Barcelona, Liverpool, now Central Coast Mariners — Luis Garcia reflects on his amazing football career

GRADUATING with Xavi and Andres Iniesta. Playing alongside Ronaldinho. Trying to explain Liverpool’s Champions League triumph. Luis Garcia has had some career.

A-League Rd 16 - Central Coast v Western Sydney

A BLAZINGLY hot day in Tuggerah is a world apart from the final of the Champions League, or a World Cup, or playing one-twos with Ronaldinho in front of a packed Nou Camp in Barcelona.

But it’s all part of the whole for Luis Garcia, part of a wonderful football journey that has kept on surprising him.

Almost exclusively billed here as a “former Liverpool Legend”, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that there’s a lot more to the career of the Mariners’ new marquee.

But ahead of his full debut for the Mariners on Saturday, he makes a hugely enjoyable guide to an 18-year professional life that refuses to die off.

At the start of it his dream was to play for Barcelona’s first team, as he came through its exalted academy with fellow graduates including Carles Puyol, Xavi, Victor Valdes and Andres Iniesta.

If it took several loan moves and then a season at Atletico Madrid to earn a place in that Barca first team, the wait was worthwhile when the side he joined in 2003 already boasted some jaw-dropping talent.

Luis Garcia has quickly had an impact on the struggling Mariners.

“It was a fantastic year — it was the year to start believing you can be one of the top players in football,” Garcia said.

“You are surrounded by so much quality. Ronaldinho was the Messi of his days, the best player in the world at the time. It was crazy — there was Cocu, Saviola, Overmars, Edgar Davids. So much quality.

“The second half of the season we didn’t even lose a game. That was the moment where Barcelona start to become what it is now.”

Yet at the end of that year, Garcia forced himself to consider some difficult truths.

Garcia scored the infamous “ghost goal” the put Liverpool into the Champions League final.

“When I saw Samuel Eto’o arrive, Ludovic Giuly arrive, Deco arrive, I said to myself, where is my place in this team?

“It was difficult for me to see myself playing ... and at the same time, Rafael Benitez was putting this opportunity on me to go to Liverpool, one of the most famous clubs in Europe.

“That was big, and also to have the trust of the coach who was like my mentor, ever since I met him at Tenerife. People wondered about the move, but we can see now it wasn’t so bad.”

No, it wasn’t “so bad” given that a year later he was a champion of Europe. Liverpool’s epic comeback in the 2005 final has inspired more analysis than possibly any other, but 11 years later Garcia confesses that still the players are unsure quite how they pulled it off.

“It’s crazy, still. Being part of one of the most amazing finals in Champions League history. Have a look at the players who were playing for Milan — if you play the game another 50 times, another 100 times, you cannot see them losing the game when they are 3-0 up at halftime.

“How we did it, we cannot explain. We try, but you just cannot explain. There were so many little things that happened to make a miracle. The Dudek save, Shevchenko missing a penalty — how many times has he ever done that?

“If you see Vladimir Smicer’s goal, it travels from one side of the goal to the other and passes almost through the tummy of Milan Baros. If he touches it, it’s not going in.”

Garcia still feels only sympathy for the player who limped off so early in that game, Harry Kewell.

“Harry was an unbelievable player, so unlucky to be injured so many times,” he said. “When he was on the pitch we knew that anything could happen, he had so much quality, so much power. He had a fantastic left foot, so many good things.

“The injuries were really sad because he was one of our best players.”

Garcia (No.21) with his Spain teammates at the 2006 World Cup.

It’s perhaps no wonder he has such empathy, because the ACL injury that Garcia himself suffered early in 2007 had major consequences. Seven months earlier he had played at the World Cup with Spain, and was part of the Spanish cohort preparing to dominate world football.

“It was like a dream come true. To play a World Cup, for your country, is the maximum thing you can ever do, nothing bigger. To think you are one of the 23 players chosen in a country of 48 million people — it’s an unbelievable feeling.”

Instead, by the time he was fit again from the knee injury in 2007, Liverpool wanted to sell him to Atletico Madrid, and Spain’s production line of midfielders was in full swing.

“I arrived at Atletico Madrid and I was playing very well. Then suddenly, maybe because I wasn’t 100 per cent fit, my body got tired. I remember one game, (Spain coach) Luis Aragones was coming to watch me play and during that week I felt my hamstring was tight. I didn’t play that game, and after that ...

“Like we said, those small moments. If I had played that game, who knows. But you have seen how Spain’s national team went from there — Cazorla arrived, Silva, Fabregas, great players.”