Ex-Liverpool and England star John Barnes spoke to Squawka to build his perfect footballer from former teammates.
Squawka gave Barnes eight different attributes that we believe are all key to a footballer, and building a player in general. These are: left foot, right foot, heading, pace, strength, football brain, skills and mentality.
Barnes also spoke to us about Liverpool’s chances this season, who he thinks the Reds should sign and about a new shirt detailing his iconic career.
Table of contents
Left Foot
My favourite left footed player would be someone who isn’t necessarily left footed, but he is ambidextrous, and he’s my favourite player in England of all time, and that’s Glenn Hoddle. So I’ll go for Glenn Hoddle for the left foot as much as he’s not left footed.
Right Foot
For the right foot I would have gone with Glenn again. But however, one of the players who who makes it looks effortlessly with all these passes, and he’s very intelligent player, Jan Molby on the right foot.
Heading
When I went to Liverpool, we didn’t really kept the ball on the ground, so it might have to come from my Watford days. But in fact, if we go back that far, people are not remembering. I’ll go with Alan Shearer when I played for Newcastle and England. For someone who’s not that tall, he was fantastic in the air.
Pace
I was one of the quick players but I wasn’t lightning like. So for pace, someone who got on the end of a lot of through balls was Ian Rush because he was also a very intelligent runner. He was quick, but he was also an intelligent runner. So, all around I’ll go for Ian Rush.
Strength
When we played for England, we’d always had these arm wrestling competitions and I was very strong but Nigel Martyn is the strongest person I’ve ever seen in my life. Left hand and right hand. He beat everybody in arm wrestling. When you talk about strength, there was David Seaman but Nigel Martyn was the strongest person I’ve played with. I’ll go with Nigel Martyn.
Footballing brain
Footballing brain is an interesting one. Gazza had a great brain for football. For other things, maybe not! It’s between himself and Ronnie Whelan, who is also a very, very intelligent player. But just for someone who you would not think of, I’ll go with Gazza.
Skills
Interestingly, Glenn Hoddle for me, was was fantastic. But I’ve already chosen Glenn, so I’ll go with Chris Waddle for that one. Chris was very skilful.
Mentality
I would have to go with a Liverpool player and the one with the strongest winning mentality for me would have been Alan Hansen.
O’Neills Iconic Shirt
Can you tell us about the collaboration with O’Neills and the shirt that they’ve come up with to commemorate your career?
Well, O’Neill’s came to me and they said they’re thinking about bringing out an iconic shirt of the teams I’ve played for in my career. And I thought, well, what is that going to look like? Because of course, I have got a very simple brain, and all I wanted was the yellow of Watford, the black of Newcastle, the red of Liverpool, and it’ll just end up being a mishmash of things.
But they came out with a very subtle design incorporating Liverpool, where you had the little thin stripes of my the original Liverpool Crown Paints kit, the band going across which was Watford, as much as it’s red. Watford did have a red banner on their yellow kit.
It has some superimposed celebrations of me on the front, me celebrating with Ian Rush after he scored the winner in the FA Cup final against Everton, which was just after Hillsborough, which was appropriate. And also a little image of me playing for England.
And I quote my favourite quote, which, is ‘if you fail to prepare, be prepared to fail’. They also put that on it. So they made it nice and subtle. It’s incorporated everything on it.
Isak or Ekitike?
With links to conversations between Newcastle and Liverpool, they become embroiled in a battle for Isak and Ekitike. Who would you rather have of those two strikers at Liverpool?
Well, we won the league by nine points without signing anyone, so I don’t know. I don’t know how we’re going to improve. And we already signed two players now.
Isak is known to the Premier League. He’s proven, he’s played in the Premier League, you can see what he brings. He’s also a good player. But it’s always when players first come to the country; How are they going to settle? Will they settle in the environment? Are they used to English football? Isak has proven that.
Balance is also always important and I don’t think we have an issue of scoring goals, so I don’t think that’s necessarily a position that we need to fill. However, if I had to choose between them, I think that probably Isak would be the one for me.
Liverpool’s chances
You said Liverpool won the league by nine points last season so let’s have some predictions for this year. Back to back champions? Champions League maybe?
Of course, you can never tell from a cup competition. You could play PSG or Real Madrid in the knockout stages and lose. So you can’t say we think we’re going to win the Champions League, but what you can say is that we’re going to be consistent enough in the league to be up there.
What we don’t know is how other teams are going to perform, because if Man City come good again, they will challenge. Then there’s Arsenal. So you have teams who will challenge you. But what I do know from Liverpool is that they’re showing a level of consistency, which would mean that come the end of the season, they will be up there.
I can’t say that they’re going to win the league because I can’t say what Man City are going to do or Arsenal are going to do. I think we will be consistent again but I don’t think it will be as easy as it was last year.
John Barnes was speaking to Squawka on behalf of oneills.com