirt pitches and when you go to take a corner animals are alongside you.
‘But it’s all part of it and you learn to fight for common goals with your friends. It makes you stronger.
‘When you come back from a game with your face covered in dirt, mud dried in your hair and stones in your boots — nothing beats that.’
Valverde debuted for a Real youth team in 2016 that also starred Martin Odegaard, now on loan at Arsenal. ‘I learnt a lot from Martin,’ he says. ‘He is a magnificent player but he is a great person, too.’
These days all his team-mates are household names. Is it finally time to start lauding Toni Kroos, Casemiro and Luka Modric as all-time greats?
‘They have won all there is to win, for club and country,’ Valverde says. ‘They’ve got Champions Leagues coming out of their ears.
‘I only have to watch them to learn things. If one of them gives me advice, I’m going to take it.’
Tonight he is expected to start alongside the trio, and knows the tie is far from over.
‘When a team lose, people usually say they played badly. But a lot of the time it’s because of the virtues of the other side. We did things well in the first leg. We pressed well, attacked well, and defended the result well.
‘The fact they lost 3-1 doesn’t mean they will go lightly on us. They will throw everything at us. But we won’t wait for them with open arms to see what they’ve got. We will try to score and win the game. ‘I would love to have played in a full Anfield,’ he adds. ‘Having that pressure from their fans turning the heat up. That’s the magic of football. You have to adapt to everything.’ That will be the Baby Football education kicking in again.