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Giovanni van Bronckhorst was known for his rocket shot as a player, so perhaps he has more sympathy than most for Phil Thompson.
The 50-year-old will enjoy a far more low-key Community Shield outing as Liverpool assistant than one of his iconic predecessors.
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The former Rangers manager was unveiled as the replacement for his Dutch compatriot John Heitinga as the Merseysider’s No.2 coach.
The ex-Netherlands international will assist Reds boss Arne Slot in the dugout for the first time in a competitive setting this Sunday.
Despite his ties to Liverpool’s Premier League title rivals Arsenal this season, Van Bronckhorst has made a seamless start to life at Anfield.
His renowned unflappable demeanour has made him an ideal fit to handle the club’s array of superstar personalities.
In contrast, a major backdrop for Liverpool’s recent Community Shield history has centred around just the opposite.
Gerard Houllier came into the 2001 curtain raiser hoping to build upon the pinnacle of his Anfield reign, having overseen a treble.
However, Liverpool’s 2-1 win over Manchester United was soured by Robbie Fowler’s surprise exclusion from the matchday squad.
Fowler, affectionately called ‘God’ by Reds fans, remains one of the club’s most successful academy products ever.
The legendary striker made 369 appearances over two spells with his boyhood club, scoring 183 goals – seventh on the all-time list.
He also won five trophies during his Liverpool career, which would have been six had he not been left out of the 2001 Wembley squad.
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Why was Robbie Fowler left out of the 2001 Community Shield?
Then-Liverpool manager Houllier confirmed his frontman had been in a training ground bust-up with his assistant manager, Thompson.
The pair ended up in a furious verbal sparring match after a misdirected Fowler shot almost struck Thompson in training.
“If you insult your boss, you may be fired the following day, whereas sometimes we are a bit more understanding,” said Houllier, as reported by the Guardian a week after the match.
“I gave him the opportunity to apologise on the spur of the moment and after training that day.
“I took him aside on the day after the incident, I waited until Sunday lunchtime before the Charity Shield, and then I brokered a get-together between Phil and him on Thursday.
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“I left the two Scousers together to sort it out, but so far it has been unsuccessful. I’m a patient man.
“At some stage, it will be solved, but until then, Robbie won’t be in the squad.
“He is not transfer-listed, and he won’t be; nor will this affect negotiations over his new contract. Now it’s down to him.”
Fowler, who eventually apologised weeks later, later claimed he’d felt that summer that Houllier had already planned to sell him.
What happened between Robbie Fowler and Phil Thompson?
“What happened just before the start of the season confirmed my fears,” the ex-England forward wrote in his 2005 autobiography.
“It was just before the Charity Shield against Manchester United on August 12. The day before we were due to head to Wales, we were training at Melwood and I was practising my shooting, firing balls into the empty net.
“As I was doing it, Phil Thompson stood behind the goal. As I shot, the net billowed out a bit, and the ball went near him.
“It couldn’t have hit him, because there was a net in the way, and I would have had to have a radioactive shot to burn the net. But he started screaming that the ball could have hit him . . .
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“He came out with all the stuff they were clearly saying behind my back.
“Thompson said I’d been at Liverpool too long, that was my problem. Now what kind of comment was that from a man who had served Liverpool for so long, and wanted to stay at the club all his life? He ranted on a bit more, and I just said that only at Liverpool under him and Houllier could they get annoyed about strikers practising shooting at goal.
“On the day of the game, Houllier hit me with this incredible bomb-shell. He hadn’t been at the training session where I’d had the row with Thompson, but just a couple of hours before kick-off he said I wasn’t playing. He said I wasn’t even on the bench.
“On Monday, Houllier called me into his office and told me I was dropped because I had been rude to Thompson, adding that I wouldn’t play again until I apologised.
“This was a multi-million pound business, and they were excluding the captain because he had kicked a ball into a net when someone was standing within a few metres of it. How stupid is that?
“Houllier said I needed to apologise, and I said I didn’t feel any need to.
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“He called a meeting between me and Thompson. When I got to the training ground, instead of going to the manager’s office, Houllier led me to the middle of the training pitch. Thompson threw his arms in the air for no reason, and I was thinking, ‘This is strange’. The next day, there was a picture in all the newspapers. Jamie Redknapp came in laughing, saying I’d been caught in a sting.”
The standoff between Fowler and the coaching staff saw the player also left out of the squad for the first game of the Premier League season – a 2-1 home win over West Ham.
In his book, Fowler says that after two weeks he made “an apology of sorts… and told them what a right load of t****** they were looking”.
“Phil Thompson accepted my apology with a smile like he had won the lottery, the wrong ‘un,” he added.
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What happened next?
Fowler fittingly scored on his return from exile in a 4-1 Champions League victory over FC Haka at Anfield on August 21, 2001.
Two months later, however, the saga proved the beginning of the end, and his fears were indeed realised as he was sold to Leeds.
“Things like that happen on training grounds every day, arguments between players and coaches, but the amount of publicity it got was frightening,” said Fowler upon his arrival at Elland Road.
“I missed out on another medal because of that, and that is what hurt me more than anything.”
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What has Phil Thompson said about it?
“There was an issue with Robbie. There’s no problems. That’s the first thing,” Thompson told the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast in February.
“Robbie and me are big mates. And it was just a training ground reaction. We had principles; we had to sit down when I came in with Gerard Houllier.
“Our players of the morning, we’d have four bags of balls, ten balls in each, and they’d take them all out, and they’d launch them into the far goal, down the far end. Wrong. Lack of respect.
“Because who had to collect them? The medical staff and the technical staff had to go and collect these balls. So we’ve gone right, the balls go in the bag until we’ve done the warm up, until we start our session, then the balls come out.
“So this day, I’m just there, we’re just finishing the warm-up, and we’re going to sort of [go through] what we’re doing, what the session’s going to be about.
Next thing, I’m walking across the goal line where the goal was. This ball flashes past me, a yard past me, and misses my nose by six inches.
“It obviously could have hit me, could have hit a player – So I said, ‘Who’s done that? You know the rules, who’s done that?’
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“And Robbie went, ‘It was me. So I went over, I said, ‘You know the rules more than anybody. I said, ‘The ball’s staying in the bag until we start the session.’
“And he said, ‘Big nose’. And I was looking around, I thought somebody else had come into the area. So me and him are squaring up.
“Gerard Houllier interviewed the staff, and he interviewed the players who were all there. We had a meeting, and he said, ‘Robbie, until you apologise to Thommo, you’re not involved in any team selection.'”
On their reunion, Thompson added: “Gerard comes to me and says, Robbie wants to see you in the treatment room.
“So in the treatment room, Robbie went, ‘Tom, I’m sorry’. He says, ‘You know, you know the way I am.
“He said, ‘You know, I’m stubborn.’ I said, ‘Robbie, I can be like that.’ He said, ‘Yeah, Tom, but you didn’t miss beating Man United.’
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“And I said, ‘I know, Robbie, that wasn’t my problem. That was you.’ And he went, ‘Yeah, but..'”
“And I said, ‘Robbie, it’s not a problem.’ I said, ‘It is what it is.’ Then both of us hugged in the treatment room, and off we went. And we’d never had a problem after that. Yeah, Robbie might have felt…
“And you know what? It was great. A few years ago, just before Gerard Houllier died, just after COVID, we were doing an interview, me, Robbie, Carra [Jamie Carragher], at the Titanic in Liverpool.
“We were sitting in, they’ve got these cameras all set up, similar to what we are today. And we said, ‘Can we ask the question?’ Robbie said, ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll have a little bit of fun about it.
“But when the cameras came to Robbie, he said, ‘You know what?’ And he went, ‘This was about me. This was about Robbie Fowler.’
He said, ‘All I thought of was myself and me.’ And he said, ‘I didn’t care about anybody else.’
“And he says, as you get a little bit older and you finish playing, you realise, and I’m sitting there looking and going, oh my goodness, how you’ve grown up, Rob, and how you realise as a coach, because he’d become a coach.
“And I said, it was a big moment in me. But he had a different idea of what actually happened on that day. And Robbie did.
“He pondered, and he went, ‘I can’t remember what happened two weeks ago. Never mind, sort of 10 years ago.’ So it was a big moment.”
“He’s a good boy,” Thompson concluded.
Listen to coverage of the Community Shield as Crystal Palace take on Liverpool live on talkSPORT at 3pm on Sunday!
