‘I understood almost nothing’
Former Liverpool striker Andriy Voronin believes that Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher’s Scouse accents were the reason behind his forgettable spell at the club.
Voronin spent four years at Anfield, joining on a free transfer from Bayer Leverkusen in 2007, before leaving in 2010 after scoring just five goals in 27 appearances.
The forward also spent time out on loan at Hertha Berlin before he was eventually sold to Dynamo Moscow but when looking back on his time at the Merseyside club, Voronin cited one major factor as to why he struggled.
‘When Carragher and Gerrard talked, I asked them to repeat it in English’
During an interview with GOAL in 2021, the Ukrainian explained that the Scouse accents at the club – in particular Gerrard’s and Carragher’s – left him struggling to understand his teammates.
“I understood almost nothing, my English wasn’t good anyway. When Carragher and Gerrard talked, I asked them to repeat it in English,” he recalled.
“Liverpool didn’t suit me as a city overall, even though it has a lot of history to offer, such as the Beatles. My father is a big fan of the band. When I told him I had signed with Liverpool, he started crying.”
Voronin struggled to cope with the English weather
The 42-year-old also felt that the lack of a winter break in the Premier League was something he struggled to adapt to, and that the weather was not to his taste.
He added: “I also couldn’t cope with the weather and the rhythm of the games without a winter break. I was just traveling and playing, which was very exhausting.”
Voronin retired from football in 2013 and had been working at former club Dynamo as an assistant manager, but left the club in March 2022 following the Russian invasion of his homeland.
In a parting statement, the ex-forward said he couldn’t “see any possibility of staying in a country whose army destroys our cities & fires at civilians.”
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