Playing against Liverpool at Anfield is like ‘a mountain you can’t climb’ according to a former Premier League striker.
Martin Pringle, who turned out for Charlton Athletic around the turn of the new millennium, has opened up about how difficult it was to go to Liverpool and get a win on their turf.
A Reddit user translated the part of the interview, which originally appeared in Swedish publication Aftonbladet, that was pertinent to us.
When Pringle was trying to take on the Premier League, the Addicks forward would have had to go toe-to-toe with some of the finest defenders this club has ever had.
Sami Hyypia would have been lining up with Jamie Carragher, while other stalwarts like Stephane Henchoz and Markus Babbel. A fine back four and one that would give Charlton an extremely hard time as Liverpool ran out 3-0 winners thanks to Emile Heskey, a Mark Fish own goal and Babbel getting one in the 90th minute.
That result makes sense when you consider what Pringle said about how he felt in the lead up to the fixture.
"“When you walk up those goddamn stairs towards the field and they sing their frigging ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’… You just feel smaller and smaller. It’s ridiculous. Maybe you saw it on TV, but when you are there to experience it, it feels completely different.When you walk up that stair towards the field you have the feeling that nothing happens, no matter how much you walk. I’m 1.90 meters tall, but it felt like I couldn’t even reach ground height. The ground height didn’t change. It was a mountain you couldn’t climb.It was completely ridiculous, it really felt like we lost the game there and then. A really strange feeling, but that was the feeling I had.”"
That’s what we want our ground to feel like. Anfield has got a famous atmosphere for that reason. It chews up opposition teams and spits them out, especially when it’s bouncing on nights like when we beat Barcelona 4-0 in the Champions League semi-final.
Creating a fortress like atmosphere is so important in football and it can help carry home teams to victory while wilting the spirits of away sides.
Although, for Pringle, feeling that he had already lost before getting on the field must have been a recurring theme for his Premier League career as he scored four goals in 25 appearances for Charlton over two seasons.
And for Liverpool? Anfield is still propelling the team to greater and greater things and under Jurgen Klopp, who knows what’ll happen over the next five years as the German builds an empire.