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Liverpool Echo

Sport

Dan Kay

Alex Ferguson desperately rang Liverpool's greatest striker after Roma and Bayern Munich bids

Liverpool Ian Rush Everton John Smith Juventus Anfield (Organization) Napoli Kenny Dalglish Juve Bob Paisley

Cloak-and-dagger transfer deals have always held a certain fascination.

They are harder to pull off in the modern era of football where it seems whole swathes of the industry and media - social or otherwise - are solely dedicated to the science of player trading although not impossible as Liverpool showed two summers ago when, only hours after finally completing the long drawn-out acquisition of Spanish midfielder Thiago Alcantara from Bayern Munich which had garnered innumerable column inches in the preceding months, a swoop for Wolves’ Portuguese forward Diogo Jota was suddenly out of the blue revealed to be close to completion and sealed very soon afterwards.

But even back in the days before the Premier League, 24-hour rolling sports news channels and self-styled transfer experts, rumour and gossip was part of the landscape meaning clubs would occasionally go to great lengths to keep whispers of a potential move quiet until completion when they could announce it as a done deal to the shock of fans and media alike.

And few if any have come more stunningly out of left field than on this day in 1988 when the Reds announced the sensational return of one of their greatest ever strikers, who had left only a year before for a club record fee, to bolster the strikeforce of what was already one of the club’s most attacking and flair-filled sides.

Ian Rush was already synonymous with the Liverpool side which for much of the decade had taken Anfield’s dominance of the domestic and European scene in the 1970s to a new level. The Welshman had arrived as a 19-year-old from Chester City in 1980 for £300,000, the highest fee ever paid for a teenager at that time anywhere in the world, but took some time to truly find his feet at his feet at Anfield until wily boss Bob Paisley encouraged him to be more selfish in front of goal and even pretended to put him on the transfer list.

He soon struck up a devastating partnership with Kenny Dalglish and rapidly became regarded as one of Europe’s best young goalgetters as the Reds emulated Huddersfield Town and Arsenal’s achievements from back in the 1930s by winning three successive English top flight league titles between 1982 and 1984, the last of those seasons seeing Rush score a club record 47 times as the club added a fourth consecutive League Cup and fourth European Cup in seven seasons since their maiden triumph in 1977 to secure an unprecedented treble triumph.

Rush’s exploits were beginning to draw attention from abroad and Napoli did approach Liverpool that summer in the hope of taking him to Italy but Anfield chairman John Smith refused to countenance a deal or let the player speak with them, much to the Welshman’s disappointment.

“I was very happy at Liverpool and had no desire to leave, but my agent Charles Roberts told me I should not dismiss the opportunity outright”, he recalled. "When Charles told me what Napoli were offering it made my eyes water. I was to receive £1m as a signing on fee. I was aware of my knees trembling, and I nearly fainted when Charles told me the ‘bones of the deal’. In addition to the signing on fee, Napoli was willing to pay me another £1m over a three-year contract. It was a Thursday and the Italian transfer deadline was 48 hours off. Charles told me that if I did not sign by Saturday all bets were off. Liverpool chairman John Smith was in London watching the tennis at Wimbledon, and in the days before mobile phones Charles didn’t manage to get in touch until Friday. Mr Smith told him he needed time to think and refused to discuss the matter until the Monday morning, which of course was two days after the Italian transfer deadline.

“I managed to contact Mr Smith, asked if I could come down to London to discuss the matter, only for him to refuse point blank. Though still not 100 per cent sure about whether I wanted to move or not, I was angered by Mr Smith’s reaction, given the urgency of the impending deadline. The deadline came and went. As a consequence the deal collapsed. I then received a call from Charles to say Napoli had been in touch. Having been unable to speak to Mr Smith they’d had no alternative but to look elsewhere and had signed Diego Maradona. I was so upset with the chairman’s belligerence and rudeness in not even returning Napoli’s calls that for a long time afterwards I refused to acknowledge him.”

Two years later however, the landscape had very much changed. Joe Fagan’s second and final season as manager having graduated from the Boot Room to succeed Bob Paisley had been markedly different to his first, with the Reds never recovering from a poor start to the season (not helped by an injury to Rush who did not play until late October after a cartilage operation) to finish trophy-less for the first time in a decade, coming a distant second in the league to resurgent Merseyside neighbours Everton and losing to Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-finals before being beaten by Italian champions Juventus in a European Cup final overshadowed by the Heysel disaster. Fighting before the match and a charge by Liverpool fans caused the collapse of a wall at the ‘neutral’ end of the dilapidated stadium in Brussels and the deaths of 39 of the Italian club’s supporters, with English clubs immediately being withdrawn from European competition by the British government and soon afterwards banned indefinitely by UEFA, a decision which would ultimately have implications for Rush’s future.

His strike partner Dalglish took over as player-manager under the most intense of scrutiny following Fagan’s retirement in the aftermath of Heysel and conjured up one of of Liverpool’s most memorable seasons, his under-fire side producing a remarkable end-of-season run after appearing to be out of the title running following home defeat to Everton in February to win back the league title from their local rivals before a week later making history by beating Howard Kendall’s Toffees in the FA Cup final to become only the third team that century and fifth ever to win the hallowed ‘Double’.

Rush, a boyhood Evertonian who had already tormented the team he used to watch from the Gwladys Street terraces by regularly bagging against them including a four-goal salvo in a 5-0 away win in November 1982, was again among the heroes at Wembley scoring twice in the second half to take his season tally to 33 as the Reds fought back from a goal down at the interval to triumph 3-1, the Welshman’s perfect day being capped off when he successfully proposed to his girlfriend Tracy at the team’s victory party. Yet life for them was about to significantly change.

“I think it was the morning after we’d completed the double by beating Everton at Wembley when serious speculation about me leaving Liverpool to go abroad really started”, he remembered. “Barcelona and Juventus were two of the clubs mentioned but I didn’t think too much of it until I spoke to Kenny and Peter Robinson. They admitted the stories were true - both clubs have made offers - and that Liverpool were prepared to sell me for financial reasons because the club were struggling, having been banned from Europe because of Heysel.

“I was shocked. I loved it at Liverpool. My personal life was settled and I didn’t want to leave but I also thought if they club were prepared to sell me, I’d have to consider going. It was a difficult time. I was still living at my mum and dad’s - me and Tracy were only due to get married the following summer - and to move away from home to a different country would be a big step for us. I spoke to both clubs and although Barcelona, managed by Terry Venables, made the better financial offer, I decided to sign for Juventus - after some sleepless nights - because I felt Serie A was the biggest stage to play on and the Italian lifestyle would suit us better.

“When I met with their president, Mr Boniperti, in London before making that decision, I did ask whether events at Heysel in 1985 would be held against me by the Juventus fans but he assured me that wouldn’t be the case. He was right. They were fantastic to me. I travelled over to Turin with Peter Robinson for a supposedly secret meeting and something like 8,000 Juve fans turned up at the airport to me! It was unbelievable. Because of the no-more-than-two-foreigners rule in place at the time, Juventus - who had signed Michael Laudrup twelve months previously- wanted to loan me out to Lazio for a season before calling me back to replace Michel Platini, who was planning to retire in a year, for the start of 1987/88. I refused. Lazio weren’t even in Serie A, there was no way I was going there so I said why not let me stay for an extra season at Liverpool instead? That’s exactly what happened.

“It was one of those situations where I felt I needed to be honest to the Liverpool fans and admit the transfer was for financial reasons, both for the club and myself, because I didn’t want to end up in a position like Kevin Keegan did when he stayed at Anfield for a year after signing for Hamburg but annoyed some of the fans by saying he was leaving to ‘further his career’.”

Any concerns Liverpudlians may have had over Rush’s motivation in what they expected to be his final Anfield season ahead of the move to Italy was soon eased by the striker showing his commitment in the only way he know how.. goals. A late equaliser against Everton in the Charity Shield at Wembley was followed by a brace at Newcastle on the opening day of the league season to set the Welshman on course for a 40-goal campaign - his second highest ever during his time with the club - highlights of which included a late winner at Goodison to knock the Toffees out of the League Cup and two more against the Blues in a late season 3-1 Anfield win which saw him equal Dixie Dean’s record of 19 Merseyside derby goals.

That sense of an Anfield era drawing to a close however was highlighted by two Rush goals against George Graham’s up-and-coming Arsenal side as winter turned to spring. His first half winner in March’s First Division encounter at Highbury in early March put Liverpool six points clear of Everton at the top of the table, the Welshman’s brace against Queens Park Rangers a week later extending that lead to nine but defeat at Tottenham four days later precipitated a run of five defeats in seven matches which saw Kendall’s Toffees regain the title by an ultimately comfortable nine points. And when the Reds met the Gunners at Wembley in the League Cup final a month after their Highbury encounter, one of the most astonishing aspects of Rush’s talismanic status to Liverpool was finally broken.

The Welshman’s double against QPR had brought up his 200th and 201st goals for the Reds and incredibly Liverpool had never lost any of the 145 matches those strikes had featured in. So when he cooly put Dalglish’s men in front midway through the first half at Wembley - much like when he equalised against Everton the year before - Liverpudlians were imbued with a sense of confidence and imminent victory only for two scruffy Charlie Nicholas efforts to break the spell and seal the first trophy of George Graham’s reign, the same thing amazingly happening a week later at Carrow Road when Rush again put the Reds in front only for the Canaries to hit back and win.

The Welshman fitting scored the only goal late on in the final home game of the season against Watford as an emotional Anfield (featuring a series of flags and banners in tribute to their beloved frontman including one which read presciently ‘After the Italian job come back here’) gave him a heartfelt send-off and, after yet another goal in the final day 3-3 draw at Chelsea, Italy beckoned. It did not take long though for Rush to realise life with Juventus - who had dominated Serie A for much of the decade but were coming to the end of a cycle with star players like Zbigniew Boniek and Marco Tardelli leaving at the same time as Platini, with World Cup winners Antonio Cabrini and Gaetano Scirea also nearing the end of their careers - would not be as easy as he had found it in recent years at Anfield.

“Less than three weeks after getting married to Tracy and honeymooning in Aruba, we moved to Turin on July 20, 1987 and initially it was difficult because of the language barrier. The difference in banter on the team coach and in the dressing room got me down to be honest and a conversation I had with Platini - who trained with us during pre-season to try and stay fit despite having retired - made me feel uneasy. ‘Ian’, he said, ‘I must tell you that you have picked the wrong time to come here. You should have been here two or three years ago when we had a better team. This is a bad team you are joining and I cannot see it getting any better’. He turned out to be a good judge!

“I did well in pre-season but a thigh injury on my debut against Lecce took longer to heal than first thought and kept me out for five weeks meant I started the season slowly and by the time the Christmas break came, I had only scored just five goals. My Italian had improved a lot and I made friends with players like Sergio Brio, Stefano Tacconi and Pasquale Bruno but the team was struggling and there wasn’t a player who was making clear-cut chances for me like Kenny or Jan Molby did at Liverpool. I spoke to Graeme Souness over Christmas about his time in Italy and his advice was for me to be more selfish. I listened to what he said and ended scoring nine goals in the second half of the season, four in one cup game against Ascoli and the decisive penalty in the UEFA Cup qualification play-off against city rivals Torino. I settled more into the Italian way of life and little things made a difference to my fitness, such as having a glass of water and a glass of wine with a post-match meal rather than beer, but we also missed our family and friends back home. I think we were racking up phone bills of more than £1,000 a month.”

Back on Merseyside, worries over how Liverpool would cope without their start striker had soon been laid to rest when it become clear how wisely Dalglish had used the £3.2m the club had received for Rush’s services. The process had started before he’d even left with Oxford United striker John Aldridge joining for £750,000 in the January before Rush’s departure and, while the boyhood Kopite would only feature intermittently until the Welshmen left, once he was joined that summer by £1.9m British record signing Peter Beardsley from Newcastle and Watford’s flying winger John Barnes for £900,000, the Reds produced one of their most dominant ever championship wins going 29 league games unbeaten from the start of the campaign and strolling to the title playing some of the most attractive football Anfield had ever seen which drew comparison to some of the great Brazil sides of the past, only being denied another Double after shock defeat to Wimbledon in the FA Cup final.

It had been a very contrasting campaign in Turin where Juventus had endured their worst season since the 1950s, suffering early elimination in the UEFA Cup after defeat to Panathinaikos of Greece and finishing the league in a lowly sixth position. Manager Rino Marchesi had appeared to blame his Welsh striker for some of the team’s woes, saying in the February “Rush does not fit in, he does not communicate” but he was relieved of his duties and replaced by Dino Zoff so Rush returned late for pre-season after a less than ideal summer break hoping the travails of his first year in Italy would at least serve him well for a better second year abroad only to find the wheels would be soon in motion to bring him home.

A change of rules had seen the foreign player allowance in Italy extended from two to three and, when Liverpool club secretary Peter Robinson read in a local newspaper while on holiday in Spain that Juventus had bought two more overseas players in Rui Barros and Alexander Zavarov, he was immediately on the phone to Kenny Dalglish to sound out the possibility of bringing the Welshman back to Anfield.

“I was in regular contact with Rushie, just seeing how he was doing”, Dalglish admitted in his autobiography, “but I never thought he would return that quickly. Liverpool had first option but that doesn’t mean anything. It just means the selling club can say no to you first. But the Italians wanted to do business with us. He was the best goalscorer about at the time and they needed him but the way they played was not suited to Ian Rush. I used to watch his games on satellite and he was very isolated in attack. We always had a good relationship with Juventus. Peter Robinson was very friendly with the people in Turin and had stayed in regular touch after Heysel. Peter asked me whether I wanted Rushie back if Liverpool could get him. Considering I didn’t want him to go in the first place I said yes, we would delighted to have him back.”

Rush’s summer break had seen him contract a number of illnesses while on holiday in the Cayman Islands and when he was able to join his Juventus team-mates on tour he found himself being quizzed on who the Italians should buy without realising he would never play alongside them.

“I developed what I thought were heat bumps while were away in the Cayman Islands”, he recalled. “We flew back to the UK afterwards and I saw a doctor who told me I had chicken pox, shingles, hepatitis and a liver infection! For three weeks I felt terrible. I was in pain, couldn’t sleep and lost a lot of weight. I was exhausted and didn’t make the start of pre-season training in Turin but a week later they made me go back and I went into the mountains in Switzerland for the training camp. I wanted another season to prove what I was good at. Rino Marchesi had gone and Dino Zoff had come in as manager, who was much better with me and knew what to do to accommodate me. The owner of the club, Mr. Agnelli, was asking me what to do. I told him to be successful you'd need three of the same country. Just look at Milan with the three Dutch players, Van Basten, Rikjaard and Gullit who had been brilliant. So in fairness to Agnelli he tried to get two English players, from Liverpool as well! Steve McMahon, Peter Beardsley, Ray Houghton and also Graeme Sharp at Everton. I told him any two of them I'd be well happy with but Kenny said no.

“Then I got a call from my advisor - ‘Would you be interested in a return to Liverpool?’ To be honest I jumped at the chance. Juventus wanted to sell me or Michael Laudrup because of the foreigners rule and Kenny wanted me back. It all happened very quickly after that. Less than a week later I was a Liverpool player again and I was made up to be back. There had been quite a lot of interest in me - Alex Ferguson rang me, as did Colin Harvey, who was the manager of Everton, the Bayern Munich manager called and so did the Roma manager but I’d returned to Anfield the previous May for Alan Hansen’s testimonial and I remember the Liverpool fans giving me a fantastic reception and singing ‘sign him on’. I’d already thought to myself that I ever came back to England to play, it would have to be for Liverpool.

“At the end of the day the relationship Liverpool had with Juventus, they said basically, ‘You go back to Liverpool or you stay here.' I said: 'Ok, I'm happy where I am', but the next day Kenny rang me and within half an hour Graeme Souness at Rangers rang me and asked me to go back there. I really got on with both of them, but Kenny's persuasion got me back to Liverpool. 'You're coming back on a plane tomorrow' and this was about 4 o'clock in the evening. It was the only deal in Italy done by phone because nine o'clock next morning I was on a plane coming back to Manchester simply because of Kenny. Kenny picked me up from Manchester airport and the next thing I was at Anfield at a press conference.”

With Alan Hansen having picked up a serious knee injury in a pre-season friendly against Atletico Madrid, speculation had linked Liverpool with a move for Middlesbrough’s highly-rated centre-back Gary Pallister so there was a genuine sense of shock and amazement when the tanned Rush, wearing a black Italian designer suit with red zip-up casual shirt, appeared in front of them having completed a £2.7m move back to Merseyside where news of the prodigal son’s stunning return spread like wildfire across the jubilant red half of the city just two days before the Charity Shield season curtain-raiser against Wimbledon at Wembley.

“The people who come to watch us will be delighted and so will English football” said Dalglish while the delighted Welshman himself explained why he had no regrets over trying his luck abroad and was aware he would have to be at his best to earn a place in the newly revamped Liverpool side.

“Until last Saturday, I thought I would be playing in Italy this season, and I was prepared to see out my contract there”, he said. “The first I knew about coming back here was a telephone call from Juventus last weekend and the next thing it was all over. I have had a year’s valuable experience in Italy, and I hope it has made me a better player. I enjoyed my time in Italy and the stories saying differently are lies. But I missed most of all, the place and the people here at Liverpool. I watched some of the performances at Anfield last season and they were magnificent. I don’t know if I’ll get into the team because they’ve just won the championship in style. Maybe I’ll have to talk to Phil Thompson about getting a game for the reserves! I hope I can produce for Liverpool what I did when I was here last time but words can’t describe how I feel now.”

Rush’s return left many Liverpudlians ecstatic at the thought of their already-swaggering side now being supplemented by arguably the greatest goalscorer of his generation but it wasn’t such a positive development for two of the era’s most notable players. John Aldridge, the man who had been brought in to replace the Welshman only twenty months earlier, would years later admit Rush coming back to Anfield was never going to be good news for him and, despite the pair proving they could play together during their one full season in tandem as Liverpool came within Michael Thomas’ last minute goal for Arsenal of another league and FA Cup double, the Garston-born forward was sold to Real Sociedad in September 1989.

Paul Gascoigne meanwhile would reveal years later he was on the brink of a move to Anfield that summer until Kenny Dalglish swooped to bring back his former strike partner from Italy, explaining “Newcastle wanted £2.2 million for me. Liverpool were only going to pay £2 million because they were signing Rush back from Juventus. So Kenny Dalglish said ‘can you wait another year?’, I replied ‘I don’t know if I can' and ended up signing for Tottenham soon afterwards.”

Like at the beginning of his first Anfield spell, Rush would take some time to find his feet again, not finding the net until his tenth appearance back in the red shirt with a goal in a League Cup tie at Walsall and he would suffer an illness and injury hit season which saw him only manage 11 goals in 32 appearances although two of them came at Wembley as he again put old foes Everton to the sword in an FA Cup final played in memory to the 97 Liverpool supporters unlawfully killed at Hillsborough.

The Welshman was more like his old self the following campaign, scoring 26 times in all competitions as the Reds regained their league title and came close to yet another Double before shock defeat to Crystal Palace in the FA Cup semi finals. It would be the last of his five championship medals and further FA and League Cup winners’ medals would follow before he left Liverpool for a second time at the age of 34 in 1996 to join Leeds United having long since overtaken Roger Hunt as the club’s all-time record goalscorer, finishing with a tally of 346 goals in 660 appearances unlikely ever to be surpassed. After a season at Elland Road, he joined Newcastle and the final goal of his career was fittingly a winner at the Gwladys Street end to knock Everton out of the FA Cup.

While few would argue Rush’s second spell at Anfield, which saw him score fewer goals than before he left for Italy in more appearances, was as searingly brilliant as his first, there were multiple factors at play not least the impact of Hillsborough and Dalglish’s ensuing departure which led to the club’s decline in the early 1990s as they adapted to the new mores of the Premier League. The Welshman has always maintained he holds no regrets over his year in Italy, even if it led to a jestful and misappropriated quote which is still occasionally recycled over three decades on.

“I know people say it didn’t work out for me in Italy but moving there for a year was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I left as a boy and came back a man and became a better all-round player. I’d most probably have stayed there for the rest of my career had I not returned to Liverpool that summer. Italy was a great experience for us and it also led to probably the most famous quote ever attributed to me - ‘Playing in Italy was like playing in a foreign country’. The funny thing is it wasn’t me who said those words. It was Kenny Dalglish!

“When I was moving back to Liverpool, the club had managed to keep the story out of the papers but after the press conference to announce my return, a reporter cornered Kenny hoping for a quote that no-one else had got. He asked if I’d said anything in private about my time in Italy so Kenny, being Kenny, decided to wind him up and replied, ‘he said playing in Italy was like playing in a foreign country!’

“Next thing it’s in the paper and taken as gospel that I said it. Over 30 years on and people still remind of the quote now. I suppose I owe Kenny one for that - but then I also owe him for bringing me back to Liverpool. Who knows how things would’ve turned out for me if he hadn’t?”

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