Why don't those dipsticks from Merseyside
make a film about a club that
can't win a league title for over
20 LONG years!!
Liverpool have risked a furore over a film starring Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher that portrays Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, as a whisky-guzzling drunk and Gary Neville, the club’s captain, as a rat who “hates Scousers”.
Gerrard and Carragher were joined by Rafael Benítez, the Merseyside club’s manager, at the premiere of Fifteen Minutes That Shook The World in Liverpool on Monday evening.
The 43-minute film is a darkly humorous, fictional account of the events that inspired Liverpool’s fightback against AC Milan in the Champions League final in Istanbul in May 2005, when they came from 3-0 down at half-time to win on penalties.
But while the movie — which includes cameos from Gerrard and Carragher, the Liverpool captain and vice-captain respectively — was intended to be light-hearted and firmly tongue-in-cheek, it remains to be seen what United make of it.
In one scene, a Ferguson parody called McTaggart rings a Neville lookalike, wearing a United No 2 shirt bearing the name “Rat Boy” on the back, to celebrate Liverpool trailing Milan by three goals.
“Rat Boy”, whose features were digitally enhanced to make him more ratlike, responds by singing about how he “hates Scousers”, an ironic nod to the song that United fans chant about Neville’s widely perceived dislike of Liverpool.
When word comes through that Liverpool have drawn level, McTaggart is seen swigging furiously from a bottle of Scotch, which has the words “Manager of the Month but not as good as Bob Paisley” on it. He then tries to put his head in a noose only to be thwarted when the gum bubble he blows explodes over his face.
United declined to comment yesterday, but Ferguson and Neville are likely to be unimpressed, not least because of the involvement of Gerrard and Carragher and others at Anfield, even though they would not have been aware of the full extent of the content.
Ferguson did not react well the previous time a club tried to poke fun at United. He described Manchester City as a “small club with a small mentality”, arrogant, cocky and stupid for the “Welcome to Manchester” poster they erected in the summer after Carlos Tévez’s move to the club from Old Trafford.
Liverpool fans, though, will doubtless view the film as it was intended — a bit of fun — even if the timing of its release may raise a few eyebrows, coming as it has only days before Benítez’s team face Manchester City in the Barclays Premier League and Debrecen in the Champions League, games that could define their season.
Ferguson and Neville are by no means the only ones sent up in the film. Benítez, who is played by Neil Fitzmaurice, the actor and comedian, tells his players in the dressing room at half-time that “the whole damn world will take the p***, go on that pitch you shower of pigs and make it our day.” Of Dietmar Hamann, the former Liverpool player who also has a cameo in the film, Fitzmaurice’s Benítez says: “But what is Hamann, what has he got, he smokes, he drinks, he uses pot, but he will shine.”
Djimi Traoré, the former Liverpool defender, is brought into the dressing room in a box by Sami Hyypia, at which point Gerrard says, “Djimi, that’s the best you’ve been in the box all night,” while Carragher, when pressed by Benítez for his thoughts, can utter only the Scouse phrase: “I’m still chocka.” Gerrard adds that he “won’t be able to show my face” around his home town of Huyton if Liverpool do not stage a comeback.
The film was written by Dave Kirby, the Liverpool playwright, and will shortly go on general release at selected cinemas — although presumably not in Manchester — before being released on DVD in time for Christmas.
