Tales from the Secret Footballer

by Anon, Anon

  As my father often says when we are discussing the state of football around the family dining table: “It doesn’t matter, son. One day it’s all going to disappear up its own arse anyway.” Not long from now, it will be difficult to argue with him.

  * * *

  In the summer I had a very interesting offer from a club that is also undergoing a huge shift towards ensuring that boxes are filled and as many seats as possible are pre-paid. As I was turning over the offer, the chairman asked to see me in his office. At first I politely declined, because when a player is weighing up which club to sign for, of all the things that need to be arranged and dealt with, talking to the chairman is never one of them. However, he was insistent and so I buckled, drove to the stadium, and met him in his office.

  In that meeting he spelled out his vision for the club. It had a huge catchment area that it wasn’t maximising, a great stadium with good facilities, heritage and, above all, potential. It was very well positioned because it was solvent, there was no debt to speak of and there were some huge local companies that were as yet untapped.

  It sounded very promising but after about 20 minutes I thought we should get to the point.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

  “Because we want you to be our ambassador,” he said. “We want you to speak to these companies on our behalf; we want you to represent the club and sell it to the people and to the corporations that are here in the city. I want to bring you here because you can communicate. Your football will take care of itself – we know that and I’m not worried about that – but I want you for what you can do off the pitch.”

  There was a backhanded compliment in there somewhere, a fair amount of assumption and no shortage of balls on his part.

  Every player’s contract, no matter what level he plays at, stipulates that he must perform a certain amount of “club duties” each season; this might mean coaching kids at a school or visiting a hospital. On the whole, there is a lot of moaning and swapping among the squad, but the things get done and there is an understanding among the players that this is an important part of the job. I told the chairman that I had no problem carrying these duties out, and not just because it is in the contract but because I quite enjoy it. I personally think that clubs should visit the kids’ hospital far more often than on the odd occasion at Christmas. It’s good for everybody concerned.

  However, there are companies that pay me for my time these days. They pay me to speak for them when they are trying to introduce a football club to a new product, they pay me finder’s fees, and some of them pay me to come up with ideas as part of their advisory boards. I love it and have learned a lot from it. Football and business have never been more closely linked. In the Premier League it is raining cash, so much so that some players feel it’s funny to lie down in piles of £50 notes or pretend to wipe their arses with them. Outside the Premiership the tie-ups aren’t as big but they are definitely happening. It just takes a bit more ingenuity to extract the cash from the money men’s wallets.

  There were signs of this influx of money long ago, far from the FT and the business blogs. Ten years ago I was in Marbella with a club I used to play for. We were standing outside Sinatra’s Bar in Puerto Banus watching the yachts come in and the Ferraris going round and round with no other purpose than to see who could make the most noise in front of the most people.

  Our squad had taken over the corner that Sinatra’s bar straddles and was in full flow when a huge, beautiful boat manoeuvred itself into a berth smack-bang outside. A red Ferrari was sat opposite on the quay, its engine running. Twenty seconds later a walkway swung around from the boat and landed on the concrete next to the car. Then a very purposeful man strode from the boat, jumped into the car and revved the engine for the reason I’ve just mentioned, before pulling all of 30 feet around the corner and stopping in front of our squad. Now that he was a little closer we realised that it was the chairman of a rival club, a man who had done very well in business and was not afraid to say so as publicly as possible.

  He pointed to our striker and told him to get in. The pair sped away around the back of the bars before coming right round and pulling up next to the boat, into which they disappeared. Half an hour later our striker reappeared, a little shellshocked and a little more intoxicated.

  Of course, we all wanted to know what had happened on the boat. One of our squad, who had been slumped against a wooden post, jumped up to find out – only to crack his head on a hanging basket and knock himself out. After we’d all taken it in turns to have our photo taken with him while he was in the recovery position, two girls came over and took him away for the rest of the weekend, though not before berating us for the way we were treating our friend. I naturally felt duty-bound to remind them that there are no friends in football, only acquaintances.

  Despite all the excitement, I did manage to pursue my enquiries.

  “It was weird,” the striker said. “He just offered me £30,000 a week if I’d hand in a transfer request.”

  This was in the days before £100,000-a-week footballers, and £30,000 was a lot of money at our level.

  In the end, the striker didn’t make the move and his career suffered as a result, while that chairman lost a huge proportion of his wealth in the financial crash. But that was the moment that I first realised that money talks. These days we have players’ wages and clubs’ commercial deals pushed into our faces by a media that still expects us to disapprove – but that’s progress, that’s democracy, that’s freedom of movement, that’s capitalism, and these are the principles upon which our society is built. It is ridiculous to be outraged by somebody’s good fortune in earning more money than someone else. Besides that, the product on offer is first class. It would be different if we were watching dross each week, but in the top leagues around Europe the standard has never been better and I, for one, love watching these players ply their trade.

  Now, for the first time in my career, as I sat there in that chairman’s office, I was being asked to reflect on a proposal that didn’t just require me to play football. For the first time in a long time I had some real options.

  Whatever happens at the end of this season, I have made a decision: for the first time in more than a decade of playing football, I’m going to do what I want to do – not what an agent advises me to do, not what a club wants me to do, not what popular opinion thinks I should do. Down the years I’ve listened to all those people, and do you know something? None of them have a clue what is right for me and most of them know less than I do. I’ve decided that I’m going to take my life back and the football world, the media, the banks and in particular HMRC can all go and fuck themselves. I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

  CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME

  With all this money sloshing around professional football, it’s hardly surprising that charities try to get a bit of it. Now, I’ll admit that philanthropy that extends past my immediate family and friends is something that has been lacking in my life. I could make a million excuses, all of which can be destroyed by a picture of a kid starving to death on the TV. But when I made it to the Premier League I decided to find one charity that I could contribute to; after a bit of research I decided that I wanted to help an organisation based in India that performed simple eye operations on people who would otherwise go blind. The cost of the operation was £5 a time. For some reason helping people to see really appealed to me: nobody should go blind just because the money isn’t there to prevent it. I donated £1,000 a month for four years. That’s an awful lot of people who have had their eyesight saved, young and old, and I’m very happy about that.

  At first I was inundated with pictures of smiling people who had benefited: each month a huge box would arrive with another picture of “Benny”, who was now looking forward to a life of being able to do all the things his friends could. At first that was fine, but after about 2,000 of these letters all saying pretty much the same thing, I phoned the organis
ation and told them that with all the money it must be costing to pulp a rainforest every month, I’d rather they just carried out more operations. The letters duly ceased, so hopefully a few more people had their eyesight saved.

  At one of my clubs the players decided to give their wives something to do by having them create a charity. This charity would raise money for organisations chosen by two wives each year. So all the money raised from golf events and dinners that usually went God knows where would now go to a cause chosen by whichever player’s wife had been nominated to lead that year’s fundraising.

  One year my wife was chosen and she put forward a charity that helped children who had lost a parent at a young age. The charity helped to explain what had happened and what it meant for them. It was very moving: at one of the dinners, the two founders made a speech that had the whole room in tears. It was a fantastic organisation that really did make a difference for a lot of people. Four years earlier my wife had lost her father to a heart attack, and although she is a very strong woman, she had a young sister who didn’t really understand what was going on. It was a difficult time for all of us and this charity was a great way of helping young kids, like my wife’s sister, who were struggling to put the pieces together,

  It was all going so well: lots of cash was being raised and people were enjoying the events that were being put on. From a standing start it had been fantastically successful in a short space of time. From memory, I think that the charities were each making well over £100,000 from their year’s association.

  But then the captain put his own wife up and the charities that were chosen were very difficult to get to the bottom of. People were complaining that when it was time to make a cheque out after they’d won an auction, they’d be given a strange company name. Something wasn’t right. One very good friend who is pretty well off and has the colours of the club running through his veins rang me to complain.

  “Mate, I won that Manchester United shirt the other night and the people have just been in touch to tell me to pay the money into a personal account.”

  “What’s the name on the account?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said.

  “Oh my God,” I stammered. “You are joking, aren’t you?”

  The next day I went to some of the players and told them what was going on; they’d had the same phone calls. It turned out that this was our captain’s testimonial year and the chairman had told him that the club would not be entertaining any testimonial requests because players were earning too much money these days and didn’t need them (I guess nobody should be rich except him). He seemed to have forgotten that fans might actually want to show their appreciation for what had most certainly been a fantastic career.

  This is one of the reasons the club fell apart. It can all be traced to that decision not to offer testimonials to long-serving players who had given their all. That was when the captain and his wife decided to make themselves beneficiaries of the yearly charity drive.

  When the truth came out it hit the other players hard and the captain was ostracised in a way that I have never seen before or since. The trust of the players fell apart, the team spirit disintegrated, and the bond that we had was broken. From then on we could barely win a single match. It can all be tied to that moment. What a tragic way for that player to finish what had been a fantastic career.

  I wish this was the only abuse of charitable spirit that I ever encountered in the game. But there is a League Two club that likes to cry wolf every other year or so by telling the press it is about to go bust unless it raises a certain figure: £50,000, £75,000 etc. Each time we read about it, a certain Premier League team rocks up and plays a prestigious friendly before buggering off again. As the ground’s seats fill up, the buckets come out and the fans are encouraged to put their hands in their pockets …

  Just so you know, that club’s manager is the highest paid in the division. By a mile.

  Charity, as has often been said, begins at home. For some people it seems to end there, too.

  THE JOKER IN THE PACK

  I’ve been accused of being a cynic. Perhaps I am, though the last chapter may explain why I have a low opinion of some of my fellow footballers. But I still believe this sport has thrown up some genuine heroes. Take Paul Gascoigne.

  When I was a kid Gascoigne was the best player I’d ever seen. My limited football knowledge meant that I couldn’t work out why he was better than the others on the pitch, only that he was doing things that nobody else was doing – probably because they couldn’t. But now I realise that I was watching the finest English player of his generation, of any generation; a player who for me is in the all-time top 10. I don’t say that because he’s now in a bad way; I say it because I know what I’m talking about. He was the complete player.

  I remember as a kid watching his England debut against Denmark; as he walked down the side of the Wembley pitch with the rest of the England squad I shouted “Gazza!” as loud as I could and waved frantically. He turned and walked towards the stands until he saw me, then he stuck his thumbs up high over his head while wearing the widest, cheekiest grin you’ve ever seen. Jesus, he made my childhood in that one moment.

  Everybody knows about Gazza’s crazier stunts, and yes, he has his demons, but when you speak to the right people you uncover stories that put this man right on the edge of genius. I spoke to a few people who played with him at various points in his career and they all say the same thing – that he is the most talented and dedicated player they ever played with, somebody who was fiercely competitive yet had time for everybody.

  A friend of mine who played with him at Rangers in the 90s has no shortage of stories about Gazza, and every anecdote, whether it’s on the pitch or off, always ends with, “What a player, though, pal. Jesus Christ.” By the time Gascoigne arrived at Rangers he’d already had one career-threatening injury with Tottenham and a semi-successful spell with former Italian giants Lazio, and some thought he was past his best, but my friend begs to differ. His stories are worth quoting in full.

  “One day at Rangers,” he recalls, “I was making the tea for Walter Smith and the other coaches. Outside the training ground a crowd had started to gather: before long there were 100 people, soon there were 500, and later still it was impossible to tell. I knocked on the door and Walter barked, ‘Come in.’ I entered with my head down, put the teas on the table and desperately tried not to look at anybody in the room, because as soon as you made eye contact you became the coaches’ bitch for the day. I tried to scuttle off when Walter piped up: ‘Hey, just a minute, pal! Who’s that sitting there?’ I looked up slowly, and peering out from behind a door was Paul Gascoigne. It was unbelievable – for us it was like having Zidane or Cruyff sat there. He was already a legend.

  “Shortly after he arrived the fun and games began. He was desperately trying to get fitter so he was spending a lot of time with the physios and fitness coaches. When that happens, you form this bond that stays between you both until the player leaves the club. We were playing Hearts away and players would often get their cars driven to the hotel on the Friday ahead of the coach if they were going on somewhere when the game finished on Saturday evening – the same as at every club. Gazza would always ask the physio because they had such a good relationship. So he gives the physio his car keys and tells him he’ll see him at the hotel later that evening. The physio heads off in Gazza’s car, and no sooner has he driven out of the training ground gates than Paul takes out his mobile phone in the changing rooms and taps a number in. The next minute you can hear, ‘Yeah, police please, operator … Yeah, hello, I’d like to report my car stolen, please.’ By now all the players are wired in to his phone call. ‘Yeah, I’ve finished training and I’ve come outside to go home and it’s gone.’

  “After everybody had clicked what was going on and Gazza had given the police the make and model of his car, we set off for the game on the team bus. An hour into the journey, Gazza’s phone rings. ‘H
ello, Mr Gascoigne, we’ve stopped your car heading eastbound on the M8 towards Edinburgh. The man driving claims to know you – he says he’s the Rangers physio.’

  “Gazza looks up and everyone on the bus is crying with laughter. ‘I’m on the team bus, mate,’ says Gazza. ‘I’m looking at the physio right now.’ ‘No problem, Mr Gascoigne – we’ll arrest the man now and have your car returned,’ says the officer at the other end of the line, and he hangs up.

  “Two minutes later the phone goes once more. It’s the policeman again. ‘I’m sorry to bother you again, Mr Gascoigne, but the gentleman here is becoming quite upset now and has asked to speak to you. Would you mind?’ The policeman passes his phone to the physio and just as he is about to make a tearful plea for his freedom the entire bus breaks out into uncontrollable laughter. Gazza sorted it all out and squared it with the police, who thought it was hilarious. They were just happy to be a part of one of Gazza’s pranks. He was brilliant, mate, so good for team morale. The lads loved him – and what a player, mate. Jesus.

  “It takes a genius to think of things like that – his brain just worked differently from everyone else’s. It was always to make other people laugh. That’s the thing about Gazza – it was always for someone else. He was the most selfless man I ever knew. One time he spent five hours in the hairdressers having his hair put into dreadlocks – five hours, man! He came strolling into the training ground and as soon as the lads saw him, that was it – people were on the floor killing themselves.

  “Then Walter walked into the changing room wearing his meanest scowl; he took one look at Gazza and with his sternest voice told him to leave the training ground, go back to the hairdressers and shave his head immediately. So Gazza sends one of the kids to buy him a huge hat so he can sneak past the paps that were always waiting for him, and he leaves training to get a haircut. As soon as he leaves, Walter Smith bursts into laughter. He had that effect on people – you just couldn’t help laughing.