Jamie Carragher nearly hung up his boots halfway through his last season with Liverpool, until Brendan Rodgers gave him a legendary goodbye.
The gutsy ex-defender, who racked up nearly 750 appearances for the Reds and sits ahead of even Steven Gerrard on their all-time list of appearance-makers, had decided that the 2012/13 season would be his last, having been with the club since he was nine years old.
However, as the season progressed, and the defender began to feel red-faced about not being a regular starter as his time at Liverpool drew to an end, he toyed with the idea of an early retirement. But Rodgers, now managing back atCeltic, ensured Carragher’s swansong was one for the books.
Rodgers advised Carragher not to call it quits early, reports the Mirror, rewarding him by bringing him back into the main squad. He went on the play consistently for the rest of the campaign, and in his last hurrah against QPR on March 2013, Carragher lapped up applause as he left the pitch in the 87th minute to a rousing standing ovation.
“The start of every season, my target was to play 50 games,” Carragher admitted on Stick to Football, brought to you by Sky Bet. “So, from 2000 that decade of 10 years I played over 50 games and nine seasons and the only one season when I didn’t was when I broke my leg.
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“I played every three days, that was my mentality and if I haven’t of done that, in my mid-20s, I would have left. There was no way I could have accepted being sub, or building up to a game and you’re not involved.
“It got to a stage at the end where I thought I’m not going to leave Liverpool at the age of 34, I want to be a one-club man, I’ll put up with this for 18 months.
“But, I was embarrassed,” the current Sky Sports and CBS Sports pundit added: “The worst bit was the day after a game, we might train, like the subs and a few of the kids. There’s nothing wrong with that because players come down and you’re passing experience.
“You’ll see the other lads warming down and stretching. You know what it’s like, a manager and staff are all over the first team players, and rightly so, and you’re just thinking, ‘what am I doing?’
“I nearly finished halfway through a season with Brendan Rodgers, and he said, ‘no, just stick with it’ and he ended up putting me back in the team. I played the last 10 or 12 games of the season it was a brilliant way to finish.
“Probably most players at my age finish [their careers] sat in the stands I was playing every week for Liverpool. We had a great team, we finished seventh, but I did well so I didn’t embarrass myself, so people said, ‘why don’t you carry on? ‘ I said, ‘this is the best time to go, I’m playing, not embarrassing myself, get out now.'”
