Sol Campbell

by Simon Astaire

  The demons were swaying in his brain. Is there anyone who has not once felt so alone in his entire life? Does part of me still think I am that special and different? He felt sick. His sickness was genuine; without a cough, a sigh, or tear of pretence. Where was the pain? Everywhere. My family are being torn apart, they are being destroyed. He thinks about the news he heard earlier. His brother John had been jailed for twelve months for attacking an East London University classmate who suggested Sol was gay. He was reported to have kicked his victim senseless. The judge said in sentencing: ‘I am told you are frustrated when people taunt you about your brother…’

  John Campbell, aged 34, was described by his barrister as ‘mild-mannered’. He added, ‘He has brought shame on his family and most ironically to his younger brother, whose reputation he fought to protect.’ It is one of those times when everyone loses. ‘My brother John spent time inside because he got into a fight protecting me when he was training, and he punched someone for calling me a homosexual. He punched him out of anger. He was taken to court and was jailed. I can handle it to a certain level, but for my brothers who are in normal workplaces it isn’t easy. There are a lot of ignorant people about. Someone from the family rang to tell me his sentence. I was angry. I was very angry. This whole incident had happened because of innuendoes, because someone had started these rumours about my sexuality. All lies. I saw how my mother was. She felt helpless and it broke my heart. We never as a family discussed what had happened. What was there to say? We were a normal family dealing not only with our own stuff but also these outside forces. I saw it destroying us, and at that time I felt helpless.’

  • • •

  John Campbell is five years older than Sol. He is the sibling closest in age. ‘I have a feeling John didn’t seize the moment. He was technically a better player than I was,’ Sol says.

  When Sol was ten years old, the two boys would go over to West Ham Park to kick a ball using a tree as one post and a sweater as the other. They played one-on-one. John would dribble the ball, dipping one way then the other, leaving Sol stranded like a mannequin; laughter from John, a frown from Sol. ‘We would play for hours. We would practise penalties and free-kicks. John would teach me how to bend the ball round the tree,’ Sol says.

  Len Cheesewright’s disappointment in John not becoming a professional footballer could well have helped younger brother Sol. ‘I think the reason he was so determined to get me, to persuade my parents that I should sign for Tottenham, was because he missed out on John.’ Cheesewright had wanted John to sign with Charlton but it didn’t work out. ‘John told me someone was racist, which of course I believed, as I’d experienced it myself. But he definitely had a chance and didn’t grab it,’ Sol says. ‘I think he was a bit lazy with his talent. Sometimes it is difficult, when you have so much skill, but you still have to turn up every day and work hard to get anywhere.’

  What a waste, Sol thinks to himself. If only...if only John had seized his opportunity. How life could have been so different. He could imagine John playing for one of the top teams. Yes, gliding by the opposition with such skill that you’re not sure you saw it in the first place. But life isn’t like that, is it? Nothing is ever easy.

  From very early on, it was part of Sol’s subconscious to be different to his brothers. Watching his mother trying in vain to get them up in the morning – ‘Get on with it! Get on with it!’ – and seeing their lack of motivation, his inner voice used to scream. You might be tired but it’s time to get up! He thought they were setting a bad example. So he spent his time alone, observing and listening; his eyes following the acts and scenes in the house, while his father said little and let his sons get on with it without his guidance. All their dreams made in a state of mind that was not going to last.

  As Sol’s fame and wealth grew, his problems were bound up in his brothers’ lives. Fame can have a suffocating effect on friends and family. Sol was distant, became even more distant and always felt disconnected. John suffered the most from his brother’s fame. ‘I remember when Sol signed for Arsenal there were news people outside the house and following us to the supermarket,’ recalls Wilhelmina. And John became angry standing there, face-to-face with journalists, questions and accusations harassing his ears. This was a couple of years before he was sent to prison. He was always fending off the inquisitor or the downright rude. His mother was there this time, to save him from himself. ‘John, leave them alone, it’s not worth it,’ she said.

  Sol can’t be angry with his siblings. He loves them, despite all that’s happened. He has helped them out financially. But then, once again, the relationship changes. There are few people in this world who can give away their own money unconditionally. Even if it is given as a gift – ‘Don’t worry, I just hope it can help’ – the benefactor will, in most circumstances, watch and judge how it is being spent. And the benefactor’s mind will start to question whether they’re being too generous or not generous enough. Do they love me as their brother or do they love me because I have money? No-one gets away with it for free. In fact, generally a door slams shut.

  ‘You can’t just give away everything without someone giving something back,’ Wilhelmina advised her son. Looking back now she says, ‘I am proud of how Sol has looked after his money. He has always been good with it.’

  When Sol talks about his siblings, there is a sense of loneliness. It is as if when he finally left home, he left forever, losing contact with everyone except his mother. ‘It’s with a great sadness when I think of my brothers. Some of them have not had the same opportunity as me. Maybe they were born in the wrong area to utilise their particular talent or find someone to help them out and turn them in the right direction. Perhaps I was born at the right time with the right mentality. I was conscious very early on that their lifestyle was not for me.’

  • • •

  ‘We used to date,’ says Sol. He calls Theresa from his house. She is coming over. While he is waiting, he calls Elizabeth who now lives in Brussels. He dials the number. She is a good friend who he hasn’t seen for at least a year since she moved abroad. Slightly older, a mother who has a family, two children aged between four and six years old. She answers her phone. He tells her he needs to get away. Can he stay? She says she is busy working in the morning but by lunchtime, she’ll be able to pick him up from the station. Before he puts down the phone, she reassures him that everything will be fine.

  Like so many people in grief, Sol has been trying to make amends. Somehow, although his father has been dead for nearly three years, he feels guilty. Illogical and painful, but that is how he is feeling among the deluge of other thoughts. He goes outside into his garden. He looks out towards the brook and breathes in everything around, if only to remind himself that things here and now are sprouting and burgeoning and flowering… And also fading, wilting and dying. He thinks he hears a bell. He did, it’s the gate. He lets Theresa in. She is concerned and they go into the kitchen. Theresa drinks a glass of white wine, Sol drinks water poured from a bottle. He drinks it in virtually one gulp. He is keen to leave the house like a man on the run, which in many ways he is.

  Theresa doesn’t realise he was playing football in front of thousands of people only a couple of hours before. He says that he is leaving the country. He’s going to take the first Eurostar across the Channel. It is still raining as they get into Theresa’s car. Sol is now wearing a coat, the collar pulled up to his ears as a form of protection. As he opens the car door, he glimpses his reflection in the car window. He sees an undertaker late for a funeral. He sighs at the impression. The car speeds around the M25 and south towards Ashford. He feels so much older now. His broad shoulders, which have for so long been his defining feature, are momentarily slumped. His fingers have lost their strength. He notices that they fall onto his knees, the joints drooping.

  They book into a hotel on the outskirts of Ashford; one of those Holiday Inn type places off the motorway. Sol doesn’t remember the name, probably wouldn’t
even recognise it, but remembers the tone of the voice of the man who booked him in. Strange, the moments the brain chooses to remember.

  ‘How many nights will you be staying?’ asked the roundish gentleman with a booming voice. So much for discretion.

  They don’t sleep. There was a brief romance but now it was simply a friend being a friend and listening to his woes. They are up into the early hours of the morning. The night encapsulates both ends of his current mood spectrum; one minute

  near to tears of joy for escaping, the other near to tears of anguish. Whether he can articulate it, or even know it, he is deeply depressed.

  There is no sense of the morning after the night before when dawn arrives. He feels anaesthetised, practically numb from his head down to his feet. Theresa drops him outside Ashford station and says her goodbye. She is confident he will be alright. She moves away from the station and watches through her rear window as Sol disappears from view with overnight bag in his right hand, his demeanour grey under the matching morning sky.

  • • •

  He sits while trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. He calls his mother just before the train enters the tunnel to nowhere…To somewhere. He reassures her that whatever she may read or hear, everything is fine. He just needs to get away.

  A man opposite recognises him. He doesn’t approach Sol. Thinks it best to leave him alone. He would say later that he’d never seen anyone lonelier in his entire life.

  The train reaches the outskirts of Brussels around lunchtime. It begins to slow enough for Sol to read the advertisements by the railway track. The language, the colour from the posters, immediately give him a sense of freedom. It seems far enough from where he has escaped. He starts to receive a variety of texts, from team-mates, friends. People he hasn’t heard from in years, some he wonders how they got his number. It’s reassuring but he is still in that space where nothing really means anything. He needs to work things through. The news of his mysterious half-time disappearance was beginning to flood the news stations. Robert Pires allegedly said, ‘He has a big worry on his side,’ which sparked a series of ‘What did Pires mean?’ His manager Arsene Wenger is quoted as having said, ‘The only thing we can do at the football club is to support people when they need our help. Every human being has the right to privacy.’ His sentiments are good; but his inaction, in personally not reaching out during the week, perhaps less so.

  At Brussels station, Sol buys himself a coffee and goes to wait outside. They have arranged to meet in the open-air car park to the left of the main entrance. Elizabeth has warned him that she is going to be late but it doesn’t bother him. The simple pleasure of his own company in a foreign city is what he needs at this moment. No-one recognises him; he simply leans against a lamppost and watches the comings and goings of a European city.

  Eventually a a black mini pulls up. It’s Elizabeth. It is good to see his friend again. The drive to her apartment is quiet. Not much conversation. They will have time for that later. The apartment is large and comfortable. Children’s toys are scattered around the living room. There is a sense of family, of warmth. This is exactly what I need now. A family atmosphere that sadly he never experienced as a young boy. Back then it was just a white noise of arguments. Here was different. Peace, warmth and loving interest. That evening, he helps with the cooking and sits down with Elizabeth and the two children to a family meal. He remembers it being chicken and also remembers the surprising warmth coming off the street. Brussels that week was expecting beautiful weather.

  After dinner, when the children have gone to bed, Sol begins to reveal to his friend what has been happening. As he speaks, he follows the road map of his emotions; taking everything slowly, so as not to miss anything. In truth, over the last twenty-four hours, it is the first time he has really thought deeply about everything or anything that has been going on his life over the years since he became famous. Isn’t it strange how we can live with torment and carry it around for such a long time without ever tackling it?

  He speaks about Janet. He seems to know little about her, even though they knew each other for two years. It was a typical non-committal relationship, like ships passing in the night. ‘I was careless, I was caught off-guard.’ Conversations that tended to lead nowhere; never looking each other straight in the eye. But there was a physical attraction. She got pregnant and Janet decided to have the baby. He was confused. He couldn’t talk about it to anyone. Even when he and Sky Andrew tried to discuss it, and Sky put forward his point of view, Sol didn’t want to hear. His siblings had children out of wedlock. They were good kids and he was fond of them, but he wanted his life to be different. He felt trapped when he heard she was having a baby; the instinct to run towards a cry for help vied with the desire to flee from any hint of trouble. What should he do? Ignore? Pretend it wasn’t happening? He dithered and then questioned whether the baby was his. Is he really mine? Sol asked himself and then was asked the same question in court, following a paternity suit. It has since been proved that he is the father. Sol and Janet don’t talk now except through lawyers. The whole episode rests uneasily with him, as it surely does with her. Most importantly, through all the contradictions and struggles, a child was born on 12 April 2004. Sol’s son is called Joseph.

  ‘Whatever I say will only hurt, not just now but in the future,’ Sol says. ‘But I do hope to have a relationship with my son.’ His tentative words echo a move forward.

  • • •

  They spoke until the early hours, Elizabeth asking questions but pacing them, allowing Sol to open up in his own time. There were minutes when he literally didn’t speak, as if putting his hand over his mouth in mid-sentence. He had changed. He had changed from the quiet, confident man to someone unsure of himself.

  He slept well but not deeply, that first night in Brussels. He remembers waking up early. He remembers driving with Elizabeth to drop off the kids at school and afterwards being left in town while Elizabeth went to work. What a perfect place Brussels is, he thought. Just like Paris but more discreet. He walked through the city taking in the different architecture, each street changing with the pace of his thoughts. No-one seemed to notice that a missing soccer star was in their midst. He sat for hours outside a café near the Grand Palace. He tried to think of nothing that was going on in his life that first morning. Not his family, not the team, nothing connected to his past or present. Instead, he watched without his conscience muttering a single word. Neighbouring cafés were opening; even an ice cream shop opposite had a small line forming within minutes of the start of business. A waiter apologised as he put a white tablecloth on his table. Sol liked the old-fashioned sense of where he was sitting. It was as if he was stepping back in time, observing a different world take shape in front of his eyes.

  His mobile was ringing but he didn’t take any calls. No calls, that is, except for David Dein’s. Wenger and Dein had met and been on the phone constantly since he left the ground. At first they had no idea where he was. Wenger was worried. When he recalled the moment Sol said he couldn’t go on, he saw a different face than the one he usually saw in the dressing room. There was something so vulnerable about Sol that day. He was shocked, to think how deep in crisis Sol was and must have been over the weeks. But when you see a man strong on the outside, it is harder to recognise his weakness on the inside. Wenger now saw the suffering going on inside and the loneliness Sol felt even with his team-mates at training.

  ‘You always underestimate how much people suffer,’ Wenger says. ‘I realised he was in trouble when he left that night because I knew he wasn’t a quitter. I had known him long enough to sense something tough had happened. That, lying below the surface, was perhaps a deep anxiety. I said to David Dein, we have to find him. What had happened was so out of the ordinary. I feared he might do harm to himself. I did not know.’ It consumed Wenger. How in the end a team game becomes so individual, like the plight of the superstar comedian who suffers inside and alone, and ends his life in a hot
el after the show because he has no-one to bear-hug after the laughter.

  Dein called Sky Andrew. He hadn’t been working so much with Sol of late and told Dein that he had no idea where Sol had gone. Dein called around but got nowhere until he tried Bon Battu, Sol’s lawyer. Battu would call him and make sure Sol got in touch. Dein was relieved and immediately rang Wenger. These were long hours for the Arsenal manager. He had spent much time, and would again for many days ahead, asking himself whether he should have noticed what was going on with one of his star players. What could he have done differently?

  ‘We always forget how much stress these players are under. Always expected to perform well and if they don’t, people can be very harsh,’ says Wenger. ‘I think it’s especially hard for international players, the ones who consistently play in tournament football like Sol. Everyone argues that they are overtired and we should have a break in the season, say at Christmas, but what many people don’t realise is that it’s as much mental fatigue as it is physical. They never get a proper mental rest. And, over the years, it slowly drains them. We forget that the athlete who goes to the Olympic games in the summer takes two months off afterwards. But, for the footballer, three weeks later he’s back and expected to perform at the highest level.’