“Many times I have apologised to him… Now I know how selfish I was as a player… I am not ashamed to say that I made a lot of mistakes.”
Albert Riera’s Liverpool career was only brief, but that didn’t stop him from making his presence felt. Signed from Espanyol in an £8m deal on transfer deadline day in September 2008, in his first season at Anfield he’d quickly establish himself as first-choice on the left-wing as the Reds fell narrowly short of the Premier League title.
Yet as Liverpool’s fortunes plummeted in 2009/10, so did the winger’s. Two injuries had already derailed his start to the campaign before he was suspended by the club in March 2010 after slamming manager Rafa Benitez in the Spanish press, having grown frustrated at his lack of game-time. Transfer-listed as a result, he was frozen out for the final two months of the season.
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Limited to 16 appearances in 2009/10 as a result, he would follow Benitez out of the exit door that summer with Roy Hodgson’s arrival not earning him an Anfield reprieve. Sold to Olympiacos at a loss, he would register five goals and seven assists from his 56 appearances for the Reds.
Now a manager himself, having taken charge of Olimpija Ljubljana in the summer after previously serving as an assistant coach at Galatasaray, the Spaniard, so outspoken at the time when blasting Benitez prior to heading out the Anfield exit door, has seen the error of his ways.
“Now that I am a coach, I see it differently,” Riera admitted when recalling the falling out in an exclusive interview with the ECHO. “Many times I have apologised to him (Benitez), to many coaches that I had during my career.
“As a player, you just see yourself, you see that you want to play, you just see your part. But it’s so difficult to keep 25 players happy, it’s impossible. You have to make decisions as a coach, someone will like it and someone won’t like it. It’s like this, as simple as that.
“Now I know how selfish I was as a player. Ask all the players, they should be. You need this passion and you want to play all the time. But I like the players who are clever and intelligent, who understand the decision I am taking is for the best of the group.
“Football is about the group and team, not only the individual. I learned a lot, I learned a lot from my mistake that I did.
“I am not ashamed to say that I made a lot of mistakes. But it allowed me to learn and now I can teach and give me experience now to my players so they don’t make the same mistakes I made during my career.”
It’s a shame that Riera’s Liverpool career ended in such a way. After all, he had impressed during his maiden season on Merseyside and very nearly ended up with a Premier League winner’s medal in 2008/09.
Cherishing that campaign as the best of his career, he’s still as a loss as to what went wrong for the Reds the following year.
“We finished two points behind United, fighting until the end for the championship,” he said. “It was my best year with Liverpool and the season I enjoyed most, season 2008/09, with Torres and Steven Gerrard. They understood each other, just looking in each other’s eyes.
“We were almost working for them. My job, even if I couldn’t receive the ball, it was to create space for Fernando to have spaces between the centre-backs. We didn’t let the opponents be very narrow.
“Football is not only how you attack, it’s also how you defend and we had amazing defenders. Starting with Jamie Carragher. He was not only an amazing player but an amazing leader. Skrtel and Agger learned a lot from him.
“We had big names but it was a great group. It was a great year but after that, I would not say a horrible year but it was not the year we were expecting.
“This is football sometimes. You must accept the situation. It’s about small details and sometimes they make the difference. The second year was not the best and then many players, especially Spanish players, left that team.”
He continued: “Even ourselves, we were asking what happened. The players were almost the same. The expectation we had the previous year was important because we expected to be champions.
“Then it wasn’t and you come back for the new season. The effort was big, the previous season. We were asking ourselves, we don’t know exactly and cannot say in words what happened.
“It was not the same feeling in the second season. I can only talk about myself, not for the rest. For me, the season started with two injuries. I was visiting therapies in Serbia that could help.
“It was not physically my best season. If every player had some problems, you can see the result at the end. It was not something special but there are many, many little details.”
Riera has enjoyed a remarkable start to his first managerial role after taking over at Olimpija Ljubljana, with the Slovenians comfortably top of the Prva liga Telemach, already boasting an eight-point lead after winning nine of their opening 10 matches.
Such a start is all the more impressive when you consider the scenes that greeted the Spaniard’s unveiling as mask-wearing ultras, unhappy with the ownership and dismissal of former manager Robert Prosineck, stormed his opening press conference, confronted him and the club’s chairman and forced him to flee the media briefing.
Given such a frosty welcome, Riera admits the pressure has been on from day one for him to return instant results as a result. Fortunately, it’s a case of so far so good for the former Liverpool man.
“It’s going pretty well. The best way to respond is by winning games,” he said. “When you get this call as a coach, you need to be ready for everything. You are the main one.
“When the team is not winning, it’s easier to change one instead of 25 players. We are responsible, we have the biggest responsibility. You need to be ready, if you are not ready you can’t get the job.
“I know and I accept the career of a coach. If you don’t get results, you will be the first to be sacked. I accept it, I know it and am just focussed on getting results.
“For me especially, being Spanish but also in all big leagues, the scores and results are important but also how and the way that you play. I will not say 50/50 but almost at the same level like having results. For me, the way we play is very important also.
“It’s true, the level you cannot compare with the big leagues. But it’s a first step for me. I was sure that, after two years with Galatasaray as assistant coach, it was the correct time to go it alone, to try, to make my own mistakes.
“It’s not only managing, if there are not mistakes it would be boring. I am really happy to manage. I can feel that I am developing, I am getting experience and progressing.”
Hanging up his playing boots back in 2016, Riera had long since set his sights on a career in management before taking up his first post, and credits his international career with Spain for putting him on such a path. And while he might only be forging his first steps in his latest role, he admits he’d love to return to the Premier League one day in the future.
“The dream for me now is to manage in Spain because it’s my country,” he said. “But I have always said the Premier League in England is the best league and where I enjoy playing more. Who knows, maybe one day I come back.
“The last few years before I retired, I felt something that I wanted to be a manager one day. If you ask me which moment was the most important to realise I wanted to become a manager, it was when together with the group for Spain that won in 2008, 2010 and 2012 the World Cup and European Championships.
“We created an amazing group with Xabi Alonso and Xavi Hernandez. Ex-players from that generation of the national team worked together and for us, we were the best coaches for everyone of us.
“We learned from each other and that was the best experience we had. The best coaches and the best teachers we could have, and we enjoyed together. All of us in the group, I realised one day that I wanted to be a coach.
“As a player, you think you know a lot. But believe me, when you stop you realise in football you never stop learning and can always learn more and more more.”
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