IT IS PROBABLY HARDER TO BE A FANS’ favourite than it is to be a superstar. After all, all you need for stardom is talent. It requires other attributes to become a cult hero: a particular type of character, a particular type of talent, a particular type of background.

By football fan, I am restricting the term to the minority who actually go to matches: and in particular, that influential minority within that minority who go to away matches. These people look for things beyond glory, beyond genius. They are looking as much for moral as for sporting qualities. At Liverpool, they find them in Jamie Carragher.

The first demand of such a person is that he must not be a headline-maker: not a goalscorer or a creative player, not a footballer of any extravagance. It is essential that he possess the quality of the unsung hero: a hero who is, if anything, embarrassed if the singing starts. There must be a feeling that you have discovered this man for yourself, that while others praise more obvious talents, you are one of the chosen few who recognise where true virtue resides.

Carragher is a defender. Last December, he scored his first league goal since January 1999. That’s the right sort of scoring rate for a local hero. After Liverpool won the Champions League final in Istanbul two years ago, most people would have recalled the frenzied, inspirational efforts of Steven Gerrard; and rightly so, too.

But ask anyone who considers himself to be a genuine Liverpool fan and he will talk about the two blocks made by Carragher in extra time. Hit by an epic bout of cramp, Carragher still found enough energy to fling himself at a shot by Andriy Shevchenko. He blocked it, fell to earth and couldn’t get up. Eventually he did so, in time for the resulting corner – and hurled himself full length to block another shot, this time from Hernán Crespo.

That’s what local heroes do, and they are celebrated by those who rejoice in such things, while less committed supporters and neutrals were hardly aware it was the same fellow who made both blocks. But of course, a player like Carragher doesn’t care about the recognition, so long as the victory is achieved.

It helps if a player has suffered some kind of injustice and if he has seen some adversity and won through it. Carragher has suffered as a footballer because of his huge willingness to play football: to help out, to do his bit. A complete absence of diva-like qualities means that he has been used as a “utility player”, some one who will fit in anywhere if you can’t get anybody better.

He has been a right back, he has been a left back, he has been a defensive midfield player, and he has done it all with a good heart, and as a result, failed to establish a footballing identity. In fact, until a couple of years ago, the most memorable thing he had done in football was to throw a coin back into the crowd: an endearing trait for his own fans, at least, since he threw it at the opposition fans. But it was a sorry episode.

Being a late developer can help you to achieve this cult status. The pivotal season for Carragher was 2004-5, the one that culminated in Istanbul. The Liverpool manager, Rafael BenÍtez, decided to build his defence around a central pairing of Sammy Hyypia and Carragher. Carragher was at last a specialist: at last playing the role he had been made for.

Cult heroes have to care. More than any other virtue, fans admire the man who cares, who never stops trying. More effective players with more fickle temperaments are far less attractive than the man who gives everything, match after match, season after season, who seems to embody the spirit of every fan.

But more than effort, fans value loyalty. For it is a fact in football that only fans are loyal: players change clubs, managers change clubs, even chairmen change clubs. But when they find that rare thing, a loyal player, he is cherished as no ephemeral superstar ever can be. Carragher joined Liverpool as a youth in 1992 and he has been a Liverpool player since 1996. He is 29, and at the peak of his powers: moving from a slightly rackety past to become the most solid of citizens.

He was an Everton supporter before he joined Liverpool, but there is more joy in the Kop over one Evertonian who repenteth than in 99 Liverpool supporters who had never loved any other club. Anyway, Carragher is a Liverpool boy: born in Knowsley Road, Bootle, and now living at Blundellsands, just five miles away.

So the Kopites made a banner for him that read: “Carragher – probably the best Scouser in the world”, which is full of all the mawkish self-regard that Liverpool specialises in. There really isn’t much more that Carragher could do to complete this picture of the perfect local hero apart from marrying his childhood sweetheart. Inevitably, Carragher has done just that: two years ago, he married Nicola Hart; they have two children, James and Mia.

A man then, of solidity, decency and modesty. Recently, he foiled a carjacking outside his house: alerted by a woman’s screams at 6.30am, he came out to investigate and the jackers fled. Even your car’s safe in Liverpool, if you park it outside Carragher’s place.

Carragher represents the fan on the pitch. If fans actually played football for the club they supported, their play would be just like his: committed beyond all vestige of doubt, giving of his best in the most trying of circumstances, loyal, decent, true, no frills, no nonsense, and a bit of a lad besides.

Carragher has become a footballer deeply beloved: a man who represents all kinds of footballing virtues. But the greatest of them all is intransigence. If AC Milan want to get anywhere, they will have to go through Carragher.