Legends of club football – Sami Hyypia

Anfield, May 24, 2009: Six minutes from the end of Liverpool’s game against Tottenham, Rafael Benitez brought off Steven Gerrard to allow a wonderful, memorable and emotional event to occur. Gerrard removed his captain’s armband and gave it to his replacement, Sami Hyypia, who was playing his final game for the club.

The Kop stood in salute of the Finn, who had served Liverpool with full dedication for a decade, helping the club to a Champions League, a UEFA Cup, 2 UEFA Super Cups and 6 domestic trophies.

When the referee blew the final whistle, it was the end of a remarkable career at Liverpool which included 464 games of no-nonsense and disciplined defending, along with 35 goals, mostly scored from towering headers off set-pieces. There were tears in Hyypia’s eyes (and many others who were present at Anfield or were watching the game live on television), and the Anfield faithful were singing songs in his praise.

Liverpool had finished the season on a high, finishing a strong second in the league, just 4 points off Manchester United. It was an apt farewell for a player who had loyally served the club. Ever since that season, Liverpool’s form has dipped and Brendan Rodgers is the fourth manager at the helm since that season, while Hyypia has now gone on to become the manager of Bayer Leverkusen and has impressed in his new role, leading the team to a 3rd place finish in Bundesliga and Champions League qualification. It won’t be far-fetched to imagine the Finn managing Liverpool at some stage in the future.

Flashback to May 19, 1999: Liverpool signed 25-year-old Sami Hyypia from Dutch club Willem II for a relatively small fee of £2.6 million. Hyypia, who had been a boyhood supporter of the club, was recommended to former chief executive Peter Robinson by a TV cameraman.

Robinson recalled “It was mid-way through the 1998/99 season when there was a knock on the door of my office at Anfield. I had never met the chap. He came in and introduced himself as a cameraman who covered football in Europe. He knew we were looking for a strong defender and recommended we take a look at Sami, who was playing for Willem, one of the smaller Dutch clubs. That is how it all started. I passed the message on to Gerard (Houllier) and, over the next few months, members of the staff went to Holland to watch him on several occasions.”

Ron Yeats, who was Liverpool’s chief scout, later described Hyypia’s signing saying “I was glad we signed big Sami Hyypia. I went to see him after we was recommended. I thought this boy looks a good player. At centre-half he was a great passer of the ball which is unusual for centre-halves. I was really taken with Sami and I put in a report that either the boss or a coach should go over and see this man. They did and then signed him a few weeks after the recommendation. When I was told how little money Liverpool had spent on Sami, I nearly fell off my chair!”

Hyypia already had seven years as a professional behind him. At the age of 17, he signed for his local club Kumu, then in the Finnish second division, after having spent ten years at Voikkaan Pallo-Peikot where he had made three appearances in the third division in 1989. He decided to undertake his period of National Service early because it could have been a problem if he had to play in another country later at some stage. He turned pro and signed for MyPa in 1992, where he played alongside Jari Litmanen (who later turned out to be his future Liverpool teammate as well). Hyypia spent three years at MyPa and won 2 Finnish Cups in 1992 and 1995.

He made his international debut at the age of 19 against Tunisia on November 7, 1992.

Liverpool weren’t his first exposure to English football. He underwent a two-week trial at Newcastle in 1995. Failing to get a contract from the Magpies, he joined Dutch side Willem II, where he was soon appointed as captain. Before heading to Liverpool, he helped Willem II qualify for the Champions League.

At Liverpool, he was initially regarded as a relative unknown who might struggle to impress. He made his debut for the Reds against Sheffield Wednesday on August 7, 1999 in a game which Liverpool won 2-1, and quickly formed an extremely reliable central defensive partnership with Stephane Henchoz, which provided the foundation for Liverpool’s historic treble in 2000-01, when they won the UEFA Cup, the FA Cup and the Worthington Cup.

In 2000-01, Liverpool’s full-time captain Jamie Redknapp suffered from a long-term injury, and Hyypia shared the captaincy with Robbie Fowler. In 2002, after both Redknapp and Fowler left the club, Hyypia was appointed as Liverpool’s first-choice captain.

After a bright start to his Liverpool career, there was a brief dip in his form and he was replaced by the emerging Steven Gerrard as Liverpool’s captain. Gerrard still remembers nervously approaching Hyypia to discuss the issue, only to be disarmed as Hyypia shook his hand and wished him good luck. It was not only on the field that Hyypia made a positive impression. Also, with the pressure of captaincy now relieved, his performances went on to improve.

Hyypia was renowned for his disciplined play and he didn’t receive a booking for 87 consecutive matches from January 2000 to October 2001. He received the only red card in his career in a game against Manchester United in 2003. He later described that incident saying “Van Nistelrooy was going through and maybe I took his shirt a little bit. The referee thought so. I got a straight red card. They got a penalty. It was an agony to watch the game in the dressing room. The only red card of my career. You remember that sort of thing.”

With the arrival of new Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez, Hyypia found a new central defensive partner in Jamie Carragher, and the partnership blossomed, even bettering the Hyypia-Henchoz combination. The duo’s performance was crucial in Liverpool winning the Champions League in 2005. That campaign included a sweet left-footed strike by Hyypia to score a crucial goal against Juventus. Hyypia rates that goal to be the best one in his career.

Hyypia was relegated to third-choice captain with the appointment of Carragher as Gerrard’s deputy in the 2005-06 season. He played in the FA Cup final against West Ham that season, which Liverpool won. (Though Hyypia missed his spot kick in the penalty shoot-out.)

With Daniel Agger joining Liverpool in 2006, Hyypia was no longer a certainty in the first-team, but he continued to play his part well whenever called upon to do so.

In the summer of 2007, Hyypia was linked with a move away from Liverpool, but he decided to stay on at the club. On August 25, 2007, he broke his nose in an away match at Sunderland. But he quickly returned on the pitch three days later to captain the team against Toulouse in the Champions League qualifying match in the absence of Gerrard and Carragher, and he scored Liverpool’s second goal in the game. On March 2, 2008, when he played against Bolton Wanderers, Hyypia made it into the top 20 Liverpool player appearances of all time.

In April 2008, Hyypia signed a new deal keeping him at the club till the summer of 2009. Rafa Benitez appreciated his contribution to Liverpool, and said that he would be a perfect role model for young defenders like Daniel Agger and Martin Skrtel. Hyypia managed to play just 19 games for Liverpool in his tenth and final season for the club.

Prior to the game against Spurs, Hyypia had played no role in the four preceding games, and fans, who were aware of his pending departure from the club, grew desperate to see him play. There were expectations that he would lead out the team in the final game, but Benitez kept everyone waiting till the 84th minute, despite frequent chants of “Sami, Sami, Sami, on, on, on!” all around the stadium.

As Gerrard handed him the captain’s armband, he repaid back the favour to Hyypia, who was the first to congratulate Gerrard when he was appointed Liverpool’s captain.

Liverpool tried to keep Hyypia at the club as a part of the coaching staff, but he believed he had some more football left in him and he went on to play at Bayer Leverkusen for two seasons. Roy Hodgson tried to bring him back when he took charge of Liverpool, but couldn’t get him released from his contract at Leverkusen. Hodgson’s reason for attempting to re-sign Hyypia was simple: “He’s one I would also put in the Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard mould, Liverpool for life.”

Hyypia captained Finland in his hundredth game for the national side on August 12, 2009 against Sweden and went on to make five more appearances before retiring from the international scene after a 2-1 loss to Hungary in a Euro 2012 qualifying match on October 12, 2010. Hyypia announced at a press conference on May 1, 2011 that he would be retiring as a player at the end of the current season. However, he would remain at Leverkusen as the club’s assistant manager and would also join the coaching staff of the Finnish national team. In April 2012, following the dismissal of Robin Dutt, Hyypia was named as caretaker-coach at Leverkusen. He was to work alongside the club’s Under-19 coach, Sascha Lewandowski. A month later the club announced that both men had signed permanent contracts that would last until 2015.

On August 12, 2012, Hyypia’s Leverkusen team played a friendly against Liverpool at Anfield in a game where the home side won 3-1. The game will be remembered fondly for Hyypia’s first return to Anfield after leaving Liverpool.

The Hyypia- Lewandowski duo led Bayer Leverkusen to a third place finish in the Bundesliga in 2012-13, behind Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, and the reward of this performance was a direct entry in the group stage of the 2013-14 edition of Champions League.

Hyypia’s profile on Liverpool’s official site describes him as “one of the finest centre-backs ever to wear a red shirt”. The best tribute to him was paid by his defensive colleague Carragher, who said “I’ve been saying it for years, Sami will go down in history alongside the likes of Ron Yeats, Alan Hansen and Emlyn Hughes. When you think of the foreign players who have played in this country, for me Sami is up there with Dennis Bergkamp and Gianfranco Zola. Not many players have come to the Premiership from abroad and played for just one club for as long as Sami has and in all the time he’s been at Liverpool you could probably count his bad performances on the fingers of one hand.”

Former German national team coach and current sporting director at Bayer Leverkusen, Rudi Voller has said “Sami has all the ingredients to become a great coach… At some point he will go to Liverpool. This is his dream.”

And it is the dream of most Liverpool fans to welcome him back at the club. Hyypia will always be revered by the Kop faithful for all his contributions on and off the pitch. Indeed, he will never walk alone.