The former Liverpool and Osasuna player on his coaching journey, redemption in Spain and working with Sven-Göran Eriksson
“I
went to a very good school, believe it or not. A grammar school. We had Spanish lessons, but I didn’t take Spanish. I thought: ‘What’s a hairy-arsed kid from the Liverpool ghetto going to need that for?’ And lo and behold …”
It’s late in Bilbao, back in the country that changed him, and a glass of wine rests on the table in front of Sammy Lee, who is grinning again. It’s been an emotional evening and a long night: a lot of laughs, some tears too, talking life at Liverpool and the life that came next. “For me, it’s about coaching even more than playing,” the European champion and former England assistant says. “And that started here.”
It also started with friendship, where the conversation keeps going. So take us to Osasuna. “Oh, please,” Lee says. It was 1986 and he had left Liverpool, the club he supported and represented for a decade, winning everything. He had also lost his way when Michael Robinson suggested joining him in at the Pamplona-based club, 90 miles south-east of where he sits now, and no sooner had he met them than Lee knew. “You can tell with people, good people,” he says. “It smelled right, felt right. Everything about it.
