392: Steve McMahon, England, Panini Italia ’90 World Cup

Our second post to celebrate our fourth anniversary comes from Richard Allinson and takes a look at one of his boyhood heroes who he might have only just worked out why he idolised. You’d like to think it was his commitment to the game which saw him admit he’d “kick (his) own brother if necessary... it's what being a professional footballer is all about.” Rich, however, might have other ideas.

Growing up, I had two childhood heroes. In truth I had more than that but a post on Super Ted or the Ultimate Warrior wouldn’t fit within the scope of this blog. No, my childhood heroes were Dave Beasant and Steve McMahon. I’m nowt if not glamorous. My idolisation of Beasant I can pinpoint to the exact moment he saved a penalty in the 1988 FA Cup final. I have spent the thick end of four decades trying to work out why I held McMahon in such high esteem and haven’t got there previously. Let’s try again.

He was part of the all-conquering Liverpool side of the late eighties, but I didn’t support Liverpool. Even if I did, he wasn’t the most obvious choice in a side that contained Beardsley, Barnes, Rush, Aldridge et al. He appeared for England in the greatest football tournament of all time, but it was David Platt’s overhead kick against Belgium that I was trying to emulate in the school playground, not Steve McMahon’s substitute appearance against Ireland. So, really, I have no idea why I liked him so much.

Starting out at Everton in 1979, he made 100 appearances for the Toffees, earning the club’s supporter’s player of the year in the 1980/81 season. After two seasons at Aston Villa he signed for Liverpool, a spell in which he won three league titles and two FA Cups. 

He was King Kenny’s first signing at Anfield, brought in to replace Graeme Souness, which speaks volumes about his ability. I mentioned the 1988 FA Cup final earlier, a match which Liverpool fans would largely want to forget, but McMahon’s importance in the Culture Club side was emphasised when fellow hard man Vinnie Jones said that if he could stop McMahon, then Wimbledon could stop Liverpool. Jones recounted in his biography that when he fouled McMahon early on in the game he did so because he wanted to "take out their top man". I’m starting to finally piece together why I thought so much of him as a child. The next paragraph brings things into even sharper focus…

Liverpool’s FA Cup final song for 1988 was the infamous Anfield Rap. As one of the only two Scousers in the team, he was the Dr Dre to John Aldridge’s Snoop Dogg: 

“Alright Aldo Sound as a pound/I’m cushty la but there’s nothing down/The rest of the lads ain’t got it sussed/We’ll have to learn ’em to talk like us”  

<Bruce Grobbelaar bit> 

“Alright Ace, we’re great me and you/But the other lads don’t talk like we do/No they don’t talk like we do, do they do la/We’ll have to learn ’em to talk propah”. 

There we have it. I now know why I loved Steve McMahon so much! He played in the 1988 FA Cup final, he played at Italia 90, and he appeared on the Anfield Rap. Of course I bloody loved him, how could I not?