Goalkeeper Brad Friedel has had his problems in England but he’s back in the Premier League. His stay at Liverpool ended in November 2000 with a free transfer to Blackburn, where he has been reunited with Manager Graeme Souness.
CITY. “The countryside is fantastic in Lancashire, absolutely beautiful,” says Friedel. “Living up there is very easy. The people in Blackburn are very friendly.
“I live just outside Manchester, about 45 minutes [away]. My wife, Tracey, knows a lot of people out that way. It’s easier for me to get in the car and drive, and her have her friends around. A lot of players from different teams live in that area, Wilmslow.”
Another plus for Friedel, an avid golfer, is that there are quite a few golf courses in the area.
FANS. Blackburn plays at Ewood Park, one of the oldest stadiums in the world. It opened in 1891.
“We have a close-knit relationship with the fans because it is a smaller city than Liverpool,” says Friedel. “The fans seem to get to know the players better.
“If you have 45,000 fans at Anfield, you have a large percentage of fans coming in from Holland, Denmark, Ireland, Norway to watch the games. At Blackburn, more often than not the fans are homegrown.
“You’ll see fans behind the goal at a game and see them while you’re walking around shopping one day. That would happen occasionally at Liverpool but not as much.”
CLUB. Blackburn celebrated the 125th anniversary of its founding last year. It played its first English League game in 1888.
“I’ll be really honest,” says Friedel. “Even though we were in the First Division last year, the club is run like a Premiership club – and is run like one of the top Premiership clubs. The facilities, the fans, the staff, the size of our squad and the players we have are first-class.
“Blackburn from what I have seen is an absolute class act, and I think any player who has played for Blackburn would say the same thing.”
PROMOTION. Blackburn earned its trip back to the Premier League last season by finishing second in the First Division after a long duel with Bolton, which finished third and eventually earned promotion in the playoffs.
“It was nerve-wracking at the end,” says Friedel. “What made it more exciting – and not in a good way for us – was Bolton kept winning. If they would have lost any of their last four or five games near the end of the season, we would have been there. [But] they kept the pressure on.
“You can be excited for about a week or so, then it’s back down to business. You know you’re going to have a very exciting, very hard season ahead of you.
“Your emotions go up and down. The way to play it is almost be emotion-less. ‘Be steady, Eddie,’ as they say.
“Most of our players have played in the Premier League before and know what to expect. Man United we played well [2-2 draw] and then we beat Tottenham in a very professional, solid performance. But you can’t get carried away.”
BECKHAM GOAL. Manchester United midfielder David Beckham scored a controversial goal against Friedel when the teams tied in late August.
Beckham’s lobbed free kick caught Friedel off his line. Although the backpedaling keeper got a hand to the shot, he couldn’t keep it from going into the net.
“[Blackburn defender] Craig Short was sent off, so he’s leaving the field,” Friedel recalls. “A red card is different than a yellow card. We had a meeting with referees [who said] before the season that you have to wait for the second whistle [after a red card] blah, blah, blah. They told us a million times.
“The referee [Alan Wiley] has his back to Beckham. He says to Beckham, ‘You can take the kick when Short is off the field,’ but he only tells Beckham.
“I asked him [Beckham] about it after the game.
“[The referee] runs by Beckham and, as he runs by him, he puts his hand up to blow the whistle, but you’ll notice before he even puts his hand up Beckham has started his run to take the kick.
“The referee isn’t looking at the ball, he isn’t counting the players. He hasn’t done anything. He blows the whistle, the ball travels over my head, and the Man United players are standing around and the Blackburn players are standing around.
“The referee pauses a moment. Then he points to the center circle.”
Friedel didn’t hear the whistle.
“There were some people standing right there, about 10 yards away, who never heard it,” he says. “He had his back to them so they never saw him raise his hand to do it.”
PRESS. “Football is a very humbling game,” Friedel says. “If you get too carried away on either side of the spectrum, you’ll have a hard time.
“The press and TV can do what they want and make things exciting. It’s up to the players to put that on the back burner.
“I’m a firm believer in keeping things inside the team. You have a better chance of being more an even keel rather than letting everyone know exactly what’s being said and exactly how you’re feeling.”
TRAINING. Goalkeeper coaches are a relatively new phenomenon in England.
“It used to be goalkeeper coaches would do one day at one club, another day at another club, and work their way through,” says Friedel. “Goalkeepers would only get specific goalkeeper training one day a week.
“Now, there are goalkeeping [coaching] badges over there, and I think all of the Premiership clubs and most of the First Division clubs have full-time goalkeeping coaches. I think people have realized it is a specific position and needs specific training.”
FOREIGNERS. Friedel was one of 17 foreigners on the Blackburn roster at the start of the season.
“It’s significant with all the foreigners,” he says, “but it’s also significant the way the English on a whole changed football in itself.
“Everybody thinks the players on the continent are a bit more skillful. That’s not true at all. It’s just the game in England is so fast that you always have someone screaming down your neck when you get the ball played to you.
“They still have that in them but they’ve changed their style a little bit. The game has slowed up, but the fans are the ones that actually make the games because they urge the teams to keep going and going and going.
“It’s still similar to what it was before. There’s a bit more flair, but the English supporters are going to demand the football to be played a certain way – and the English coaches are going to coach it a certain way.
“Foreign coaches will try to coach it their way, but I think they find very soon they have to adapt and not have English football adapt to them.
“That’s when the foreign players and foreign coaches prosper. They bring their views, adapt to English football, and it works. But if they think it will adapt to them, it will never happen.”
LIVERPOOL. Friedel went to Liverpool in 1997, and shortly thereafter Gerard Houllier was hired as co-manager along with incumbent Ray Evans, who was eventually phased out.
Houllier brought in Dutch goalkeeper Sander Westerveld in 1999, and Friedel’s playing time diminished. Liverpool won a treble of UEFA Cup, League Cup, and FA Cup last spring.
“I thought I was treated unfairly,” Friedel says. “I had a bad 20 minutes in one game and didn’t play much after that, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
“Houllier was very fortunate. The English players he has are of the highest standard. There’s no reason to replace them.
“When I first got to Liverpool, Michael Owen was fully fit and he was fantastic. Then he had some injury problems. [Houllier] has [Emile] Heskey, Steven Gerrard, Danny Murphy, Jamie Redknapp, Jamie Carragher. They’re all English internationals and can all play the game.
“Gerard didn’t change the way they played their football. He changed maybe they way they looked after themselves, the way they trained. By no means would he come in and say, ‘I want to play this way because that’s the way they do it in France.’ If he did that, he’d have a very hard time. He’s a very intelligent man, as is Graeme [Souness].”
GRAEME SOUNESS. The Scotsman was a star at Liverpool during its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s.
He has played and coached in Italy and coached in Scotland, Turkey and Portugal.
“I first heard from him via a phone call in 1992 when he was at Liverpool,” Friedel says. “He ended up resigning and got a job at Galatasaray a year and a half later, and that’s when I met him.
“In ’92, I was a free agent, and he was trying to get me a deal at Liverpool. He’d seen me with the national team.
“I know he has a reputation, but he treats the players with a tremendous amount of respect.
“He’s stern in the manner that when he feels strongly about something, he will not back down. More times than not he’s correct. When it comes to management, he’s very much in charge of the club.
“If you’re a player on the outside, you know where you stand. A lot of managers don’t tell you what’s going on, whereas he will let you know. It’s a big positive for a manager to be that way.
“He had that heart condition, so off the field he’s a little bit more mellow. He’s still the same way on the field. He loves the game and loves being around it.
“Graeme played at Liverpool. He comes from that school – he wants us to play football the way it should be played. Most footballers would like to play it that way – a lot of passing and moving – and although the drills we do might be a bit different, it’s the same concept.”
SURVIVAL. Staying up isn’t easy.
In the last three seasons, four of the nine teams that were promoted to the Premier League went back down the next season.
“We’ve got a very talented group of players,” says Friedel. “If we have a good win and everyone goes out and starts dribbling all over the place, we’ll have problems. If we leave the dribbling to Matt Jansen and Damien Duff, we’ll be fine.”
Friedel admits that there’s a big difference between the Premier League and First Division.
“The key for us to surviving is making sure on the day that everyone does their job,” he says. “We don’t have the luxury of having two guys [being] shut off and the other nine guys carrying them.
“We maybe had that luxury in the First Division for a few games, but in the Premier League all 11 have to be firing on all cylinders for us to get the results we’d like to get.”
by Soccer America Senior Editor Ridge Mahoney