"It’s not football!" Sir Alex’s fierce Carragher tirade after Man Utd tears

The vast majority of Anfield had started to launch into a chorus of 'Happy Birthday' as manager Kenny Dalglish celebrated having turned 60 on March 6, 2011, two days after his birthday, before all attention turned to the cards on the pitch and not in the Dalglish household post.

It was shortly before half-time and, just after Liverpool's Dirk Kuyt had scored his second close range goal of the opening period, Patrice Evra played a short pass to Nani on the Manchester United left wing.

Jamie Carragher, who had moved over to right-back as Liverpool had had to go through a defensive reshuffle in the wake of an injury to Fabio Aurelio, sized up the Portuguese winger before making a mistimed attempt at winning the ball.

Horribly mistimed.

The defender flew in, as Nani nicked the ball away, ended up stamping on the winger's left leg. The slow-motion replays weren't kind. How he avoided a red card from referee Phil Dowd only the official knows.

Yet very quickly, because this was Anfield and a Liverpool vs Manchester United fixture, attention turned to what Nani was doing.

The Portuguese started hopping around, dropping to the floor and then rising up again. Home fans laughed, some Manchester United players did.

"I was on favourable terms with the referee Phil Dowd," recalled Carragher in 2019.

"I got him on my own, pulled him and said ‘he just beat me with skills’. Everyone is fighting and I got him over like an experienced pro. Then Rooney comes over and says ‘you won’t believe it, he’s crying’."

Nani was indeed in tears, and as he headed to the changing rooms in first half stoppage time to be replaced by Javier Hernandez, he was raging.

He still was 10 days later, too.

"The first time I looked at my leg, I was thinking: 'The season is finished for me now," said Nani a week and a half after the incident, via The Guardian.

"That's why I was crying. I felt the pain straight away. But I was in shock. I wanted to show the ref so I got to my feet. I knew I wasn't going to play any more and, if I was not going to be able to play, he has to give the red card.

"But then he quickly gave the yellow card. How could he give the yellow card? He hadn't seen my leg. Then I showed him my leg and you could tell on his face [it should have been a red]."

Sir Alex Ferguson agreed.

"I don't know what Carragher was thinking but I do know what he did was not football," said the legendary United manager.

"I don't want protection. I just want the referees to be fair. If it is a red card, they have to give it. If they give the card, the next time the player doesn't make the tackle."

After the game, which Liverpool won 3-1 after Kuyt completed his close range hat-trick, Carragher sought out Nani to apologise for the challenge, but he got short shrift.

"If you ask anyone in football, anyone who has suffered a tackle like that, they are not going to accept an apology, especially as it was the second year running he took me out," Nani continued a few days after the tackle.

"He came to apologise after the game but I was not happy. It is the second time he has injured me. He always tackles like that. Before, he put me out of the game for two months."

Nani only missed one week before returning to action in the Champions League, but neither he nor Ferguson forgot the incident.

Carragher didn't either, and speaking last October he detailed his sense of regret.

“My thought process was skewed and I got it badly wrong, mistiming my tackle in a way which looked awful,” he wrote in his Telegraph column.

“I felt terrible when I watched it back. I could not sleep that night, my mind preoccupied with the horrendous tackle and the public response to it.

“It appalled me to think my reputation might be sullied by one incident after the hundreds of robust but fair tackles in my career.”

Nani certainly didn't forget this one.

Source: Read Full Article