Liverpool v Manchester United: Raul Meireles looks to slay bitter rivals as he enters dragon's den
On Sunday lunchtime, Raul Meireles will need his dragon. It covers his back. “You know what it means?” asks the Portuguese midfielder, when required to explain the vast tattoo which runs down his spine. “It is protection. In Japanese mythology, it is the perfect creature.”
Fired up: Raul Meireles is enjoying a new lease of life under Kenny Dalglish and is hoping to turn up the heat on Liverpool's bitter rivals Manchester United Photo: ACTION IMAGES
By Rory Smith 9:00PM GMT 05 Mar 2011
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On Sunday, Manchester United are at Anfield. Against the Red Devils, face to face with Liverpool’s demons, Raul Meireles will need his dragon.
He knows it, too. His eyes are wide, his tone disbelieving, when he discusses the intensity, the sheer, relentless physicality which pervades the Premier League. “The kicks here,” he exclaims. “Ooph. The game never stops. Everything is a battle.”
Never more so than against United; never more so than when United must be defeated if Liverpool are to have any hope at all of remaining even the joint most titled club in England. Reason to be afraid? Reason to think he has no taste for a third encounter with Sir Alex Ferguson’s side this season? No. A laugh. “It is very good. I like it. This is England. It is unbelievable.”
It is a word that crops up often in 45 minutes in Meireles’s company on a sunny spring afternoon at Melwood, Liverpool’s tranquil training complex. He is relaxed, engaging, his English fluent enough to showcase his rapid-fire wit. His sentences are short, staccato. He receives an idea, releases a retort. He is as economical with words as he is with possession. And he is positive. Always, breathlessly positive.
The Porto team where he made his name? “Lucho Gonzalez, Lisandro Lopez. Unbelievable.” Andre Villas-Boas, the coach at the club he departed last summer for Anfield for £11.7 million? “I only worked one month with him. Unbelievable. He is like Steve Clarke, since he came here. Wow.”
His delight is not restricted to his former club. Rui Bento, his hero, was unbelievable. Steven Gerrard, his captain, likewise. Kenny Dalglish’s return, too, to replace Roy Hodgson. “The fans had stopped believing in the team. Now, with Kenny, they sing his song 10 times every game.” Believable? No. “Unbelievable.”
So too the goal that first catapulted him into the country’s consciousness, that volley at Molineux. “After the game, I went home, straight on to the internet and watched it 20 times. But it was a lucky goal.”
Another recurring theme. “I am a lucky guy,” he says, when discussing team-mates past and present. “I played with Vitor Baia at Porto. He won more titles than any player in history.” He will not, though, be drawn on who is the best he has played alongside. “Too difficult. Sorry. Lucho. Cristiano Ronaldo. Lisandro. But I like Stevie [Gerrard].”
Conscious of his own good fortune, capable of drawing pleasure from all he has achieved. Meireles is a reservoir of positivity. His first few months in England, though, must nearly have drained it.
His transfer, he freely admits, was “a dream”. “I always dreamed of playing in the Premier League,” he says. “But [I never thought] for a top club. Maybe a middle club. To play in Liverpool, it is fantastic.
The supporters. Wow. I want to win every game because they deserve it.”
Especially after what they, and he, went through earlier this season. By October, Meireles, pursued for the last three years by Internazionale, Sevilla and Marseille, found himself in a side sitting 18th in the league.
He is adamant Liverpool’s ostracism from the Champions League did not negatively impact his view of the club. “When Liverpool make you an offer, there is only one answer,” he insists. “When my agent told me it was a possibility, I said I go now. Now.”
Nor, more surprisingly, did the relegation battle he found himself embroiled in. There are no regrets.
“Did I expect it? No. Never in my life. Never,” he says. “But I enjoy things more now. In Portugal, at my first club Boavista, I had to fight and fight to be in a good position. Then at Porto, we played so well, we had the best players in the best team. I won 10 titles. Then I came here, and we had this season.”
Meireles, playing out of his homeland for the first time, might have found his expectations confounded, his ambitions realigned to fit Liverpool’s new reality, but while his surrounds were unfamiliar, his club’s plight was less strange.
His ability to connect with a dropping ball would not suggest it, but perhaps Meireles does not have the greatest sense of timing. A boyhood fan of their great rivals Boavista – “I hated Porto” – he crossed the Douro in 2004. The summer after Jose Mourinho won the Champions League, left for Chelsea and took a raft of players with him.
“It is hard to lose a figure like him,” he says. “That year, my first at Porto, we won nothing. We had three coaches. But that is normal when you have had two fantastic years, winning everything. It is difficult to build a new team. But the second year was perfect.
“It is like Liverpool. This is a difficult year. New coach, new players. But I think next year we will have more chance to fight for better places. It takes time to be perfect.”
Hodgson, summarily dismissed by Fenway Sports Group, the club’s owners, in January was never afforded that time. Meireles will not speak ill of him – “He brought me here. I like him. I need to thank him” – but will acknowledge that Dalglish’s more aesthetic style suits him better.
That is hardly a surprise. Meireles, muscular but slight, is not built for combat, but for grace. “In Portugal, we say it is better to be small and good, than big and bad,” he says. United should not expect him to shrink away from challenges today. “Sometimes you need to tackle. “But it is more how you read the game.”
And it helps when you have a dragon on your shoulder. Offering protection.
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