Carragher Reminisces About the Time Liverpool Trained at Rod Stewart’s House

The late 90s were a weird time for pretty much everyone around for them. Sometimes you ended up wearing denim from hat to shoes, sometimes you got detention for trying to feed your Tamagotchi during social studies class, and sometimes, if you were a professional football player in England, you ended up training for a Premier League match in Rod Stewart’s backyard.

If you’ve personally never experienced that final one, Jamie Carragher described it on Monday Night Football this week.

“We were playing Tottenham away. Rod Stewart lives in Essex and has an 11-a-side football pitch in his garden. I don’t know who organised it. Roy Evans was the manager but on the Friday, we ended up training at Rod Stewart’s house.

“The day before a game you don’t do much, little 5-a-side matches and we were practising set-pieces. I was in the 11 and we were defending them but the subs went in. Rod is on the side of the pitch and takes the corner and scores!”

It’s an oddly fascinating story, one that brings two disparate cultural icons together. It also makes me wonder what happened after they were done practicing. Did they just hang out at Rod Stewart’s house? Did he jump on the piano and lead them in a group rendition of “Do You Think I’m Sexy”? Did they teach him the lyrics to “Pass and Move (It’s the Liverpool Groove)”? I have so many questions. I think I would watch a dramatic re-enactment of this.