There was the Barcelona comeback on the night he ruffled Lionel Messi’s hair, the Champions League triumph in Madrid, winning Liverpool’s first league title in 30 years and pressing five Manchester City players in one career-defining run at Anfield when 4-1 up. But the best feeling Andy Robertson experienced at Liverpool was “climbing the mountain” with Jürgen Klopp’s all-conquering team. Nobody climbed higher or harder.
The boy who was rejected by Celtic at 15 and tweeted: “Life at this age is rubbish with no money” after his debut for Queen’s Park aged 18 became the man many consider to be Liverpool’s finest left-back, and arguably the best in the world at his peak. With 377 fiercely committed appearances in a Liverpool shirt behind him, Robertson will say goodbye on Sunday. The 32-year-old Scotland captain leaves “with no regrets, no bitterness” and “glad that one of our Egyptian friends might take a bit more of the limelight. I can just sneak underneath that.”
As one of the most identifiable and popular players of the past nine years, there is no chance the £8m signing from Hull will be granted a quiet exit. Robertson is “gutted” it is coming to an end – “Everyone’s gutted when you leave Liverpool,” he says – but is filled mostly with pride at overcoming his initial insecurity to cement a place in Anfield folklore. It was quite the ride.
“We were on the most amazing journey ever, all together,” he reflects. “When we started out Mo Salah didn’t sign as the best player in the world or the best winger in the world. Virgil van Dijk had the potential to be but wasn’t the best centre-back in the world. Alisson wasn’t the best goalkeeper in the world. Trent [Alexander-Arnold] wasn’t the best right-back in the world. Hendo [Jordan Henderson] was still trying to find his feet as captain. We were all just on this journey from the bottom to the very top together and climbing that mountain was the best feeling ever.
“Every day we came in knowing we were getting better and better and starting to click as a team. We’d beat teams in the tunnel. Genuinely. When I speak to my Scotland teammates, they were lining up in the tunnel and looking over thinking: ‘We’re going to need to run our socks off today to get anything.’ And more often than not they didn’t get anything.
“We had an unbelievable environment to express ourselves, to play with freedom, but in our minds we knew we had to work at 100%. That was obviously from the manager, from the coaches, and I think then all the staff and people behind the scenes bought into it and you had the whole training ground determined to achieve all our dreams. Everyone was on the same page and we just made magical things happen thankfully.”
Robertson’s reminiscence prompts an inevitable follow-up. Why does Liverpool not feel like that now? His reply stops everyone in their tracks, and brings home the tragic reality of what this season has entailed for the now deposed Premier League champions. “In terms of the club I am leaving behind I think we are not at the 2017 stage, we are at the transition stage,” begins one of Diogo Jota’s closest friends. The Liverpool forward’s death in a car crash alongside his brother in north-western Spain last July cast a dark pall over the campaign
“This year hasn’t worked out for a variety of reasons. We can’t hide away from it, and it is not an excuse, but what we went through in the summer no team will ever go through. No member of staff will go through. I hope they never go through it because the devastation we went through … football didn’t matter. We didn’t care about football for weeks. None of us wanted to train. You were getting treatment off physios and physios didn’t want to treat you. That is the reality of it.
“As footballers we of course have a duty, we have to move on and we managed that. We started the season fairly well although it was still an emotional time for us. The [season-opening] Bournemouth game was ridiculously emotional with all of Jots’ family being there. I think after the 20th minute you saw a real dip in performance because of the emotional impact that it had on all of us.
“But then the season has been inconsistent. We bought players that we all got excited about, and they will all have an unbelievable career at Liverpool. I have no doubt about that. But they are also young. The one thing I get annoyed about in football is that footballers do not control their price tag. The market controls it. These players will be successful for Liverpool but they probably need a bit of time.
“Then some players who have played at a ridiculously high level haven’t played to that level. If you add all that in then we have had an inconsistent season and that is the huge frustration for us. We have been too easy to play against. There is no hiding away from that but I believe they have more than enough in that changing room to be successful for Liverpool again.”
Robertson received a farewell gift this week from Alexander-Arnold, who sent an image of the two of them celebrating the 2019 Champions League final victory over Tottenham. The message attached almost moved him to tears. The pair pushed each other to world-class levels and reworked the role of a full-back. There were the assists, naturally, while Robertson became the pressing machine that Klopp demanded. One press in particular, when he chased City players across the Anfield pitch in January 2018, will be forever part of the Scot’s Liverpool story.
“Everyone still talks about it because I think that was the moment people could see I could potentially be the left-back for years to come,” he says. “I’m not saying it would have been nine years, but that was a moment in a big game against the best team in the world at that time, I think fans left that stadium thinking: ‘We could have a proper left-back here.’
“I believe that was the game I finally belonged in a Liverpool jersey. That was the moment I really felt: ‘I belong at this football club, I am worthy of the shirt and I’m worthy of being here.’ Everything went straight up from there. That’s why when I look back now, I do so with a massive smile on my face because it’s the moment that made me sit here nine years later.”
Born in Glasgow, Made in Liverpool reads the inscription on a new mural of Robertson that has been painted near Anfield. His connection with the city is another source of pride. He says: “Liverpool and Glasgow are very similar cities and they are very similar people with similar things that are important to them.
“I think that’s why it has been so easy for me to fall in love with this city. I’m very fortunate that a lot of people in this city have then fallen in love with me. I think they saw a player out on that pitch who, if they could get a chance to put on a Liverpool shirt and play in a competitive game, they would play similar to me in terms of giving 100% and always being at it. I put a lot of pressure on myself to try and do that and I’m very grateful to the people for how they accepted me.”