‘I’d have left Liverpool if Mascherano had stayed’

Matt Stead

Lucas Leiva admits that he would likely have left Liverpool in 2010 had Javier Mascherano stayed.

The Brazilian is currently the club’s longest-serving player, having joined in 2007 under Rafael Benitez.

The 30-year-old has regularly been linked with a move away, but he has survived the reigns of Benitez, Roy Hodgson, Kenny Dalglish and Brendan Rodgers, and remains a key member of Jurgen Klopp’s squad.

He almost joined Inter Milan in the winter, but it was not the first time he came close to leaving Anfield.

“Many times I had chances to leave,” he told The Anfield Wrap. “Sometimes the club didn’t want me to leave, sometimes I didn’t want to go, but I always felt that there is something missing still.

“I thought if I leave like that it’s not the way I wish.”

The closest the Brazilian came to leaving was in 2010, when Roy Hodgson was appointed manager.

“Always when a new manager comes in you doubt your future, you’re not sure,” he added. “He comes in and brings his players. We had a lot of talk of Mascherano leaving.

“All the big players, Mascherano, [Fernando] Torres, wasn’t really happy, you could see in his [Torres] body language, we had a lot of problems off the field, with the owners. So I think everything started to affect us.

“And then of course for me it was really hard because I didn’t know [my future] until Mascherano left. I knew that if Mascherano had stayed I probably would have to leave because there was no space for me. So he left and then I had to stay. [But] it was like if he goes ‘you stay’, if he stays, ‘you go’.”