DEAL DONE: Liverpool signed winger who’d been to prison and scored hat-trick on…….

 

From playing in the Champioague final with Liverpool on 2007 to appearing on Jeremy Kyle – a look at the career of Jermaine Pennantns Le

On this day in 2007, Liverpool signed Jermaine Pennant from Birmingham City for a fee of £6m. The winger was never shy of controversy, but played well at times at Anfield before a fall out with manager Rafa Benitez and sale to Portsmouth. Here’s the story of his Liverpool career…

When looking back at the Liverpool side that faced AC Milan in the 2007 Champions League final, you see a team that won 845 international caps between them. They boast numerous winners’ medals, including the highest honours in the World Cup, European Championships and Champions League, as well as the likes of the Olympic Games, UEFA Cup, FIFA Club World Cup, European Super Cup and Intertoto Cup

Meanwhile, between them, they can won league titles in Spain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Turkey, Denmark, Cyprus, Argentina and Brazil, as well as domestic cups in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Turkey, Denmark and Cyprus, and have lined up for the likes of European giants Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, AC Milan and AS Roma following their stints at Anfield.

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Yet it was the one player with no international caps, no major winners’ medals and no big-name club on his CV after his time at Liverpool that shone brightest in Athens. The one who ended up at Billericay Town rather than Barcelona. A boyhood Red who dreamed of playing for his beloved side at Anfield – Jermaine Pennant.

As the rest of his colleagues forged successful careers around the continent, striving to make their most of every last bit of talent at the highest stage possible, the winger’s tale remains a curious story of unfilled potential. Or was he simply just never good enough?

In truth, he always felt like a second choice player for Rafa Benitez. Not somebody that the Spaniard every really wanted at Anfield. Signing for Liverpool as an alternative to Dani Alves after the Brazilian’s own move to Merseyside fell through, Pennant joined the Reds as a £6.7million signing from relegated Birmingham City in July 2006. Just over a year earlier he had been in prison.

Yet the 2006/07 campaign is arguably the best of his career and one that saw him fall agonisingly short of an England call-up. The third youngest-member of the Liverpool starting XI behind Daniel Agger and Javier Mascherano in Athens, the then-24-year-old should have been entering his peak with his best years ahead of him.

Instead, the 2007 Champions League Final was as good as it got. The winger retired in 2018., leaving Pepe Reina as the only from that night’s starting XI still active. Now 40, Pennant was last in the spotlight not for footballing reasons, but for appearing on the Jeremy Kyle show trying to sort out his marriage with wife Alice Goodwin following a controversial stint in the Celebrity Big Brother House in 2018. The couple would split up two years later.

Pennant did spend time abroad after his time at Anfield came to a close. There was a move to La Liga, but with Real Zaragoza rather than a Real Madrid or Barcelona. He also enjoyed stints in India and Singapore with Pune City and Tampines Rovers. There have also been permanent spells at Stoke City, Wigan Athletic and Bury, while he was last on the books of non-league Billericay Town as his career slowly withered out.

Since the start of the first Premier League season in 1992, Liverpool have signed 34 senior English players. Even when arriving at Anfield uncapped, English players do not have to wait long to receive maiden international caps including the likes of one-cap wonders Neil Ruddock and Dominic Solanke.

Alongside Julian Dicks, Andy Lonergan, Ben Davies and Harvey Elliott, Pennant is one of just five to have never played for the Three Lions. It would be a surprise if the latter didn’t change and reduce that number once more sooner rather than later, with it previously standing at just two back in 2019.

A promising youngster after breaking through at Notts County, Arsenal signed the then-15-year-old for £2million in 1999 – a record transfer fee for a trainee at the time. He admitted in his 2018 autobiography, ‘Mental: Bad Behaviour, Ugly Truths and the Beautiful Game’, he should have stayed at Meadow Lane.

The confessions do not end there. He memorably scored a hat-trick on his full debut for Arsenal against Southampton in May 2003. Yet he did so with a hangover having been out until the early hours the night before. That was not a one-off. His career is littered with tales of womanising and boozy nights out.

He became the first Premier League player to wear an electronic tag in a game when with Birmingham City following his release from prison, having being convicted for drink-driving in March 2005. He openly admits in his memoirs to have to regularly driven under the influence and subsequently continued to drive when disqualified.

And then there’s the infamous tale of his Porsche Turbo, with personalised number plate, being found abandoned at a railway station in Zaragoza with five months’ worth of parking tickets following his rush to return to England and complete a deadline day move to Stoke City.

Abandoned by his mother at just the age of three and raised by a drug-dealing father, who later became an addict and spent time in prison, Pennant’s life has not been easy. He did not have any contact with mother for the next decade until he had to track her down to ask her to sign a passport application so he could travel to Paris with England Schoolboys. A relative even falsely told him she had died of throat cancer at one point.

Quite how a player with such history spent a decade of his career under the stewardship of Arsene Wenger and Benitez is astonishing. In the case of the latter, clashes with the Spaniard were inevitable to anyone who knows anything about either individual.

It was a relationship doomed to fail from the start. Yet Pennant played some of the best football of his career under Benitez, culminating with that Champions League Final performance in 2007. He has been quite vocal with his thoughts about his former manager a number of times since leaving Anfield.

In his autobiography, he says: “On the pitch, often I can see what’s best. Ultimately you have to trust the players once they cross the white line. But with Rafa, it was constant directions. Just sometimes, he might as well have turned a player into an Xbox, dressed me up like RoboCop and put a picture of my face on it.

“I’m not a defensive midfielder. I’m not James Milner, who keeps it simple. I’m a flair player and do my own thing. But his constant instructions really restricted me. They stopped me from being free. He could never let me do my thing.

“When you have so many instructions, it makes it so difficult. You’ve got some instructions and tactics in your mind and yet he’s shouting even more at you. All of a sudden you’re confused. You’ve got two sets of instructions in your mind and you’re left wondering what to do.

“It means that, suddenly, you mess up with a simple pass because your mind is all over the place. Honestly, Rafa was a nightmare like that. There were times when I would get so angry about how boring and repetitive training was that I would just lose it and shout, ‘For ***** sake – just give us a bit of a five-a-side!’ As a player, you just want a bit of fun, to make training good and lively.

“But, with Rafa, the training was so boring that you’d come in and all you’d want to do was slit your wrists! The amount of time in training that we’d do shape, tactics and nothing else!”

Maybe if he had listened to Benitez, his career could have turned out differently. But then he wouldn’t be Pennant. With his days at Liverpool numbered after falling out with the Spaniard, the winger spent the end of his Reds contract on loan at Portsmouth as they were relegated from the Premier League.

Yet he very nearly joined Real Madrid instead. A bid was accepted only for Juande Ramos to opt for West Ham United flop Julien Faubert instead. Rated by Wenger, rated by Benitez and rated by football’s most famous club, Pennant clearly had talent. Why he didn’t achieve more is open to debate.

He should have achieved more. He should have a number of winners’ medals of his own. He should have played for England. His move to Liverpool should not have been the beginning of the end. He should not have been grabbing the headlines for appearing on the Jeremy Kyle show.

Considering his talent, did Pennant fail football or did football fail him? Yet to play for Liverpool in a Champions League final is every boyhood Reds fan’s dream. His career resembles something of a modern Shakespearean tragedy. But Jermaine Pennant lived HIS dream. Maybe that was enough.