The Kop fan who went on to live his dream
By John Edwards
Roy Evans\' moist eyes glistened beneath a battery of television lights as he did his best to explain why an ill-considered managerial alliance with Gerard Houllier had to be dissolved.
The words came at an uneven rate and were delivered in a faltering voice as Liverpool\'s outgoing joint-boss admitted the folly of trying to split managerial duties down the middle and nobly offered himself up as the one to be sacrificed.
If emotion hung heavily in the air as he sat alongside chairman and lifelong friend David Moores and blinked back the tears, the reason was clear enough. It was not just Evans who was leaving.
He was taking a dynasty with him. As the last in a long, illustrious line of graduates from the Bill Shankly school of learning, Evans\' departure marked the end of an era after nearly 40 years of continuity.
The Boot Room was officially closed for business. One of the greatest legacies in British football may have been halted abruptly in some eyes, just 48 hours after a dismal League Cup surrender to Tottenham.
But it was that defining moment that led to the groundwork being laid for the drama and excitement of Liverpool\'s dramatic UEFA Cup extra-time triumph over Alaves in Dortmund on Wednesday - a million miles from that Spurs debacle.
Ironically, however, the change had been coming for years.
Indeed, it could be traced back to the beginnings of Shankly\'s inestimable contribution to Liverpool\'s proud history.
To the day when a starry-eyed Frenchman, a failure as a player himself but no less ambitious about making his mark as a coach, first set foot inside the club\'s Melwood training complex.
Houllier was the impressionable 20-something, and his insistence on forging lasting links with a club that had always beguiled him signalled the start of a journey that has now taken him into soccer\'s history books as the first manager to win three major cup competitions in the same season.
Two and a half years after placing both hands on the reins, following the withdrawal of his co-manager, he is the master of all he surveys.
Back in the early Seventies, when his love affair with Liverpool was in its infancy, he was master of 4B at a Merseyside comprehensive, teaching French to a class of 15-year-olds during a 12-month secondment.
It has to be one of football\'s more unlikely success stories, as he badgered Peter Robinson for permission to study the then manager Shankly\'s training ground methods.
He went on to become a close friend of former chief executive Robinson, yet Houllier confirmed the remarkable background to his astonishing transformation of Liverpool\'s fortunes.
He said: \'I can still vividly remember standing on the Kop while I was teaching on Merseyside and saying to myself that one day I would come back and manage Liverpool.
\'It was a daydream, of course. When you consider I was in my early 20s and no-one knew me, it was almost a fairytale.
\'But watching those great players of the Seventies and mingling with fans whose passion and knowledge just swept you along made a lasting impression. I always wanted to be a top coach, and I could think of nowhere better than Anfield to fulfil my dream.\'
When the opportunity finally arrived, Houllier could have been forgiven for looking back on his formative days as a Liverpool devotee and believing his memory had deceived him.
The swaying masses hailing another sublime example of the beautiful game had given way to a half-empty Anfield howling derision at that shambolic 3-1 League Cup exit at the hands of Tottenham.
If handling an emotion-charged Press conference two days later, to rubber-stamp his new role in sole command, was difficult, it was nothing compared to the onerous responsibility of surviving the critical gaze of Anfield\'s influential contingent of traditionalists.
They had argued long and hard for a British recruit steeped in Liverpool\'s past.
They presented a case for John Toshack until finally being talked out of it by Robinson, who eventually convinced them that Houllier represented Liverpool\'s future.
An insistent Robinson may have been sticking his neck out but not as far as Houllier, who met a four-man delegation headed by Moores before taking a deep breath and opting for a challenge that has already taken him to heights few could have envisaged.
\'When I left my first job at Noeuxles-Mines and subsequently moved on from Lyon, people thought I was mad,\' he told a French sports paper this week.
\'They said the same when I gave up my job as technical director for the French Football Federation at the age of 51.
\'I could have stayed there until retirement but I had to get grease on my hands again, and there was no better place than Liverpool.
\'I remember getting to Anfield and finding I was staring at a blank page but that was all right. I needed to focus on a new objective. I have to be working as part of a team and setting myself a strategy, and that is what I am doing.
\'People say it is a revolution, and I suppose that is an easy tag because of the obvious French connotation. I do not agree, though.
\'It has been a re-education, a matter of making the players aware of what is expected of them in terms of diet, discipline, rest and so on.
\'I believe in educating rather than dictating, and it has yielded results so far. I will be a dictator if need be, though. If it is necessary to get the point home, then so be it.
\'We have come so far that I will not let anything or anyone stop us going even further.\'
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