Graeme Souness hits out at Liverpool after their late season collapse

And thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. First of all, how are you? I’m very good. Good, good. I’m fine. Fateful as is it. Yeah. And before we get into your story, specifically, I want to talk a little bit about the event today, what we’re here for and why it’s so important for people to kind of be learning CPR. Yeah, well, I’m. I’ve been for a decade now an ambassador for the British Art Foundation in conjunction with Sky Bet and Sky Bar is going to put £3,000,000 in over the next 12 months into a campaign where the term is every minute matters. And this is for people who have heart attacks and people who have cardiac arrest and they fall over with the cardiac arrest and they’re, you know what’s happening to them, they’re dying. So every, every single minute matters how quickly you can get on someone and give them CPR and try and bring them back to life. You know, we have 30,000 people for cardiac arrest in this country in a year and one in 10. If it happens outside of a hospital, only one in 10 survive. So we really need to take the message out there that, you know, that’s such an important skill to have. It takes 15 minutes to learn. You can go to Reviver site, which are foundation site Reviver, and I’ll talk you through it in 15 minutes and show you how to do it. 15 minutes is 1/2 time. One of the things I didn’t quite realise which from speaking to people today, I’ve kind of learned is about the pressure that you have to put on someone’s chest to be able to do you break roots. Yeah, I couldn’t believe that. Yeah, they’re already dead with a cardiac arrest, so you’re not going to hurt them anymore to try to bring them back to life. You have to exert this much. Certainly for a woman it would take all the power to to put onto their chest to to get them back. It’s a real it’s a real effort and you never stop. You never give up until the ambulance comes here. And your story, I mean, you were diagnosed with coronary heart disease at 38 and I think it was just five days later you were having open heart surgery. That’s a lot to kind of process in such a short period of time. How was that typical? You know, when you’re young you think you’re invincible. You know, I’d live the life of a professional footballer most of the time. Well exercise obviously vigorously wasn’t a big drinker of alcohol. So when I had to let someone punch around their nose. So I was diagnosed on the angiogram on Thursday and came off the table and said right when can you do me? And he said on a Tuesday. So I went and psychology when when my situation was a wee bit different. I partly I’m self-inflicted. I said I’m only the best customer you’ve ever had. So I I tried to do too much too soon after my operation and it ended. I ended up getting an infection. Instead of being in hospital for 10 days I was in 28 days and had to have another had to be opened up again. So from having a nice neat scarf it’s second time opening up. I haven’t got such a nice scarf. You say you tried to do too much too soon. What were you trying to do back on my feet, Exercising and just a simple thing that get, try, get out of bed without using your arms. Someone was doing that and developed a a click in the sternum. And of course you just said there about the fact that then you had to go back into the stool and kind of go through more medical scenarios. Then when you had recovered, was it in the back of your mind that, you know, you don’t want to rush things? Were you almost apprehensive about going? Yeah. Oh, definitely. You know when you come out of hospital there is a you’re fearful. And no one warned me and I’m more than happy to to say this. I was I I would get emotional for no reason at all and that is not me. I’m you know normally up for the cup. But I I would have tears running down my eyes three or four times when I eventually came out of the hospital just feeling sorry for myself. I think it’s quite it’s a traumatic thing that took me maybe the best part of the year to over, you know, you’re cleaning your teeth and you can’t help the glass down to your chest. Can you see a terribly attractive scar on your chest? And a little reminder all the time that no one’s invincible. I was 38 at the time. I think this should have happened to me. So the fact it happened to me, given the lifestyle of having been a professional athlete, I can’t tell you. How did you come to terms with it? Was it just time or how did you, the love of my wife and family eventually just park it. And this is 32 years ago and I and this is a scary it’s happened to me, happened to me. But for the last 32 years I’ve lived with perfect normal life, didn’t stop me doing anything. I exercise most days, you know, eat and drink Vols, eat, eat Nan drunk in moderation. So I eat sensibly. I just got on the line. Stop me doing nothing. That’s what I was going to say. Is that is there anything that you can’t do anymore or is it No, I stay away from like playing squash or playing tennis where your demand of your body a sudden burst of energy. So my doctors don’t need to stay away from that, but I exercise, start up, get to a plateau, stay there for a while and come down again. You said beforehand that you were fit and healthy and you know you exercised, living the elite lifestyle as such. Was there anything in the build up that you felt or was it just going from feeling absolutely fine to something? The only thing I used to get headaches, if I had one glass of wine, 1 pint of lager, I don’t. I’d feel a headache coming up, and that’s to do with extremely high blood pressure and then latterly not sleeping very well. But was that the job or was that this disease creeping up on me? I’m not sure with that. Then I guess it’s even more important for people to go and get DC GS and checks, even if they don’t feel like they necessarily need it. I keep coming back to I am the perfect example. Maybe not today, because there’s younger people here. I’ve had cardiac arrest at my time. I think that was a very good example of, look, I’m fit, I’ve lived the life of, you know, being healthy in my lifestyle, but it can still happen to me. So if there’s a family history of the high blood pressure, we’ll get still checked out. What’s it like with your family? Did they try and slow you down a little bit now or no, they didn’t before and they don’t know. And I’ve also then checked out and it’s something that they’re all aware of. You know, I have a faulty gene. I think the Celtic race, we we, our diets hysterically have not been great and that’s why we’re more prone to to having coronary artery disease unfortunately. And we’ve seen some, you know, there’s some inspiring stories around the room today, let alone, as you said, out on the world anyway, people that necessarily aren’t in spotlight. How important do you think it was for these people to be, you know, sharing their stories so that then it’s getting people notice? I think, you know, for the ex footballers here today, you know, to we’re here to promote Every Minute Matters campaign, Bridge, Art Foundation and Sky Bet conjunction, not conjunction. You know, this cooperation wins. Yeah. Collaboration, yeah, collaboration, collaboration. So, you know, to get the word out there that, you know, we need to teach more people CPR, you might need it one day to look after a family member. It might be a complete stranger on the street. If you’ve got that knowledge, you could save someone’s life. You know there’s 30,000 people with cardiac arrest in our country every year. If it happens outside of a hospital, you got a one in ten chance of surviving. So the more and more people that can earn CPR, the better. The sky better. Thrown a big chunk of money at this. Guaranteed 3,000,000 lbs with 10,000 lbs for every goal scored in the the champion the playoffs next month So they’re they’re it’s a real commitment by them and and you know the the target is we’re here at Wembley the target is to get free Wembley’s 270,000 people. I think we should be aiming higher you know 270,000 people sounds a lot but over 12 months we should be we should be going for a million people. I know we won’t get that but that should be our aim. It’s I I know it. I know that I’ve got the knowledge. It’s a very simple thing to learn. You can learn it at 15 minutes, you go onto Reviver app. It’s a Reviver site with the British Art Foundation. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about CPR. And in 15 minutes, that’s 1/2 time in the football match. You could you’d have the knowledge to save someone’s life. Yeah. I can’t imagine why anyone would not do it after hearing all of this. We’ve all got families, we’ve all got elderly relatives. We’ve got might be shopping with your wife or husband and someone falls over and how much you would regret it if you said someone because of dying with, you know, the dying in front of you, if you if you’ve got the knowledge you could bring that person back to life, not taking those 15 minutes. You know on the football side of it, obviously you’ve spoken to a few people today and they’ve spoken about how the fact that having cardiac arrest and heart conditions has prevented them from doing what they love and they kind of have to take a step back from football. Can you sympathize with that? Yeah, it’s, you know, for me. It happened to me when I was 30, so I’d finished playing. I’ve been finished playing two years. So, you know, it was still a shock to me. But, you know, if you’re a young fella and you’re in the middle of your career, there must be a real blow. You know, the thing you love most has been taken away from you, from you. But what I would say to these young guys is it may not seem like at the time because it’s all it’s your life. It just takes over your life. Football. There’s a lot of life after football. You know, we’re talking tons up here. I think Tom’s over 30, he’s had a fabulous career. I don’t know what the future holds. Remember, I can guarantee him there’s a lot of life after football. You know he’s got a child now and everything, so that’s important thing with with his daughter. Thank you for sharing your story. I really appreciate it and getting it out there. I do want to finish by asking you a couple of football questions, if that’s OK. Business end of the season. Now heading into the title challenge, how do you see it going down? Well, my team are out of it. I had a bad weekend a couple of weeks ago. We were both Glasgow Rangers lost to Ross County and and Liverpool lost to Crystal Palace. So I think for Liverpool disappointing end to the season, I thought they would win. I thought they were playing brand of football, which was you don’t have to play well to win games because there’s so much firepower on the team and that’s gone in the last couple of months. They’ve gone from team that could score for fun to team that can’t score and they have to look at themselves. You know, at the time that really mattered. They couldn’t deal with that pressure for whatever reason. I was going to say why do you think that fire? I can’t tell you. You have. They’ve been great for seven months of the season. The last two months of the season. There’s just not the same players and collectively not the same team. They have to look in the mirrors and say I’m going to learn from this and it’ll never happen to me again as an individual. And if they all think that that won’t happen again as a collector, but they’ve been, they’ve been a major disappointment to themselves and to the football club because they they had a wonderful opportunity, a wonderful opportunity, bitterly disappointing from the over for the over clock obviously. And what do you think Liverpool looks like after the open clock? I’ve no, I’ve no idea. And I tell you I said I’ve no idea if you’re saying it. I said the other in the season that was absolutely cup final. Whoever gets the Liverpool job after Europe has walked into a very healthy situation. I look at that now. It’s not such a healthy situation. So you’re asking me what the future was like for Liverpool. We’re talking about Liverpool for the first seven months. This evening we’re talking about this Liverpool. It’s been for the last couple of months this season that I can’t answer that. Most players can’t answer that and we’ll have to wish the new manager all the very best of luck.