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The coach put me in goal, and back then, we were playing on bone-hard ground: red ash; we even trained on black ash, which was worse. That's not easy for a goalkeeper. My mother was always taking out her sewing kit for the countless holes in my training pants. For a long time, I had to buy my own gear.
I turned goalkeeper. My father had been one and we had a goal in the back garden. He'd taught me a bit about it so I thought I'd give it a go. I didn't really know whether it was going to be a good choice or a bad one but I joined a small local team as a keeper and it turned out to be a really good decision.
When I played in Holland, I always tried to lob the goalkeeper. People used to say, 'Oh, you're always only trying to make a nice goal'. But I said, 'Listen, if the goalie is a little bit off his line, how much space do you have on his left or right?' It's not a lot. 'And how much space do you have above him?'
I enjoyed 13 successful seasons at Anfield, becoming the most decorated goalkeeper in league history. But I believe the match-fixing scandal arose because the press did not like this person they perceived as arrogant and who had a reputation for clowning around in games. Goalkeepers aren't supposed to do that.
I can tell you that the Galacticos era in the early 2000s wasn't just memorable for the fans. It was also incredible to be part of as a player. You would sit in the dressing room, look around you, and see the Ballon d'Or winner, the Spanish player of the year, the top scorer in La Liga, the best goalkeeper in the world.
Every position is difficult, but you're always involved in the biggest chances of the opponent; when there's a goal, you're always involved. It's difficult to explain, but this is the importance of the goalkeeper: he's always concentrated, even if he's not running as much as other players. He always needs to be focused.
When I was 15, Juventus of Italy, wanted to hire me because one of their scouts, who had been a famous Italian goalkeeper for them, saw me and told them that there was a boy with a potential, that it would be good to take advantage while I was still unknown. Juventus proposed but my mum never wanted to hear anything from anyone.
The pressure of being a goalkeeper is one of those things that attracts a lot of people to the position, if you don't have that, if you don't enjoy that pressure, I don't think you're suited to playing goalkeeper. It's about being strong mentally, being able to see the difference between making honest mistake and silly mistakes.
Every goalkeeper has a different way of playing. Some will take risks to help the team - coming for high balls, being prepared to be attacked in the box knowing there is not much protection from the referees - but that might mean they make more mistakes. Some try to be safer to avoid those situations, but it does not help the team.
This is ludicrous. Seven- and eight-year-olds valiantly trying to cover the same acreage as those grown-up chaps in the Premier League is absurd. To add to the lunacy, a little goalkeeper, barely out of nappies, has to stand between posts that are eight strides apart - adult strides - and under a crossbar more than twice his height.
It's a goalkeeper's job. There's so many times you're doing nothing for 89, 90 minutes, and then there's a split-second moment. It's a different challenge to outfield players, who have a lot of physical challenges and battle. We have a lot of mental battles; it's about maintaining your focus, refining processes of what you do in a game.