I’m proud of my time at Everton – but my niece was told at school that I was a traitor

A woman once told Sammy Lee’s eight-year-old granddaughter that her grandfather was a traitor after taking a job at Everton.

Lee, 65, spent less than six months as Sam Allardyce’s assistant manager at Goodison Park in the second half of the 2017/18 season before both left at the end of that campaign. His time at Anfield was over seven years earlier, having rejoined the club under Rafa Benitez and staying with Roy Hodgson and Sir Kenny Dalglish.

Graeme Souness was the first manager Lee worked under after he joined the coaching staff shortly after retirement in 1993. He stayed for 11 years, including under Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier, before finally leaving to play a part-time role with Sven-Goran Eriksson’s England. permanent.

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Lee seized the opportunity two years after retiring from the game, a career spent mainly at Anfield. The midfielder made nearly 300 appearances for his boyhood club, coming through the academy after initially joining as an apprentice.

After such a long association with the club, Lee anticipated and was unaffected by the criticism that came his way. But as he first exclusively recalled to the ECHO last October, people have also made their feelings known to members of his family.

“Someone said to my niece, who was maybe eight at the time, ‘Your stain is a traitor,'” Lee told the ECHO. This is Anfield.

“My real niece was in school and one of the mothers actually came up to her and said ‘your stain is a traitor.’ So it was a bit painful.

But as Lee told the ECHO, he has no regrets. “I knew the problems were coming,” Lee recalled. “I knew the criticism was coming.

He explained: “The way I look at it, I have a number of passions in my life: my family is the main one, football and the city. I’ve just been lucky enough to follow my passion at the club I love, which is Liverpool Football Club, both as a player and as a coach.

“But when that passion goes away, you have to move on and go somewhere else. I jumped at the chance to join Everton because one of my other passions is the city and when I went to Everton they were 16th in the table.

“We finished eighth. I was very, very proud of that because, in my humble opinion, you need the two teams from the city in the Premiership.”