Obituary Ray Clemence
In the Past Players section of Liverpool’s official website, Ray Clemence is described as: “Without doubt the greatest goalkeeper ever to play for Liverpool.”
Given that he was a regular during the Reds’ glory years of the late ’70s, winning five league titles, an FA Cup, a League Cup, two UEFA Cups and – most importantly – three European Cups, it is a statement that is hard to disagree with. Those achievements are particularly impressive given how reluctant he was to play in goal. “I never wanted to be a goalkeeper. I never really played in goal until I was 15,” he told lfchistory.net. “One day we were short of a goalkeeper and the sports master at school nominated me to go into goal. When I went in it was just natural for me, but I still didn’t really want to be a goalkeeper.”
Within two years he was starting in goal for Scunthorpe United, where he was spotted by Bill Shankly and signed by the thenLiverpool manager. In 14 years at Anfield Clemence made 665 appearances, putting him joint-fourth on the club’s all-time list (tied with Emlyn Hughes).
In 1981 he joined Tottenham Hotspur where he continued to win trophies and cement his reputation as one of Europe’s finest shot-stoppers. In his first season at White Hart Lane, he helped the team keep five clean sheets on the road to winning the FA Cup. Two years later he added to his collection of European medals by winning the UEFA Cup again, although injury meant that he watched from the bench as his replacement Tony Parks became the hero in the decisive penalty shoot-out. He retired in 1988 after an ankle injury.
Only one goalkeeper (Real Madrid’s Juan Alonso) and only one Englishman (his former team-mate Phil Neal) won more European Cups than Clemence, yet his international career was somewhat unfulfilled. Having made his England debut in 1972, he had to wait until the 1980 European Championship for the Three Lions to qualify for a major tournament, where he shared goalkeeping duties with Peter Shilton, as England failed to qualify from their group. At the World Cup two years later in Spain, Shilton was the established No.1, and the following year Clemence retired from international football having won 61 caps.
That didn’t stop him from serving in England’s backroom team for 17 years though, first joining Glenn Hoddle’s staff in 1996 and going on to work with Kevin Keegan and Sven-Goran Eriksson. In spite of being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2005, he continued to work with the senior squad under Steve McClaren, Fabio Capello and Roy Hodgson, as well as the Under-21s with Stuart Pearce, before retiring in 2013.
He finally succumbed to the disease that he had been living with for 15 years in November aged 72, and is survived by his wife Veronica, daughters Sarah and Julie, and his son Stephen, a former midfielder and current first-team coach at Newcastle United.