Robbie Fowler, one of the greatest strikers to have ever graced the game has for the second time drawn a close to his Anfield career and this time its for keeps, but it all could have been so different.
The Toxteth Terror was lucky to have the amazing skills he had, but was so unlucky that when he made his breakthrough into the team that he loved so much, Liverpool Fc`s empire and stranglehold on English football had just come to and end. Due to bad decisions by the board and management of Liverpool Fc, Fowler never got to win the League with his beloved club, something that had become routine in Liverpool teams gone by.
But when Fowler burst onto the football scene in 1993 he was an instant success scoring on his first team debut against Fulham in the league cup and in the return leg showed what was to come by scoring all five goals in a decisive win.
Fowler has other amazing records to his name, the fastest hat trick in premiership history will take some doing to overtake, four minutes and thirty-three seconds against Arsenal, a top team and at the time renowned for their stingy defence.
Fowler earned his nickname `God´from his early days playing in front of the kop, he scored a massive amount of goals over 30 in each of his first three seasons, but it was not the quantity of goals that he scored, it was the quality of these goals that will always endear him to the Anfield faithful.
Fowler was simply born in the wrong continent, if he was born in the slums of Sao Paulo and his name was Kakadinho the whole world would be worshiping his early goals as the best ever scored, but instead he has always been labeled as the spiceboy from Toxteth that made good. If people think its crazy to compare him to the greats of South American football you must take a look of clips of Fowler early exploits, they will amaze you, even when he was only 18 he was not just scoring but putting the ball away with aplomb and a confidence that a lot of the players that we today regard as the best can only dream of.
With Fowler the term `the most natural finisher´has been used so much that it has lost some of its meaning, but you only have to look at his massive goals haul and more importantly, the quality in these goals to see why so many people say this about him.
Fowler was never the same after his knee ligament injury in 1998, gone was the predatory instinct that was so much of his game, gone were the legs that had previously carried him into the deadly runs that left opposing defences bewildered and even more importantly he seemed to have lost some of that cock sure scouse confidence in his own ability that had reassured his following on the Kop that he could truly walk on water.
But his first exit from Anfield was a disgrace, he will always be remembered as one of the true Anfield greats, but the way Houlier maneuvered him out will always be a black mark against the French manager. Fowler deserved more than that, he never got a chance to say goodbye to the Anfield faithful, and i remember an interview that Fowler gave at the time and for me it sums up the relationship between Fowler and Liverpool. The reporter badgered him by trying to get Robbie to say something bad about his departure from the club, but Robbie replied in the most serious voice i have ever heard him speak `you will never hear me badmouth anything about Liverpool Football Club´, and he was true to his word, even though an injustice had been done against him, he has never slagged of the club which most players today in the same situation would have done.
This is a guy who sat in the Ataturk stadium and watched his team like all the rest of the scouser fans, the team he knows he should be playing for, play the greatest game of football the world has ever known, that takes guts but it also shows how much he loves the Club and will always be a fan.
But he is still here now, and remember his return to Anfield was a fairytale and this fairytale ending was not fulfilled against Charlton in the last game of the League campaign so perhaps there is another chapter. What i will be watching as much as Benitez`s starting 11 in Athens is if God is selected to sit on the bench, and if he is, who would bet against him fulfilling his destiny to win glory for himself and the club whose history have become so intertwined.
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