Jamie Carragher grew up supporting Everton, but there were no divided loyalties watching the Merseyside derby on Monday night.
The Sky Sports pundit is now, without any doubt, a Liverpool fan – 737 appearances for the club will have that effect – and the Merseyside derby always had special significance for him throughout his career.
“I was very intense. I thought about (derby) games the day before. I was like that as a kid,” Carragher says in Ring of Fire, a book about Liverpool players in the 21st century.
“You build yourself up all week into a frenzy. Ahead of the derby, you’d read the papers and see fans on the street. You’d get would up. You desperately wanted to beat them. I mean, playing at Goodison – fuckin’ hell. It was my favourite place to play an away game and win.”
It seems Goodison Park is still Carragher’s favourite place to win a game, judging by his reaction to Sadio Mane’s winner for Liverpool on Monday night.
Understandably a lot of Chelsea players https://t.co/BBqd4WBD2r
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) December 19, 2016
Carragher was covering the game in his usual slot on Monday Night Football, and reacted like a true Liverpool fan to the late winner.
After a feisty, but generally poor 95-minutes, Mane reacted quickest in the Everton penalty area to slot the ball home, after Daniel Sturridge’s shot rebounded off the post and landed in the Liverpool forward’s path.
Carragher howled, cheered and clapped like he was in the terraces with his mates watching the goal go in, but was instead in the Sky studio being filmed for Soccer AM’s Snapchat account.
? WATCH @Carra23 react to Mane’s late winner against Everton! #EVELIV pic.twitter.com/6tap8lrWbC
— Soccer AM (@SoccerAM) December 19, 2016
