by Anon, Anon
There was still an hour to kick-off, so we made the most of the hospitality. The waiter took the cork out of a very good Barolo and poured in earnest, and we sat around like kings of the San Siro until the team sheet arrived. The first name we all looked for was Gareth Bale, who’d destroyed Inter Milan over two legs earlier in the season and was looking like the real deal. But he wasn’t there. That was unfortunate because earlier I’d taken a call from a friend of mine at the Guardian who had told me that Bale was fit and was going to start. Although he’d warned me against telling anyone until it was confirmed, I couldn’t resist and tweeted something like, “A little bird tells me that Gareth Bale is fit and starts in the San Siro.” I later tweeted that I’d shot that particular bird.
The stadium began to fill up; the Tottenham fans were way up in the heavens and although we could hear them we couldn’t see them due to the thick, foggy blanket above us and the smoke from the flares. I phoned a mate who was up in the rafters among the Tottenham fans – he’s a season ticket holder, before you ask why he wasn’t invited with us – and he said that none of them could see the pitch yet. Isabelle told us that kick-off was imminent and escorted us to our seats, from where we could see that, apart from being the only four people in the box not in an immaculate made-to-measure suit with sunglasses, we were also the only Englishmen.
As the game started the noise levels were incredible. Somebody let off one of those bangers that sound loud even when you hear them on TV, and it was greeted with what was probably the loudest cheer of the night as far as the Milan fans were concerned. When the first half came to an end, amazingly Tottenham had held their own, although in truth Milan had offered almost nothing. Seedorf was having an off night and was being jeered by a section of the Milan fans as a result, and Ibrahimovic looked as if he’d forgotten that there was a game tonight, had made other plans for the evening and was now sulking after having to reschedule. Even so, Michael Dawson was still having the game of his life against the big Swede.
At half time we made our way back through the doors and into the warmth of the box, where I helped myself to some more Barolo. Just then the door opened and an impossibly sharp-looking Italian man walked in, followed by a second man who entered with the aid of a pair of crutches. I recognised the first as Gianluca Zambrotta and the second as Filippo Inzaghi. If we were in the UK, even in the Premier League, they’d have both been in horrible club tracksuits but this was Italy and AC Milan, so they were dressed impeccably in their own clothes. Inzaghi had a beautiful leather jacket that, as my friend commented, “probably cost more than my car”. True, but then so would a shit leather jacket.
I don’t think I’ve ever been star-struck and this was no exception, but they are legends of the game and I found myself walking towards them and shaking their hands just so I could tell them so. Unfortunately my friend wasn’t able to style it out quite so coolly and proceeded to tell Inzaghi that he used to buy him regularly on Championship Manager when he was a Juventus player.
At that point I decided to grab a plate of food and another glass of wine. I made sure that I sat down directly in front of the table, so that I was in easy reach of the bottle I’d been enjoying and had every intention of finishing. My father still hadn’t come in from his seat and was busy taking pictures of everything and soaking up the atmosphere. Just then Isabelle received a call on her radio and stiffened as if royalty were expected at any moment. There was a quick spruce-up of the box and readjusting of clothing and hair before she stood by the door, waited for the shadow of a figure to loom over the frosted glass and turned the handle just before the person on the other side would have to do it himself. In walked Fabio Capello.
I had a friend who played in the Premier League for many years and earned a fortune; whenever I’d ask how he was doing he’d say, “Very wealthy, thank you.” For some reason, the moment I asked Capello how he was, that reply popped into my head. Not for the first time he let me down. “Very well, thank you. How are you?”
“Pretty good,” I said. “How did you get in here?”
“Ah, good,” came the reply, coupled with a half-smile. I slunk back into my seat and poured another glass of Barolo while Capello sidled up to the table.
The reason it was uncomfortable for both of us is that a few years earlier, when Capello had taken the England job, he had held a press conference in which he’d made it clear that it was time for the England squad to grow up. Misbehaviour would no longer be tolerated. A day later I received a call from a journalist friend who said he had it from two good sources at the FA that I was in Capello’s England squad. I think it was some of the guys who arrange transport for the players.
Not for the first time, I celebrated too early and far, far too well. This time, it proved to be a monumental, career-defining mistake. The next morning my name was everywhere – newspapers, TV, the internet – everywhere, except on the list of Fabio Capello’s England squad. Until this point my career had been going up and up and up, and it isn’t an exaggeration to say that at that exact moment my love for football, my desire to play and, ultimately, my career fell off a cliff. Still, it makes for a great story.
I like to think that our meeting was an awkward one for Capello because it reminded him that he was not a man of his word. He made it crystal clear in that same press conference that it didn’t matter which player committed an offence – the result would always be the same. We now know that, depending on the player in question, that was bullshit.
The box had filled up a little bit, to the point that there were now a dozen people or more milling around. Just then, my father and my friend walked in, rubbing their hands together and pointing out that it was still cold outside. “Nil-nil,” said my friend. “We’re in danger of doing something here.” He came around the table to sit next to me, and my father walked up to the table for a quick heart-starter. Neither of them had noticed Capello, and I waited for them to realise who was in the room with them. But they didn’t.
In Milan, at least, it is tough to find anyone held in greater esteem than Fabio Capello. Some of the memorabilia we were sitting near harked back to his great Milan sides of the early 90s. He won four Serie A titles, three Coppa Italias, a European Cup and a European Super Cup during his time with the Rossoneri. But now he was just a man looking for a drink.
I sat there looking straight at my father and Fabio Capello standing next to each other, each deciding what they were going to plump for. I was no more than six feet away from it all and my smile was getting wider. Just then Capello leaned across my father to reach for a glass at the other end of the table – and probably wished he hadn’t. “Oi, fuck off, John! What’s your game?” said my father. “If you want a glass, just ask for one. Don’t lean across people.” The best thing was that at no point did he notice that this was Fabio Capello because he never once looked up. I sat there in a state of semi-paralysis watching the episode unfold; I hadn’t managed to get the olive that I was holding into my mouth and my eyes were on stalks.
My father reached for a glass and passed it to Capello, who thanked him before filling it and wandering off. My father came to sit down next to me. “Bloody people,” he said.
I stared straight ahead for a moment trying to think of the right words.
“Dad,” I said. “I think you just told Fabio Capello to fuck off.”
“Eh?”’
“I said, I think you just told Fabio Capello to fuck off.”
* * *
As the teams came out for the second half, my father and one of my friends took their seats. My other friend and I stayed inside and watched on the TV, mainly because it was bloody freezing and the Barolo was going down far too easily. Capello had disappeared and it wasn’t long before the two Milan players had seen enough. Inzaghi raised a hand and said, “I see you.” I wasn’t sure if he was saying goodbye or simply commenting on the fact that we were extremely conspicuous in our surroundings, but as he limped toward the door I took it to be the former and
bade him a friendly “Ciao, Pippo.” To this day, he remains the coolest man I’ve ever met.
The game was drifting towards a memorable draw, a result that none of my Tottenham-supporting friends had thought even remotely possible. I stood to top up my glass just as the ball fell to Luka Modrić. It’s a strange thing about football: if you play this game long enough with a certain level of intensity, you are sometimes able to spot promising situations way before they happen, just by the way the players are positioned and which players are on the ball – sometimes even before the ball has reached the player who can set the move off. You get a gut feeling that something is about to happen, your brain puts everything together in a nanosecond and you realise: “Modrić is a great passer who sees things very quickly; if he can slip that ball in to Lennon then nobody will catch Lennon; if he can draw one of those defenders out, neither of whom are quick, and get past him, then Tottenham have a great chance to score because Milan are all over the place.”
It reminds me of Ronnie O’Sullivan coming to the snooker table for his shot and knowing that he is about to make a 147 even before the first ball is potted, just from the way the first red is positioned.
When Modrić pushed the ball through to Lennon I made a break for the door, pausing only to glug the remaining Barolo. As Lennon ran with the ball the pattern of play was working out just as my brain had told me it would: Milan were hopelessly exposed and the fastest player on the pitch had the ball with metres of clear grass to run it to. I was halfway down the executive box and had jettisoned the wine glass. The door was shut and needed to be opened, using up precious seconds; as I got closer to the window I could see Lennon sprinting down the far side of the pitch and the Milan defender, Mario Yepes, holding his ground. I lunged for the door just as Yepes lunged at Lennon, but he had no chance. I already knew Lennon was going to get past him rather than take the foul because he would have seen Peter Crouch in his peripheral vision sprinting into the box alongside him.
I opened the door just as Lennon entered the box. My father and my friend began to get out of their seats as they saw Crouch arriving too. Lennon squared the ball perfectly and, with one long sweep of his right leg, Crouch turned the ball past Christian Abbiati at the exact moment that I bundled into the back of my friend and my father. We went absolutely nuts and in doing so drew the attention of about 500 or so sharply dressed Italian men who had turned around to see who was responsible for the noise in what was usually the safest Milan seat in the house.
Now, I know that all sounds like a cheap imitation of the film Fever Pitch at the moment when Michael Thomas scores the winner for Arsenal against Liverpool at Anfield in the 1989 championship decider – but, hand on heart, that is exactly what happened.
The last 10 minutes were tense, but unbelievably Tottenham held on. When the final whistle sounded there was an almighty roar to our left from somewhere way up in the heavens. My father and I hugged each other and in a sudden release of pent-up emotion we began to cry. Neither of us ever thought that we’d see Tottenham beat AC Milan in the Champions League at the San Siro – it was a hugely emotional moment for both of us. Football is more than a game to my father. He once refused to watch me play again after my debut for a Premier League club because he didn’t believe that they were playing football the way it should be played. He said to me, “I didn’t drive you around for all those years as a kid to have to watch you play football like that.” He was absolutely right. I told my new manager that I wanted to leave his football club the next day, six weeks after I’d signed. That’s what football means to me … to us.
We walked around the executive box in a daze for a few minutes, trying to work out where we were going to carry on the party. Isabelle came back into the room and I grabbed her in a weak attempt to show what a good mover I was, even though it’s obvious to everyone that I have two left feet. “Where are we going, Isabelle?” I asked. She laughed and made some poor excuse about having to stay in the box and make sure it was tidied, so I told her that if she didn’t come with me of her own free will I was going to take her with me anyway. She gave me one of those looks somewhere between mock surprise and genuine intrigue before grabbing a beautiful leather jacket, slipping it over her made-to-measure black uniform and pulling me toward the door. We waited for a taxi outside some apartment blocks next to the San Siro and bumped into the Milan full-back Ignazio Abate, who had driven back from the ground to an apartment that he had in this block. I told him we were looking for a cab – that was the Barolo talking – and he said to ask the concierge and pointed me towards a guy behind a little window to one side of the main gate. Nice guy, considering he’d just lost at home in the Champions League to Tottenham.
Isabelle told the driver to take us to a hotel and I assumed it must have a decent bar with a good crowd. When we arrived it was an enormous five-star effort that exuded Italian opulence. As we walked in security was tight and we eventually found our way to a roped-off entrance flanked by two security guards. “Here is your friends,” said Isabelle; I looked inside and there were the Spurs team celebrating. Almost immediately I became extremely uncomfortable. There’s an unwritten rule in football: no matter how well you know other teams’ players, no matter how much they say, “Come out with us,” you never, ever, muscle in on their celebrations. It looks desperate and clingy. Still, I made sure I had a good look around first.
We still managed to celebrate in style, drinking well into the small hours with a group of Spurs season ticket holders before heading back to my hotel for a nightcap. It, too, was heaving with fans clinging on to the memory of a famous night in the San Siro. I slipped into bed and reflected for a moment on an unbelievable day.
I spoke to Isabelle first thing the next morning and over coffee she told me that she slept very comfortably. So that was nice.
PART TWO
WHERE NOW?
Where else could I play?
What else could I do?
BANG GOES PLAN A
It used to be the case that once a player was older and had proved himself, possibly won a couple of things and earned some standing in the game, he could move closer to home and have his pick of the smaller local clubs. Whoever signed him could expect to sell a few more tickets and a few more shirts, as well as having an experienced older professional to help with the younger players. It was a good deal for everyone and it allowed the older players to grab a couple of extra years on the pitch while they waited for their pension to mature, got a foot on the coaching ladder or even tried their hand at management.
But that cosy arrangement is changing, thanks to legislation passed down from Uefa, the long and short of which is that no club will be allowed to spend more than 60 per cent of its turnover on wages. It is widely expected that these rules will reach Europe’s top leagues within two years; they are already in place in the lower divisions, where some clubs have been hit with transfer embargoes for breaching them. This has led to an interesting situation for clubs and players alike: those players who can be used in several positions are being retained and joined by others who are young, hungry and, above all, cheap. But for those players looking to nab an extra year or two before they retire, things are tougher. Squad sizes are being cut and the options to play are limited.
This has hit a few of my friends hard. I have never known so many players out of a job – good players, too. Players who are extremely capable and dependable can’t even get a foot in the door. I called a mate who had always harboured ambitions of playing for MK Dons because he lives in Milton Keynes; he’s had a good career, much of it spent in the Premier League, and isn’t too worried about the wages on offer. He told me that MK Dons’ failure to win promotion to the Championship has led to a change in policy at the club and they are now only signing players who are 25 or under.
Now, that could just be something that they told him so he’d sod off but, worryingly for the older players, this policy actually works. When Yeovil won promotion from League One last season, they
did it on a total wage budget of £800,000 a year. This season that will rise to £2m, but to put that figure into context it is still £3.2m a year less than Christopher Samba’s annual wage when he was at QPR, a team Yeovil will now be playing in the Championship.
Uefa seems to have given little thought to the players affected by its cost protocol. We’re not talking about players who have enjoyed success at the highest level; we’re talking about the players who have been at Rochdale their entire career, with two kids, earning £600 a week with a £1,000-a-month mortgage. There are a huge number of these players and, in my opinion, Uefa and Platini have completely shafted them.
The positions of many other members of staff are also being cut because the wages cap doesn’t only cover players, so those clubs that looked to do things professionally by employing chefs, sports scientists and masseurs are now finding that they are having to let them go, no matter how heavily subsidised those positions were by private money.
All of which makes for an uncertain future for footballers like me, who are finding out that there is indeed a wrong side of 30. And that has led to some “out of the box” thinking. Many of my friends have now moved to Australia, North America, Indonesia, the UAE and all over Europe to improve their prospects, and it’s striking how many say the same thing: “Come out here to play – you’d love it.” Now, either they’re liars and like the idea of bringing somebody else down with them, or there is actually something to be said for playing football abroad.
I have always liked the idea; I have played with many fantastic foreign players who have made their money in this country and returned home to play, in much the same way that English players want to play for their local club when they are coming to the end of their careers.
