‘Steven Gerrard asked if I’d sign for Liverpool – I should have gone but didn’t’
Bobby Zamora says Steven Gerrard urged him to sign for Liverpool – and he very nearly did!
The former Premier League striker, who played for the likes of West Ham, Fulham and Tottenham, said deciding not to join the Merseyside club was the biggest regret of his career, along with passing up the chance to go to the 2010 World Cup.
Zamora ended the 2009/10 season with a (top-flight) career high of 19 goals in all competitions after helping Fulham reach the Europa League final, where they were beaten 2-1 by Atletico Madrid. He made his England debut a few months later, and ended up impressing Gerrard to the point the Liverpool skipper asked him if he'd be up for a move to Anfield.
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"I should have probably gone to Liverpool from Fulham," the 42-year-old said on the Under The Cosh podcast. "Roy [Hodgson] went to Liverpool. They bid and Spurs bid at the same time, £10million the pair of them.
"When I played for England, my first game against Hungary, I get in the lift with my best pal and Stevie G, and Stevie G goes, 'Mate, f***ing brilliant today, well done. Would you come to Liverpool?' I was like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah' … so he said, 'I'll speak to Roy'."
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A bid soon followed, but Zamora chose to stay in west London for the sake of his family. "I'd just had my girls," he said. "Mark Hughes was like, 'You're going to be my key man, I need you, we'll give you new a deal.' I don't know why, but I said, 'Yeah OK'.
"But yeah, I probably should have gone to Liverpool. Regardless of the fact Roy didn't do great there. I should have got five years at Liverpool. You can't hit a few branches coming down from there."
The London-born forward ended up breaking his leg the day after he signed an extension at Fulham, and never hit the goal scoring heights he hit in 2009/10 again. Earlier that summer, he passed up the opportunity to go to the World Cup because he was recovering from an injury at the time and knew he wouldn't be fully fit.
"I was struggling with my Achilles and I needed an operation. I probably shouldn't have played the Europa League final, but you can't do the whole season and miss out," Zamora said. "Fabio Capello and Franco Baldini came to a lot of games, and the conversations were, 'We want you to come to the World Cup. How's your leg? How's your injury? Are you going to be OK?'
"I said, 'No. I don't think I can go'. Because in my head, I couldn't train. I wasn't training at Fulham Monday to Friday, because I couldn't. So if I go to England, and I'm there with Frank Lampard, Stevie G, whoever it may be, and if I'm not training, are they actually going to pick me to play? I didn't feel comfortable, but if I could turn back time now I'd have gone and been a vegetable and just enjoyed the experience."
Zamora scored just shy of 200 goals over the course of his club career. He started at Bristol Rovers before making a big impact at Brighton in the early 00s. A move to Tottenham followed in 2003, but he failed to make grade and moved on to West Ham a year later.
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He spent five seasons at Upton Park, scoring 40 goals in 152 games before moving on to Fulham. After four years, and 37 more goals, with the Cottagers, Zamora joined his fourth and final club, QPR, before later wrapping his career up with a season back at old club Brighton.
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