Sol Campbell

by Simon Astaire

  Sol wanted to concentrate on what had been said over the four weeks, what he had remembered from their first meeting in Chelsea. He wanted to hear from King and Willett that everything was about to change and that new players were joining at the end of the week. But, after a mere five minutes, it became clear: there was nothing. He warned them before he signed that if money wasn’t forthcoming, he wanted to be allowed to walk. He had no intention of going through what he had just experienced at Portsmouth all over again. ‘Tell me…’ he pleaded, ‘tell me everything is going to be alright.’ But again, there was nothing. The time of having that reverential look on their faces was in the past. ‘I always remember their empty eyes,’ says Sol. The relationship was over. They all knew. What was the point of prolonging the pain? None of that will happen here. They hadn’t fulfilled their promises and Sol now knew they couldn’t. He knew for absolute certain during those few minutes.

  As he was about to get up, he noticed a contract on the desk. Not his, although he wished it was so that he could tear it up into a thousand pieces. He saw the signature at the bottom was that of someone who considers himself too busy for the full version, or someone who doesn’t want his name recognised. This was not the time to talk about payment; that would have to be discussed later, probably between lawyers. He had a sense these guys didn’t pay their bills. He would not be wrong. Eriksson famously said later that he knew things weren’t going according to plan when he noticed a milk bill remain unpaid.

  Then, his eyes returned to the two men. They said how disappointed they were. But nothing meant anything anymore. Strange, once you recognise a con everything seems so obvious. The hesitation in the voice, the softer tone, the way they want to make you feel special, the way they communicated suspiciously upright. The ever so slight touch of the elbow in greeting, giving you that sense of reassurance. The wide awake smiles and further hand movements, aimed at befriending you.

  He left the office without a farewell handshake. What was the point? He was still in his tracksuit. His immediate thought was, shall I have a shower or shall I go straight back to the hotel and do it there? He chose the hotel. He needed to be out of there.

  When he walks down the stairwell, he feels a breath of wind touch his face. He stops and looks upwards. He sees flecks of light squeezing through a dull autumn sky. It’s the cracked window. It had still not been fixed. ‘What have I done?’ he says quietly to himself. As he leaves the ground, he passes what looks like an odd job man.

  ‘Fix the fucking window, will you?’

  The man looks startled.

  ‘It’s on the landing of the first stairway.’

  • • •

  He called Fiona. I’m coming home. He had a shower, packed and was in his car within the hour, heading down the M1 back to London. He texted his old school friend Jermaine ‘Winston’ Barclay who was living in the area: ‘Sorry, can’t make dinner tonight.’ Winston already knew why. The story was beginning to break on Sky news.

  Sol Campbell had left Notts County.

  Peter Trembling made a statement: ‘While we are disappointed that Sol felt he could not adjust to the long-term nature of the project underway at Notts County, we obviously wish him the best with the remainder of his career and hope that he is able to obtain a place where he can play at international level ahead of the 2010 World Cup.’ It was a mollifying piece from the Notts County PR machine. The club offered to refund any shirt with Campbell’s name on it with a voucher from the club shop.

  Sven-Goran Eriksson said: ‘I don’t know the real reason he left but he didn’t like the training ground or the dressing room...’ He was certainly right about that, but Sven did not once call afterwards to check if Sol was doing okay or to apologise that he had brought him into the mess. ‘Perhaps he was too embarrassed or maybe he never gave it a second thought,’ Sol says, but is clearly very disappointed. He had trusted him and therefore trusted the others. Sven was the one who had persuaded him that everything would be fine and the one who had made the initial call, but even to his very last day at County he was defending them. Since then, he had vanished from Sol’s life quicker than a body rotting in the tropics; scarpered with no admission of responsibility.

  Sol had made a mistake. He was not alone in believing the scam but he was the most high-profile victim. He suddenly realised the whole episode had lasted a pitifully short time. He readily admits to being foolish. And if you’re foolish, the media won’t let you forget it, especially if money is involved. So the papers jumped onto the next instalment of the Notts County story, with reporters all scribbling manically. ‘The star had left… His career was surely now over…’ Sol knew what was coming. He had read it all before. He never minded the press as long as it was fair. But one story Sol thought was especially cruel. The headline was: ‘Don’t feel sorry for Sol, the most selfish man in Britain.’ It was written by Piers Morgan. Here are some extracts: ‘What about the day Sol was substituted at half-time, after letting West Ham run riot over Arsenal at Highbury, and reacted by throwing his toys out of the pram and marching off home, not playing again for a couple of months? A spineless, pathetic reaction.’ And another: ‘Arsene Wenger says Campbell is a strong man and that’s why he tore up his County contract. With the greatest of respect Arsene, he’s not. He’s just a selfish git.’

  ‘He didn’t know the situation. He was too fast with his comments. Everyone was,’ Sol says, as if he was anaesthetised by the continual onslaught.

  BBC’s Panorama ran an exposé of Russell King, ‘The Trillion Dollar Con Man’, and the whole Notts County debacle. Slowly, the truth of what had been going on came out and soon everyone knew about the fraud; Sol had simply seen it before most.

  Like Sven, Piers Morgan never picked up the phone or wrote to apologise to Sol to say that he just may have made a mistake.

  Challenging Manchester City’s Emmanuel Adebayor in his only season at Newcastle, 2010-11.

  On holiday in Italy.

  Reunited: Sol with eight of his brothers and a nephew at a family gathering.

  Sol with his mother Wilhelmina and sister Pam.

  Arsene

  ‘You’ve seen me through so much and yet you still thought that I hadn’t got it in me to come through this latest test. Don’t you realise it’s in my DNA?’

  Sol

  He needed a good night’s sleep after his escape from Nottingham to be able to face the long day ahead. Just one night and then he was ready to go again; any sense of taking it easy was not possible let alone conceivable.

  Under League regulations, Sol was unable to sign for another club until the transfer window in January but he needed to keep fit. ‘I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t have a job and really, for the first time, I truly didn’t know what was going to happen.’ He spoke with Tony Colbert, his former fitness coach at Arsenal. He asked whether he could join in some sessions. ‘I need to be fit for January, Tony. Can I work with you?’ Tony checked with Arsene Wenger who said, ‘Of course.’

  ‘I worked with the injured in order that I could get back to full fitness, so that was good for me,’ Sol said. ‘There were multiple sessions with balls, passes, cones, all on distance and timings, all measured.‘

  He was unfit. Far worse off than he had admitted or had been told. But he worked hard. He had made the decision that he was going to come back. Nothing, not even his age at thirty-five, was going to stop him. Within two weeks, his times began to improve, not slowly but rapidly. He was getting stronger and faster. The coaching staff were surprised. When they had first seen Sol, they thought he wouldn’t come back. They wanted to tell him to forget any notion of playing at the highest level again. His physical condition was way off. But then their clocks started to tell a different story and his speed and times were improving. The coaches started to talk about it. ‘Have you seen Sol’s times?’ Like the coach who looks at his stopwatch and shakes it to his ear to check it is working properly. ‘I think we should tell Arsene something is happening
here.’

  Sol was being told how impressed everyone was and it made him more determined to get even stronger. But Wenger was not interested or simply not listening. He didn’t re-sign players – end of. Never had and was not going to start now. But Wenger kept being reminded by his coaches: ‘Arsene, some of Sol’s times are as good as the twenty-one-year-olds. He doesn’t seem to have lost it. He has the same skill as he always had.’

  Sol kept on improving but still there was no murmur from the manager. Until, quite unexpectedly one day Sol got a message that the boss would like to see him work with the first-team squad. It is nice to be given a surprise, yes, but it is sometimes a little less nice to think how much more one could have enjoyed the surprise, if one had been forewarned about it! Here is a man who played over seventy times for England, played in three World Cups, scored in a Champions League final, played in high-pressure matches across Europe, won and lifted the FA Cup as captain, won two Premier League titles and yet that morning he felt like a young footballer on trial for his career. He knew this was his chance. And his father’s words rushed back into his conscience: ‘You have one chance. Grab it!’

  Wenger was not going to make it easy. Best to know if Sol still had it and if he didn’t, then he could get on with his day without the continual nagging from his coaches. He arranged for some one-to-one sessions. Two full-sized goals, thirty seconds with the ball, and you take on each other, trying to beat your man and score in the allotted time. Wenger looks round his team. Who to choose? Who to put Sol up against? He thinks. There is a pause. Let me see now: ‘Cesc! Get ready.’

  Cesc Fabregas, the young Spanish midfielder who had been at the club since he was sixteen and was fast becoming one of the best-ever players to wear the Arsenal shirt. ‘As soon as I saw Fabregas when he first came to the club, I recognised his talent. He had skill, balance, control, everything, but he also had an attitude and dedication that seems to belong to the best. I knew he would reach the top. I had no doubt,’ Sol remembers.

  Sol relishes the challenge of facing Fabregas. He feels fit. He feels good. I’ll show the boss. I’ll show him what I can do. And he does. Every thirty seconds testing every part of his fitness. ‘It’s very intense, pressing on all aspects of the game.’ Sol trains as if back to the time when he was part of the Invincibles. Dennis Bergkamp said about training with Sol: ‘You would test your pace and strength against Sol. He’s your team-mate but if you can beat him, who couldn’t you beat in the Premier League?’

  Fabregas, like Bergkamp in his day, was as skilful as anyone in the league. Sol’s knowledge of Fabregas’ style of football, watching him grow from a teenager, wasn’t going to help that morning. ‘When you are good, you can just flip your play, do something different. Go to the left instead of right. Never predictable, never obvious.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘The great player simply unlocks his gift. I know some managers are very meticulous. Jose Mourinho has videos of every player his team is going to play. He has studied every single move. It’s quite intense but you watch it. The centre-forward likes this. He studies the defender, the sides he doesn’t feel comfortable with, whether he likes to pass to the right when distributing out of the box. Which direction he likes to head away at corners. The same works when the defender studies the striker. Does he move to the right? Does he like to shield the ball when the ball is about to be trapped? Does he like to tap the ball a fraction forward just before he shoots? You have to realise, when you come up against certain managers, that they have studied every move from every player. But if you have four or five geniuses on the pitch, you can study whatever you like and in the end it’s worth nothing.’

  After finishing with Fabregas and having a short rest, Sol sees Wenger send on another two players. It’s as if he didn’t want it to work. ‘It was not that,’ says Wenger. ‘I was resistant to going back to a former player, an ex-champion. I had never done it before. How he left the club the first time weighed heavily on my mind; the stress that overwhelmed him during that time. I didn’t want him to ever go through it again. I wasn’t sure he really knew what he was letting himself in for. It wasn’t times or skill that I was analysing; it was whether in his mind he had decided to go for it. Once I had seen he had, there was little doubt he would succeed.’

  There was no denying it turned out to be a good session. Sol knew it. Wenger knew it. When it was over, coaches went over to offer their congratulations, but not Wenger. He walked away on his own, deep in thought. He has that habit of living as if to suck lemons and pretend they are not sour. Sol was neither surprised nor offended. That was Wenger’s way. And whatever Wenger had just seen, he was still arguing in his mind that he simply didn’t re-sign ex-players. It kept coming back to that fact. It didn’t fit into his philosophy. There had been rumours in the summer that he was flirting with the idea of re-signing Patrick Vieira, but nothing happened.’ It was just that: rumours. There was no truth in it,’ says Vieira. A couple of the other coaches nudged Sol as he headed to the dressing room and in a stage-whisper said, ‘You did good, Sol,’ so Wenger, who was a few metres ahead, could hear. Wenger’s assistant manager, Arsenal legend Pat Rice, gave him a smile, a slight nod. ‘I always liked Pat,’ says Sol. ‘He wanted you to work hard but with it he had a sense of humour, and was always joking.’

  Sol watched Pat catch up with Wenger. The manager was walking quicker now, as if he was hiding something. Pat walked as if he had seen something. They spoke. Sol knew Pat was part of Wenger’s inner sanctum. He had been since Wenger arrived, since Sol first arrived. That’s how it works. Wenger will consult those closest to him. Give each decision a sound hearing and then find the right conclusion.

  When he drove home that afternoon, Sol was thinking that he’s still at his best when he’s under pressure. Again he recalled his father saying that you have one chance, so take it. He felt like a teenager once more. He had to prove himself. Well, he felt he did. Now let’s see what happens.

  Wenger kept Sol waiting. He was still trying to make up his mind, still unsure if it was a good idea to let Sol back into the Arsenal spotlight. Does he really need it? The image of Sol’s face during that final season still haunted him. Meanwhile, Sol kept going, keeping up his times and continuing to train hard. ‘I think he’s going to speak to you today,’ one of the coaches whispered but he didn’t, and the days went by and still nothing happened. Sol wasn’t going to approach Wenger and ask what was happening. No, although time was pressing, he would wait until Wenger was ready. He felt no fear of rejection. There was no time when he thought he would help hasten the decision; or beat Wenger to it by simply not turning up and playing hard to get.

  Funnily enough, on the day it happened Sol wasn’t even thinking about his future. Wenger approached him with forced ease and asked Sol to come to his office. The same office they had met in before he left the first time. The same office where he met Wenger to ask what was happening when he was dropped.

  When he walked to his office he thought of the old adage, that in football you are only as good as your last game. And for Sol and Wenger, that was the Champions League final in Paris. Suddenly, he steps further back in time and remembers the games he played at Highbury; the glories and the few disappointments. The last game ever played at the old stadium, when Thierry Henry scored a hat-trick in a 4-2 over Wigan on 7 May 2006. How, at the end, he walked inquisitively from one end of the pitch to the other, like a schoolboy on a long train for the first time, insisting on seeing it all from the first carriage to the last. He thinks of the history of that day. He thought it was, until this moment, the perfect setting to end his Premier League appearances for the club. He recalls hours spent in the dressing room when he first arrived and was quiet, just listening to everything going on around him. It all seems a long time ago. Now, if he came back he would be the senior statesman; the player who would show the youngsters how to conduct themselves, play the game. He looked forward to taking on that role. He sensed the younger players needed his advice, his gui
dance. He had seen some of them disappear far too quickly after the training sessions, as if escaping something or other. He wasn’t sure what the rush was, especially when he saw they all needed to work harder to improve their game.

  He knocks hard on the door. He knocks again.

  ‘Come in!’

  He sits opposite Wenger. A man he has the upmost respect and loyalty for; surely the backbone of any good relationship. A man who dominated his thoughts over the last few weeks, far more than ever before. He knew that his destiny rested with him. There’s a pause and then Sol is told that the club wants to sign him for the last six months of the season. They liked the way he had been training, improving every week. Wenger had been watching him carefully. There was still a bit of work to do, but he was confident that Sol would reach the standard that’s needed. He starts mapping out the whole deal. You will be paid this if you play this number of games, etc. ‘This is good for you and good for me,’ Wenger says. He pauses and then slowly explains how he sees the coming weeks working out: ‘To be the cover and teach the young players how to prepare and how to be professional.’ He sighed. ‘If you can do that as well, I’ll be very happy, as it is needed.’ Funny, thought Sol, I was thinking about that just before knocking on your office door.

  This is good, Sol thinks. He is buzzing inside. He hasn’t felt so excited since he first joined Arsenal. And now he’s back and will be playing at the Emirates for the first time.

  When he drove away from the training ground, he switched on the radio and felt contentment. The wounds that had scarred his final season with Arsenal had finally been healed in the last hour. He hadn’t realised they were still open until that morning. Strange, how you can carry so much around and sometimes not notice it.