There was one divisive issue at the club around the start of the season, although it was nothing to do with the players. In the face of a lot of opposition from the fans, Vincent Tan had changed Cardiff’s home kit from its traditional blue to red. Red is viewed as a strong colour in parts of Asia, including Malaysia where Vincent is from, and he thought the move would help with the marketing of the club for that reason.
I understood the opposition of the fans but I was okay with the change. I was looking at the bigger picture. Vincent was putting a lot of money and commitment into the club. If he wanted to change the kit, it didn’t bother me. He owned the football club and I worked for him. The way I saw it, he was giving me the opportunity to have a decent shot at helping Cardiff get into the Premier League and in that context, the colour of the kit wasn’t a problem for me.
In an ideal world, you would want your traditional colours but nothing in this world is ideal. You have to be prepared for change and if this is the change it takes for us to be a much more stable and powerful club, we have to be prepared to do that.
I didn’t actually give it that much thought. There were more important things to worry about. I knew how hard it was going to be to get to the Premier League.
The Championship is the hardest league in football. The pitches, the referees, the unpredictability: it is difficult for every single team. In that situation, you have to work and work and work. Our Prozone stats showed we worked harder than anyone.
I came back from the ankle injury in the middle of November for a home game against Middlesbrough. We won that and when we beat Barnsley at Oakwell the following Saturday, we went back to the top of the league. I knew then it would take quite a lot to shift us but I also thought that there was a group of other sides that would start to challenge us.
I thought Leicester would be strong and Middlesbrough. I’d been worried about Wolves, too. You are always wary of the teams that were relegated from the Premier League the season before. Look at Blackburn. They spent £8m on Jordan Rhodes. I thought they would be a threat, too. You always know there is going to be a surprise package as well, and this season it was Watford.
When people looked at Cardiff and the players we had, they were surprised that we were in the mix for promotion. Because you look at us and you don’t see stars. You see grafters. Malky Mackay was given the option to spend money. In fact, when the January transfer window came around, the club was urging him to spend. He didn’t want to.
He had spent the best part of two years building a team that had got where it was because of hard work and he was very wary of upsetting the team spirit by bringing in someone who might not share the same mindset. I understood exactly why he was concerned about that. We are more of a team than any team I have been involved with and that’s what you need most of all in the Championship. Because games come thick and fast, you have to be together.
We tried to abide by the old rule of approaching the season one game at a time. We never looked at other teams. Never looked at Palace or Leicester. Never thought about how many points we would be ahead of someone if we won one game or drew another. No one mentioned promotion. We weren’t scared of it. It was just one game at a time.
Before every single game, the manager had a number of team talks and the preparation was fantastic. The last thing he did before we walked out on to the pitch was put up a sign on the board. ‘Individuals win games, team work and intelligence wins championships’, it said. It was similar to something Michael Jordan once said and the manager left it on the board every time we went out.
And that was us. That was Cardiff City. I never thought of myself as an individual during last season. I thought of myself as someone who was giving everything for the team. We got where we got through sheer hard work and doggedness. If we weren’t going to win, the opposition was going to have to play damn well to beat us. We never gave an easy defeat away.
We were still top of the table going into the Christmas period. On December 22, we went to Leicester and won 1-0. Leicester started strongly but we limited their chances and managed to hold them. Then I scored to put us ahead and we locked the door. We saw it out. It felt like a big win.
Then we beat Crystal Palace, Millwall and Birmingham, away, in the space of six days. Each time it was by a single goal. We were grinding games out. We didn’t play particularly well in any of those games but we won them all. And at the start of the new year, we were seven points clear of Hull City, who were second. There was distance between us and the rest and no one ever really narrowed the gap.
No one put a run together to exert any pressure on us. The form teams towards the end of the season were the relegation teams. And until a few weeks before the end of the season, no one really talked about us that much. Maybe it was because of our lack of stars and lack of controversy, but we pretty much went under the radar. We played one home game on Sky all season and that was the first match of the season.
We did begin to tie up a little bit when the prize was in sight. We only won one game in March, a month that was bookended by defeats to Middlesbrough and Peterborough. But even then, none of our pursuers took advantage. Hull, Leicester, Crystal Palace and Watford were all dropping points, too. Nottingham Forest came with a bit of a run but they were starting from too far back to be a real danger to us.
By April, we were close. Really close. We drew at Watford, who were third, on a Saturday evening and that was a big step forward. It kept them at arm’s length. There was a hiccup when we were leading Barnsley deep, deep into injury time in a midweek home game only for them to steal a deflected equaliser with the last kick of the match. But a few days later, we battered Forest and Watford lost at Peterborough.
Hull, who were second, could still catch us but now we were 12 points clear of Watford with four games left to play. We only needed a draw at home to Charlton the following Tuesday to be out of reach of Watford and sure of promotion.
The excitement building up to the Charlton game was great. You couldn’t get a ticket for love nor money. This was it. This was something the city and the region had been waiting 56 years for, something that we had begun to think would never come.
Now we were one point away from the realisation of the dream.
It was difficult to know how to approach it. The excitement around the ground was all-consuming. I couldn’t think. We only needed a point but the idea of playing for a draw is foreign to any player. I did my utmost not to get carried away because I knew that it might not happen that night. But I desperately wanted it to happen. I wanted it to happen here in Cardiff, in front of our own fans, in front of friends and family, in the city where I grew up.
I felt emotionally exhausted before the game even began. I just hoped adrenaline would get me through. Charlton were a useful side and they had come into form but we tore into them in the first half, eager to get the goal to settle our nerves. But the goal never came and in the second half, the mood changed.
Now, we were concentrating on not losing the game. Now we were focused on getting that solitary point.
I made bigger efforts to sprint back to cover than I made to sprint forward to attack, put it that way.
With about five minutes to go, the crowd started going ballistic. Something had happened. Watford were playing at Millwall and I assumed there had been a goal. I looked across at the manager. I couldn’t hear him but I could see that he was mouthing ‘Watford are losing’. Millwall had taken the lead in the 83rd minute. If it stayed that way, it meant we were up whether we got a point or not. I tried to ignore it. I told the players to concentrate. “We’ve got to get this done,” I kept saying.
The crowd celebrations did us a favour. It brought the game to a premature end, effectively. The last five minutes turned into a bit of a practice match. It was one of those strange psychological things where Charlton didn’t really want to do anything to spoil the party and we didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise what we had.
I saw the fourth official com
e to the touchline to hold up the board to show how much added time there was. It said three minutes. That was a relief. Things started to happen in slow motion. I noticed every single detail. I saw expressions on faces in the crowd. I looked around at my teammates. I saw the ref nodding to the linesmen, intimating that he was about to blow the final whistle. I saw him signal to the Charlton captain to get their keeper in before the crowd invaded the pitch. I realised that there were only a few seconds left.
Then he blew. When he blew that whistle I just dropped to my knees. One, because I was so knackered and two, because I couldn’t believe it was done. I couldn’t believe this thing that had seemed like an impossible dream had actually been achieved. I had come so close to things so many times in my career but this was the thing I wanted most and we had done it.
The fans came rushing on. It was carnage. Happy carnage. Eventually, I made it back to the tunnel and gazed around at the joy on the faces of the other players. I saw the club doctor, Len Nokes. We call him Doctor Len but he’s actually a professor and I’ve known him my whole career, since I was 16 and he was the doctor of Wales Under-21s.
He has given so much for the club and I knew how much he had always yearned for this moment. We hugged each other for a couple of minutes. We were both tearful. I wanted to soak it up but it was difficult. Everyone got to share it. The staff, the people in the media department, the groundsmen. This meant an awful lot to an awful lot of people.
I went back to the changing rooms. We wanted to go out and thank the fans. I saw Ellis in the tunnel and he came out on to the pitch with me while we did a kind of abbreviated lap of honour. I went up to the private box I have in the stadium, still in my kit, to see all the people who have been there for me, all my best mates.
My dad was there, of course. He’s followed me everywhere. He’s followed Cardiff, too. He was there when they were in the fourth division, watching them scrape along the bottom. It was great to see the happiness on his face. He told me he could die happy now, which I mentioned to the newspaper reporters later. It made all the headlines the next day.
Even if I hadn’t been involved, even if I’d been playing for Liverpool or Newcastle or Man City, I would have been delighted for Cardiff. But to be a part of it, to be a player in the team that made history, to be a player in the side that got promoted to the Premier League, to be a player that brought so much joy to the people of my city, well, I was just incredibly grateful that I was involved in that occasion on that night. It will live with me forever.
I felt a deep sense of professional satisfaction, too. I felt I had given my all to the team. I had sacrificed individual ambitions and dedicated myself to the greater goal. I loved it. It gave me a kind of fulfilment I hadn’t had before. I only scored four goals all season. But I had played well and enjoyed myself. I learned a lot from that and from the players around me.
That’s part of the reason why I feel being promoted with Cardiff is my proudest moment in the game. I’ve never had a feeling like it. When you win something at Liverpool, it is great for you personally but you are always conscious that the club has won about 50 trophies. It is another trophy for the club, another trophy for the fans. Everyone’s happy but, let’s be honest, they have seen bigger days.
The Olympics was special, too, because it was unique but to be able to share that promotion with everyone was different because it tapped into my background and my history. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe it’s been more than 50 years since Cardiff were in the top flight. Where’s this club been? To clear that final hurdle filled me with a huge sense of achievement.
I intend to stick around, too. I hope this is just the beginning for Cardiff. I hope that we can do something different with what we’ve achieved. I hope we can capitalise on the fact that our Welshness can give us an advantage. We are a city of 350,000 people but it isn’t just the city. It’s the valleys as well. You add that up and we are a club of a million people round this region who are all connected with the club and adore Cardiff.
A lot of those people probably followed other clubs like I followed Liverpool. It was a lot more fashionable for a kid to do that 20 or 30 years ago. We always had our eye on the stars. But now, that can change. Now we can build on our regional identity in the same way Athletic Bilbao have placed themselves at the centre of Basque culture and Barcelona have become a focus for Catalunya.
This is our identity. It’s strong. It’s separate. This is who we are. Playing for this club is first and foremost. So many boys who have come from this region have never played for Cardiff. Gareth Bale’s never played for Cardiff. Ryan Giggs has never played for Cardiff. We have had players like Aaron Ramsey who have left too young. I have only played for the club towards the end of my career.
I am the only person from Cardiff who played for the team last season. We have to change that. We have to make the most of our area and our identity. We can produce the players but we have to be ‘more than a club’, as Barcelona say. We have to be about a region and an idea. You have to have the idea that playing for Cardiff is everything.
If there are lads running around like I was when I was a kid at ABC Park all those years ago, those kids will gravitate towards Cardiff now that we are in the Premier League. And even if the club lets a kid slip through the net, his parents will be on the phone telling you about him and saying they want him to be part of what we’re building. The kid won’t have to go to Norwich, to the other side of the country, to play football. The parents won’t have to listen to their boy crying down the phone, standing in a phone box outside a chip shop, because he’s homesick and far away.
We could control Merthyr, Rhondda, Caerphilly. We could have them in lockdown. All the kids from those areas playing for us. That’s what makes us unique. The main core of the valleys is with us. We know how deprived those areas are. With the money we are able to receive now we are in the Premier League, we are hoping we can invest in those areas and invest in bringing those kids from those areas into ours and help with their schooling.
We have to get to the point quickly where players won’t want to go anywhere else if they’re from round here and we won’t allow them to go. That is how we want to breed the football club. We want the top young players and preferably we want them to be Welsh. They don’t go elsewhere and they are the future of the club and the backbone of the club.
I know that more and more clubs want to follow this route but we have got the kind of separateness that gives us an advantage. We have got the fan-base, too. When you go and play for Wales, most of the fans are Cardiff fans. Swansea have done brilliantly and I have always been vocal about how much respect I have for them but we are a bigger club by miles. Our attendances will shoot up in the Premier League and we have to make the most of it.
What we have achieved will hit home when we are building towards the first game of the 2013-14 season. The fixture list comes out, you look to see when the big clubs are coming to town. You go into the changing room and you see those shirts hanging on your pegs with the Premier League logo on them, the Nike balls instead of the Mitre ones we have in the Championship.
My older boy, Ellis, is 16 now and he has earned a scholarship with Cardiff. He is representing a Premier League club now. It will make a difference to his life, too. If we do it right, we have the manager to take us forward to the next level, a manager who believes in the vast potential of this club. There is no limit to where we can go.
We have the opportunity to create a club for the next 10 or 20 years. I am committed to staying because I want to be a part of it all. I want to see Cardiff become a power in the game. I don’t know when my career is going to end. It could end me. But I am not looking to move on. Far from it.
I’ve never felt comfortable feeling comfortable before. It goes back to my time at Norwich when the club guaranteed me an apprenticeship a year ahead of time and I went off the rails a bit. Since then, I’ve been suspicious of planning ahead. I’ve always tried to live one season at a time
. I never wanted that feeling of being comfortable again.
I’ve changed a little bit now. Steve Peters has had a huge effect on me. And my divorce made me realise I had to open up and relax a little. Sometimes, you can obsess and want something too much. Sometimes, you can lose sight of the fact that feeling content about something is actually what you should be striving for.
When I first started talking to Steve Peters in the aftermath of Speedo’s death, I thought my life wasn’t going to get better when I finished playing football. My life was going to be dark. I was going to be lost.
That was the thing that really petrified me: the idea that I wouldn’t be able to stay in the game. If I had remained the way I was, I knew going into management would be out of my reach. Because of the intensity I worked at, I wouldn’t be able to cope with players. I wouldn’t be able to cope with unprofessionalism. My inflexibility, my lack of man-management skills would undermine my chances of succeeding as a boss.
If I hadn’t started seeing Steve, if I hadn’t begun to change, my people skills – or the lack of them – would have destroyed my chances of being a successful manager. I had always worked on the basis that if you have got something to say, say it, and deal with the consequences later. But you can’t do that as a manager. And I knew that would be a stumbling block for me.
In the time since I have been talking to him, my people skills have improved beyond all recognition. I actually think before I speak now. Nothing’s black and white for me any more. There is grey as well. I listen to people. I have actually become a proper human being.
I am not a saint. Watch me on a football pitch and there is still a percentage of me that exists in chimp mode. But it’s a vastly smaller percentage than it used to be. I am more open to mistakes. I am more forgiving. And you know what, I am beginning to feel happy. My quality of life is much, much better.
Craig Bellamy - GoodFella Page 31
