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Pepe Reina became the latest Liverpool hero to disappoint his fans for criticising Vinicius Jr.’s behaviour after he was racially abused…
 
NEVER meet your heroes. That?s what they say, isn?t it"
Of course, heroes become less of a thing the older and jaded you become.
A few years ago, I walked past Bruce Grobbelaar. He was going into a Chinese restaurant as I was leaving. I loved Brucie as a kid. Oh, I loved Clem much, much more but when you?re 12 years old and your keeper is doing handstands at Wembley with a medal in his gob, you?re going to look at them with fascination and admiration.
They were all Gods back then and the thought of holding the door open for them as they passed by was the stuff of dreams back in 1982. As it turned out I merely glanced at him with the limpest indifference. I couldn?t even be arsed with eye contact or a grunt. You see, Bruce Grobbelaar was no longer the deity I thought him to be. Bruce Grobbelaar, following the match-rigging scandal of 1994, had shown himself to be human after all and subject to faults and indiscretions.
He did many great things at Liverpool and not all of them off the pitch. He wore a black armband on the telly on the 20th anniversary of the disaster and attended many funerals of those who were unlawfully killed in April 1989, so I didn?t have a go at him or anything. I just got on with leaving the ...