Andrea Dossena, a former Italy defender, emerged as one of Serie A’s leading left backs when he joined Udinese in 2006. Two years later, he moved to Liverpool, where he got his first chance to try his hand in the Premier League.
However, his performances in England continued to be lackluster, and although he played a total of 31 games, he was unable to get a regular role.
In short, the Premier League challenge was a failure, and the player, who retired in 2017, admitted he made a mistake at the time, saying he did not try hard enough.
“In Italy we have a culture of work that is much more based on quantity, while you (in England) are very good at having an optimal quantity/quality ratio. In my opinion we lack this in order to adapt to your football because when we no longer work, as the quantity contains, the quality decreases accordingly.”
“At least this was my problem in my case. I came from a culture of a lot of weekly work and in Liverpool we played every three days and we never trained. I would have had to train in my personal time so that at the time of my employment, I could have been at my 100%.”
“I spoke to Benitez, I wasn’t physically well. It wasn’t his fault but I understood that I had to work on my own. But being inexperienced I didn’t do it. My fault.”
“I certainly regret not being able to give my best due to my inexperience. No regrets about joining the club though, because in any case, Liverpool helped me grow both as a man, a footballer at the time, and as a coach today.”
Liverpool Echo
After his failure at Liverpool, the sideback’s career continued on a downward spiral. He moved on to Napoli and Sunderland, but did not last long, nor did he make it back to the Italian national team.
After retiring, he began his coaching career and has been in charge of four different clubs.