Background and career
Steven McManaman (born 11 February 1972) is an English former professional footballer who played as a winger. He is one of the most decorated English footballers to have played for a club abroad, with the UEFA website stating in 2012 that "of all England's footballing exports in the modern era, none was as successful as McManaman". During his nine years at Liverpool where he was the club's talisman from the mid-1990s until his departure, McManaman won the FA Cup and League Cup, while individually, he was the Premier League's top assist provider for the 1995–96 season and was named in the PFA Team of the Year for the 1996–97 season. His influence on games was such that for opposition managers it was a case of "stop McManaman, you stop Liverpool". In 2026 McManaman was listed at number 38 in an official club poll of Liverpool's greatest players, with the club's site regarding "McManaman and fellow Scouser Robbie Fowler as the spearheads of a hugely entertaining team." With contract negotiations over a new Liverpool deal floundering, McManaman moved to Real Madrid in 1999, with the transfer becoming one of the most high-profile Bosman free transfers of all time. Amongst his accomplishments with Madrid, he won La Liga and the UEFA Champions League twice, becoming the first English player to win the latter trophy with a non-English club, and later became the first English player to win it for the second time. An early Galáctico, he won eight trophies and played in 11 cup finals in four years and made the semi-finals of the Champions League in each of his four years at the club. He went on to play two seasons at Manchester City before retiring in 2005. Since his retirement, McManaman works as a co-commentator on ESPN and TNT Sports (formerly BT Sport)'s football coverage, as well acting as a La Liga ambassador. He previously worked as a football pundit for Setanta Sports.
Steven McManaman was born on 11 February 1972 in Bootle, Lancashire. He grew up as an Everton supporter, with his boyhood heroes in football being the Everton players Bob Latchford and Duncan McKenzie. However, when Everton offered the player a two-year contract, after McManaman had made a name for himself at tournaments for school and around Merseyside, McManaman's father rejected it in favour of a schoolboy contract and two-year apprenticeship offer from Liverpool (through scout Jim Aspinall and then-manager Kenny Dalglish). McManaman signed as a 16-year-old apprentice upon leaving school in 1988. As an apprentice, McManaman was under the mentorship of John Barnes and many regarded McManaman as a player who could potentially replace Barnes in the future. McManaman was said to be a natural athlete; having been a cross country champion at school level.
McManaman developed through the youth scheme at Liverpool and signed as a full professional on 19 February 1990 in what was to be Kenny Dalglish's final full season as manager. On 15 December 1990, McManaman made his Liverpool debut under Dalglish as a substitute for Peter Beardsley in the Football League First Division in a 2–0 league win over Sheffield United at Anfield. By the following season, Dalglish had been replaced by Graeme Souness as manager. On 17 August 1991, he made his full debut in a 2–1 win over Oldham Athletic. This was a game in which The Guardian reported that McManaman "ran his legs into the ground" all day and assisted his mentor John Barnes in scoring the late winner by flicking on Mark Walters' cross. McManaman scored his first ever professional goal with a diving header four days later on 21 August 1991, in a 2–1 away defeat to Manchester City. The 19-year-old McManaman quickly became a regular first team player in the 1991–92 season, making 51 appearances in total in only his first full season. It was suggested that opportunities in the first team had come as a result of then manager Graeme Souness' decision to sell several ageing players. Moreover, McManaman also found opportunities in the first team as John Barnes had suffered a career threatening achilles tendon injury. McManaman was deployed as a left-sided or right-sided forward, backing the club's new signing Dean Saunders. This was a move which Saunders reluctantly accepted at first, having realised that Souness "had [no choice but] to bring kids like McManaman into the team before they were properly ready." Saunders however began to change his mind as the season progressed following his observance of McManaman's ability to form an attacking partnership with him, with McManaman managing to create and score several goals across the league and in the side's run to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup, as well as in the FA Cup. On 9 May 1992, McManaman started in the 1992 FA Cup final as Liverpool defeated Sunderland with a score of 2–0. He was also named the man of the match, having set up the winning goal for Michael Thomas, despite being the youngest player on the pitch. McManaman's performances saw him described by Ian Rush as the most promising young player at Liverpool at the time.
Although McManaman had a couple of quieter seasons with the advent of the Premier League, in which Liverpool initially struggled, he continued to develop a reputation as one of English football's two best emerging young wingers alongside Ryan Giggs of Manchester United. A BBC article described the pair as able to "embarrass defences with their mazy runs, which too often lack the finishing touch they deserve". In the 1993–94 season, McManaman showed fine form with two goals against Swindon Town and some assists including a spectacular run and assist against Tottenham Hotspur. However, this form faltered following a drop in confidence after an incident with Bruce Grobbelaar towards the end of a Merseyside derby, when the players exchanged blows after Grobelaar lambasted McManaman for a poor clearance which led to a goal being conceded (an incident later named as one of the top five bust-ups between teammates in Premier League history). At the beginning of the 1994–95 season, McManaman signed a new million-pound contract, and was given a central, freer role by new manager Roy Evans, who wanted to utilise McManaman's natural running and dribbling ability to drift all over the park. It proved a successful decision as McManaman began mesmerising defences with runs that were later to become hallmarks of the Liverpool side of the 1990s. The 1994–95 season also proved to be a turning point for Liverpool after the lack of success during the previous two seasons. That season, he collected a League Cup winner's medal after scoring twice in his side's 2–1 win over Bolton Wanderers; such was his performance that fans named it "The McManaman Final". For his second Wembley final appearance in succession he was awarded man of the match, earning the Alan Hardaker Trophy and a tribute from guest of honour, celebrated veteran winger Stanley Matthews, who had a personal word with McManaman before the final, saying: "I like the way you dribble," adding [to the press] after the final, "He reminds me of me when I was playing ... I wish there are more dribblers like him." In 2024, FourFourTwo magazine placed McManaman's performance in the final at number 87 on a list of the Top 100 best individual performances in all of modern football history. By the end of 1995–96, McManaman was top of the Premier League goal assists chart with 25 assists over the season (15 in the Premier League), including assists and top ratings in a match against Newcastle United voted the best of the decade in the Premier League 10 Seasons Awards. By now, McManaman was ranked as one of the finest midfielders in England and had developed a strong reputation on the European stage following UEFA Euro 1996, earning praise from many at the time including Kevin Keegan, who said "there are few finer sights in world football than the sight of Steve McManaman running down the length of the pitch".
McManaman had also been noted for his versatility in his free role, switching from right to left wings, and his ability to play in central midfield, behind the front pair, or as a forward. McManaman was credited for making the free role that manager Evans gave him work, with the result being that Liverpool were playing some of the most aesthetically pleasing attacking football at the time in England. McManaman was also said to have been one of only a handful of so-called "talismanic" players along with Eric Cantona and Gianfranco Zola in the league at the time believed to have the charisma to lift supporters from their seats each time they got the ball. From 1996 through 1998, McManaman consistently won several 'Man of the Match' awards, and Premier League managers were forced to deploy a man-marker specifically to follow him for an entire game. The then Middlesbrough manager, Bryan Robson, was quoted as saying that "everyone in the Premiership knows that if you stop McManaman, you stop Liverpool". According to interviews on an ITV documentary titled The Alex Ferguson Story (1998), Peter Schmeichel stated that Alex Ferguson was also tactically fixated on stopping McManaman each time Manchester United played Liverpool, with Schmeichel adding Ferguson was so concerned about stopping McManaman dictating the play; it became "Groundhog Team Talk": "We've heard it every time we're playing Liverpool—McManaman's doing this ... We know that," said Schmeichel, while Ferguson himself told his players: "We lost the league (title in 1994–95) at Anfield by not listening to instructions about McManaman..."
In August 1997, Liverpool, having been unable to agree a new contract with McManaman and fearing that the player might leave on a Bosman free transfer, finally accepted a £12 million bid for the player from Barcelona; Barcelona had previously tried (and failed) to sign McManaman twice before (after the 1996 FA Cup final and after Euro 96). The deal subsequently fell apart amidst recriminations about the player's remuneration demands and Barcelona's motives for the bid, being in negotiation with Brazilian superstar Rivaldo at the same time and snubbing McManaman when he travelled to Spain to meet them. At its height, the transfer saga was dubbed by the International Herald Tribune (later acquired by The New York Times) as one that ushered in a "new low in transfer trading tactics"; adding that McManaman was a pawn being "used" as the big clubs battled. By the end of the saga, Barcelona had signed Rivaldo after Bobby Robson changed his mind (he had earlier told LFC vice-chairman Peter Robinson that he wanted the player) and intervened and told Louis van Gaal that he decided McManaman was "a cosmetic player who would not score 18 goals a season for Barcelona", while McManaman himself, albeit expressing that he was surprised Liverpool were willing to sell him, stated that he had no desire to leave Liverpool and reiterated his former position in February 1997 - that he would not leave Liverpool no matter what unless the club ever decided to sell him, and with two years left on his contract was simply not in any rush to sign a new one - as cover for his waiting on the management and board to offer him the right contractual terms on a new deal. A subsequent bid of £11 million from Serie A club Juventus in November of the same year was rejected by both club and player. In early 1998, Barcelona returned with yet another bid for McManaman, and former Deportivo La Coruña president Augusto César Lendoiro later added that Barcelona did not want to sign his former player Rivaldo and that they had (initially) wanted McManaman, and put it down to a "coincidence" that they pulled out and opted for Rivaldo instead, with it being notable that the fact Barcelona came back again in 1998 (after having already signed Rivaldo five months earlier) had stood as evidence of that point. Nonetheless, McManaman and Liverpool turned them down once and for all for the last time. McManaman had been named Liverpool stand-in captain at the start of the 1997–98 season, but contract negotiations continued to flounder as the club could not match the sums available to McManaman if he left as a free agent at the end of the following campaign. Having been overlooked by Glenn Hoddle for the 1998 FIFA World Cup starting lineup, denounced in the English media as being greedy (due to the FC Barcelona fiasco) and bolstered by advice from the likes of fellow professionals Paul Ince, Paul Gascoigne, David Platt and Chris Waddle, McManaman publicly announced his desire to play abroad, explaining: "I have always said I would love the chance to play abroad and now that chance has come along. When you have a chance to join clubs who are involved in the Champions' League every season, you have to consider it...I'm sure everyone must see the logic in that." Numerous European clubs circled the soon-to-be free agent, with Juventus again back in the fray amid huge media speculation, but La Liga club Real Madrid soon emerged in November through December 1998 as his most likely destination. In January 1999, it was reported that McManaman was talking to Real with the player reportedly offered £60,000 a week and nearly £2 million as a signing-on fee. On 30 January, McManaman passed a medical and signed an official pre-contract with the club which would make him the best-paid British footballer to date. He declined to pose in a Real Madrid shirt at the contract signing event, out of respect for Liverpool's fans. McManaman's image of being a contract rebel and mercenary at the time was also exacerbated by his involvement in a year-long dispute between 1997 and 1998 with Umbro, his football boot sponsor. Umbro sued him for breach of contract for knowingly wearing Reebok branded boots in contravention of the deal, and deliberately "blacking out" their logo on his boots in protest. McManaman argued that his contract was unenforceable and an unlawful restraint of trade. McManaman said that he was being exploited in that he was being held and tied to a boot deal he had signed back when he was a mere teenager. McManaman's agent during the 1990s, Simon Fuller and 19 Management—of which McManaman was his first football client—helped him negotiate a settlement. The court initially ordered McManaman to fulfil his contract, plus an undertaking to pay Umbro's legal costs for launching contempt of court proceedings against him in 1997, which McManaman accepted and apologised for. A year on, however, McManaman continued to dishonour the deal. He finally won an out-of-court settlement in October 1998, freeing him to negotiate with other companies for what he regarded as remuneration appropriate to his status.
