Carrick on Jose, being at united and becoming a boss
UNITED ACE BACKS UNDER-PRESSURE BOSS TO GET THINGS RIGHT AT OLD TRAFFORD
THERE is a passage in Michael Carrick’s new autobiography – Between The Lines – where he reflects on United’s commanding 2-1 victory at Liverpool in 2015 – probably their finest performance at Anfield this century. Only it is tinged with regret for Carrick. Someone – he does not say who – arranges for a celebratory photo that is taken by masseur Andy Caveney.
Starters and substitutes appear in the shot, including Carrick – ‘against what he believes.’
The photo is shotgunned over the internet through the players’ social media accounts and lapped up by ecstatic United supporters reeling from five defeats in the last seven at Liverpool.
Carrick feels ‘ashamed’ and describes it as ‘one of the worst things I’ve ever done.’
“It’s obvious when I was a player 10 or 15 years ago, what you did then to what you did now, the world’s very different,” he tells M.E.N. Sport.
“These things [he holds up his iPhone] are very different and there are certain things you’ve got to live with, but there are boundaries for everything, of course there is. “So that’s what you’ve got to gauge. “I wouldn’t sit here now and say, ‘This is right, this is wrong,’ but there is a duty now.
“It’s open to new things, a new world to changing rooms and training ground and being in and around the team. So it’s something that you’ve got to look after.
“I’ve always been a bit old school, too oldfashioned, I was brought up where you were lucky if you had a phone, never mind have it in the changing room!
“So that’s just something I was brought up with. My wife has a go at me all the time about, ‘come on you’ve got to get with the times a little bit.’ She’s probably right but that’s just how it is.”
Carrick clarifies it would ‘not be right’ to continue tweeting now he is assistant to Jose Mourinho. He will only use Twitter to promote his Foundation.
You can imagine Carrick approving of Sir Alex Ferguson’s suggestion players ought to ‘go to the library’ rather than post 140character musings.
It has got personal. His wife, Lisa, took umbrage with Roy Keane’s analysis of Carrick’s ‘flat’ interview in the wake of United’s infamous 2014 Champions League defeat to Olympiakos. “Roy Keane, what a **** ,” Mrs Carrick tweeted. Mr Carrick, stewing on the United coach in Athens, received a phone call from his tearful wife.
“After a game like that, it’s a horrible place to be,” Carrick says. “I brushed it off, as for Lisa and Roy Keane, that was irrelevant, it was the fact we lost the game. It wasn’t good enough.
“Just any game that you lose with United you suffer with it but, us as players and me, you suffer more than most because you’re responsible for it and that’s probably the thing that, at certain points, some supporters think we literally lose and brush it off and go live our life for a week until the next game.
“But it does literally change your whole life for that week. It totally affects you, it changes your whole mindset for the week.
“So at that stage, that was the one where you know you’ve let yourself down, the team down, the fans down, all that sort of stuff, so it’s something you’ve got to deal with and look to the next game.
“Luckily that one, we put it right, we won the second leg [3-0] and you can move on, but obviously Lisa realised, learnt a harsh lesson in a way. It’s not fair on her but it’s the way it is, I’ve got no problems with Roy whatsoever.”
United supporters who watched Carrick throughout his 12 years would regard his most testing period came in the aftermath of the 2009 Champions League final defeat in Rome, where Carrick – and United – were left dizzy by the Barcelona passing carousel. In the 10th minute, Sergio Busquets clears the ball into United’s half and Carrick has a free header but is hesitant as to whether to cushion it for Patrice Evra or JiSung Park and botches it. Xavi switches the loose ball into Andres Iniesta’s path first time, he exchanges passes with Lionel Messi and then surges past the panting Anderson and Carrick, whose urgent movement towards Messi creates a chasm.
Iniesta plays in Eto’o, who turns Nemanja Vidic too easily before poking the ball through Edwin van der Sar amid Carrick’s desperate dive.
The fallout was so hysterical a rumour circulated that Ferguson had punched Carrick, whose diagonal passes were regularly read by the Barcelona captain Carles Puyol.
There was an altogether more serious diagnosis, though: Depression. “I was beating myself up,” Carrick writes in the book. “Sinking lower and lower, slipping into a depressed state.” Carrick had a penalty saved in the second game of the next season at Burnley, who clung on for a 1-0 victory, in what was his most fragile year at the club, synonymous with errors which allowed Ivica Olic and Arjen Robben to strike in Bayern Munich’s away goals defeat of United in the Champions League quarter-finals. There was an uncharacteristic red card in Milan and the season ended how it had started for Carrick – on the bench. That depressive state lasted upwards of a year. In these modern times, sportsmen and women are more candid about their bouts of
That was the one where you know you’ve let yourself down, the team down, the fans down Michael Carrick
It takes over my life. You don’t sleep that night, you don’t sleep the next night Michael Carrick
depression. “It’s easier to talk about it once it’s done and I’ve come out the other side,” he explains. “I was never not going to talk about it. It is part of my journey, part of my story and it’s kind of an important time for me to put in.
“I’m not ashamed of it and was never going to hide it, it was for me, it didn’t feel right to talk about it then, I was going through it and I was too busy thinking about trying to be better, trying to be successful, win things, play football as good as I can, to actually come out and talk about that.” He pauses. “Too stubborn, maybe,” he smiles.
“I don’t know why. I never for once thought about telling anyone about it at that stage, apart from my family, apart from my wife, my mum and dad and my brother, and even then I still kept it from them a little bit, I just felt that it was something to get through and get back to winning and get back to playing well, that’s all I was worried about.”
Reading Carrick’s book, his happiness as a player and a person seems almost solely dependent on United’s results. He admits his children, Jacey and daughter Louise, have provided perspective and escapism but United’s tribulations continue to consume him as a coach.
“Whether I’m a player, whether I’m a coach. It takes over my life,” he stresses. “You don’t sleep that night, you don’t sleep the next night, you go on the street and you feel almost like, everyone’s looking at you, like, ‘oh, they got beat last night,’ that’s how it is. There’s no hiding from it.
“It’s not a case of life goes on as normal because it’s impossible to do that. So, of course, I understand what it means to people and how it affects people because it affects me just as much. That’s not being selfish, I just understand how it feels, so that makes it harder to take. I think if you don’t understand how it feels and it doesn’t hurt you that much then it’s easier to take. But that’s certainly not the case. “It [escapism]’s important because you keep going and going and going for so long you need a bit of relief along the way, especially at United. It’s a beast of a club, it does take over your life.”
Carrick was seldom a regular during his two years as vice-captain and then captain under the Portuguese but, as the last member remaining from the 2008 Premier League and Champions League winners, the Geordie is as invaluable to retaining United’s standards and identity as the generation of the Class of ‘92 Youth Cup winners.
Now for the inevitable question: Does he want to manage United? “Do you know, I can’t answer that,” he straight-bats. “Only because I’m, what, three or four months into the start of my coaching. I’d love to be a manager one day, I’m not blasé enough to say, ‘I am going to be a manager.’
“I’ve got to start and earn the right to do that, it might never happen. It’s like being a player; you set up to be a footballer as a young kid, does it happen, does it not? It’s the same thing now.
“Obviously I’m giving everything I can and, at this moment in time, it’s something I’d love to do.”
Carrick is struck by Mourinho’s drive. “The biggest thing is, he’s a winner,” he notes. “He’s desperate to win, he’s won wherever he’s gone, we’ve won trophies since he’s been here, we’ve got to win more, that’s what we strive towards but that’s the biggest thing for me, he’s a winner.”