Liverpool might have disparagingly been referred to as the Spice Boys in the 1990s, but even they didn’t allow new players arriving at the club from overseas to try and deceive the officials.
German star Karl-Heinz Riedle found that out the hard way in 1997 when he arrived at Anfield, with Steve McManaman letting him know they didn’t tolerate diving at Liverpool – or in England, for that matter.
Coming up against Vinnie Jones’ Wimbledon on his Liverpool, Riedle had a baptism of fire to contend with. The game ended 1-1, with Riedle playing the full 90 for the Reds. It’s what he did during the game that sticks most in his memory, however, and it didn’t have to do anything with Jones…
Liverpool star told ‘don’t do that in England’
“The players came to me before the game and said, ‘Listen, we’re playing against Vinnie Jones. He’s completely nuts’,” Riedle exclusively tells FourFourTwo. “I knew his record and even the video tape he had released: Soccer’s Hard Men.
“In the end, it was funny for another reason. Jones fouled me straight away, but there was another situation where I dribbled, had slight contact with a Wimbledon player, fell on the floor and shouted for a penalty. Seconds later, somebody pulled me up and said, ‘Don’t do that in England.’ It was Steve McManaman. He was like, ‘You should never cheat to win penalties in England.’ From that day, I never did it again!”
That experience did little to dampen Riedle’s enthusiasm for English football, with the German forward remaining at Liverpool for two full seasons before he dropped down to the second tier with Fulham. A few months later, in 2000, he became the caretaker manager at Craven Cottage.
He ended up phoning his former Liverpool manager Roy Evans to try and help him out, while also reflecting on the experience of working under joint-managers when Gerard Houllier arrived at Anfield in 1998.
“Nobody could understand having two guys in the same position, and everyone wondered how it would work,” Riedle says. “Roy was a completely different type of coach to Gerard. You felt it wouldn’t work out. But I had a really good relationship with both Roy and Gerard – they were fantastic people.
“Later on, when I signed for Fulham and they put me in charge as interim manager after a year, I called Roy and he helped me out with the coaching sessions.”
By the time Riedle had signed for Fulham he was 34 and approaching the final days of his career, and didn’t want to pass up the opportunity of living in London.
“Yeah, it was at the end of my career and when I got an offer from London, I was very keen to go there,” he adds. “I thought it would be nice to go with my wife to London, to have another experience in England. Then, in the first year, the club sacked the manager [Paul Bracewell] and asked me if I could help them out as interim manager for the remainder of the season, because in the following season they would go with Jean Tigana.
“I said, ‘No problem – I can do that for a couple of months.’ But I couldn’t do it alone, so that’s why I phoned Roy Evans. I told him, ‘You have to help me out – I have no idea how to coach my buddies, who I’ve been drinking beer with and now
I have to coach.’ It was quite a funny story at the end of my football career.”
