Liverpool’s Jamie Carragher reflects on how the lack of game-changing wide players hindered his team’s title ambitions during the 2000s.
During the time in which Sir Alex Ferguson served as head coach, much of Manchester United’s dominance of the Premier League and English football was centred on the brilliance of their wingers.
From the early 2000s until the late 2010s, Old Trafford featured some of the most exhilarating wide players in world football, like David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani, Ji-Sung Park, and Wayne Rooney.
United’s wing players were noted not only for their talent but for their ability to affect matches. Wingers who could create chances, score, and turn draws into wins provided considerable value, and were important to the club’s success, especially during such successful title-winning campaigns.
The destructive capability of impact players such as Giggs and Ronaldo to shred defenses was something their rivals, Liverpool especially lacked.
Jamie Carragher on how United’s wingers outclassed Liverpool
During the interview with The Overlap Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher reflected on this when discussing why Liverpool, despite having strong teams under Rafa Benitez in the 2000s, could not overcome United in the Premier League.
In both the 2007/08 and 2008/09 seasons, Liverpool recorded fewer losses than United but still finished behind them both times. When discussing the topic of being unable to get ahead, Carragher stated the difference simply be the wingers.
“We never had a Ronaldo. We never had a Giggs. If we could have had one of them… I think we could have won the league,” he said, referring to the game-breaking quality of United’s wingers as the difference-maker.
Carragher conceded that while Liverpool did indeed have solid performers in Ryan Babel and Dirk Kuyt and that they were and are solid performers, they did not have a wide player who would deliver the same routine level of game-changing ability as either Ronaldo or Giggs.
Benitez’s Liverpool were well organized but often drew too many games, unable to find the spark that United’s men delivered frequently.
Gary Neville, a former right-back for the Manchester United football team, shared that opinion and emphasized that Liverpool had no wingers during the Carragher years that could match United’s wide players.
He went on to say that even Liverpool’s current wingers, Mohamed Salah, Luis Diaz, and Diogo Jota, were still much better than the wingers that Carragher played alongside.
In many ways, United’s wingers were the key to Ferguson’s success, providing the speed, and goals needed to turn good teams into title-winning ones.
Even today, Manchester United’s emerging stars like Alejandro Garnacho continue the club’s proud tradition of exceptional wingers, a sign that the legacy of those golden years still endures.
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