Brendan Rodgers reveals 'no one' in 'Being: Liverpool' envelope | Liverpool FC

Liverpool manager has told ESPN that there was no one in the envelope he talked about during 'Being Liverpool'.

Read the full article here: http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/relegationzone/id/1486?cc=5739

Brendan Rodgers is a man who oozes confidence. The Liverpool manager is slighter in person than he appears when clad head to toe in black on the Premier League touchline, yet he still makes an instant impression. As he walks into the room, the combination of his leadership and charisma is as overwhelming as cologne. This is a man who commands respect through a soft-spoken intensity and thoughtfulness that are in stark contrast to the giddy image promulgated last season by the cult fly-on-the-wall documentary "Being: Liverpool."

I had spent the morning watching Rodgers whip his squad through training on a frigid, damp morning at Melwood, the club's modest practice facility in West Derby, Liverpool. Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley had once trained their title-winning teams on those compact fields, where neighboring homes are packed so closely around the walls, one player's wayward shot smashed an upstairs window. Amidst the shouts of the players, a distant police siren and a local church bell, Rodgers' whistles ring out. He is a man clearly reveling in the challenge of balancing big vision and pragmatic reality to restore Liverpool to the apex of English football.

Talking "matters American" conjures memories of "Being: Liverpool." I admit to Rodgers that his reflective demeanor contradicts the more colorful persona he projected in that series. When asked what he learned about himself by watching the show, the manager grimaces. "I didn't like it ... I'm a very private person," he says. "I know it was great for the American supporters to see, but my own personal feeling is I don't like being intruded on and for people to see my private life."

Rodgers' discomfort is palpable yet broaching the cult series has given me the opportunity to ask the one question American football fans long to pose above all others. The manager knows what is coming and sits back in his seat as I broach the infamous preseason motivational speech in which he brandished three envelopes before his squad, proclaiming they contained the names of the three players he knew would let him down in the season ahead.

"Which names were in the envelopes?" I ask.

"There were no names," he says with a wry chuckle. "There were no names."