John Barnes

speaker

1,771 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 18 Jun

John Barnes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Stick to Football · John Barnes: Liverpool Legend, Battles with United & Tackling Racism | Stick to Football EP 112 · 22 Jan 2026 podcast

But I knew I had to play in that way, in that position.

Because the laws of the game has changed as well, which means that if you're very technical and you're playing in midfield and the Roy wants to come and kind of just be a bit over physical, it's going to be a free kick, whereas back then it wasn't.

So as much as having technical ability, you had to have that resilience as well, which meant that technical players now, look at Andrea Pirlo, for example, you know, and players like Iniesta, because you could still tackle them.

Whereas now it's so much easier for technical players because you can't tackle them.

You can't tackle them at all.

So are we concentrating too much on technique?

I think we're concentrating too much on tricks because I don't know how real it is.

It could be AI, but on my phone all the time, I'm seeing people I've never heard of and the skills that they're actually doing looks incredible.

But what you see now are players putting themselves in positions to do certain tricks, like drag backs and stuff like that.

For me, technical ability for me is getting in the right area on the right, on the half turn with an awareness around you to be able to get the ball and play one touch or two touch.

Whereas we feel technical ability now is about having five and six and seven and eight and nine touches on the ball.

You know, so I think it's more to do with me looking at

Ronnie Whelan is an example, or other players and what they did in those positions, and we try to recreate what they did.

And as I said, what Graham Taylor made us do at Watford is we had to be able to play in every position.

So there is a functional requirement of a position.

And if you understand that, playing on the left wing, playing as a centre-back, playing as a right-back, playing in these positions, if you understand that and you are technically competent, you should be able to play.

You see people playing in many different positions rather than thinking, I am a centre-forward, I'm a left-winger.

It wasn't... When people talk about tricks, I don't think I would beat a player.

But I wasn't a player like... Or he does lots of tricks.

I think I was more direct than that.

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