Craig Bellamy - GoodFella (8 page)

There was another reason, too. I just don’t like going to watch matches. It’s one thing preparing for a game when you’re in the dressing room and cocooned inside the bubble that players live in. You can be single-minded about what you do and not worry as much about everything that surrounds the game. But when you take yourself out of that bubble, when you sit in the stand and hear the crowd and realise the expectations they have, it can feel daunting.

You sit with the fans and you realise what a responsibility you have. There’s no escape from the fact that what happens out there on the pitch is very important to them and that they are relying on you to deliver. I felt that if I saw too much of that side of things, the pressure might start to get to me, so I ended up rationing the amount of games I watched.

When I got back to Norwich after working with Tim Atter, I started to join in a few training sessions. I noticed a difference with my knee. It wasn’t exactly as good as new. But it was appreciably better than it had been after the injury Muscat inflicted on it. I could feel it was stronger. I could feel that the work I had put in had paid off.

I had missed football. It had been taken away from me and now that I was close to a return, I had even more determination to try to succeed. I didn’t feel vulnerable. I played a reserve team game in April against Cambridge United that felt like a huge step forward. My dad came to watch and some Norwich fans turned up too, which meant a lot to me.

I made a couple of tackles and went in hard. I wanted to show people I wasn’t going to try and hop out of it. I only played a half but I felt great. Phil Mulryne, one of my Norwich teammates, had suffered a double leg break a few months after I was injured at Southend and we both made our comebacks at the same time. We’d become good friends during our rehabilitations. We helped each other pull through. I could sense that the same sort of relief I felt was coursing through him, too.

Some of the reserve team players held a party for Phil and me after the game and it felt like a great triumph for both of us. Injury is every footballer’s secret struggle and the fight is made harder because it is conducted away from the limelight. Nobody sees the work you are doing, nobody knows how hard you are trying, nobody knows the fears that are stalking you.

I had been out for so long that by the time I was fit again, Bruce Rioch had left the club. We had had another disappointing season, getting nowhere near the pace set by clubs like Charlton and Manchester City and Rioch resigned in March. Bryan Hamilton took his place on a temporary basis so he was in charge when, after nine months out, I made my first team comeback against Port Vale on April 22, 2000.

I came off the bench against Barnsley at Oakwell in the next game and scored. And then, in the last home game of the season against Sheffield United, I got my first start. After about a quarter of an hour, I found myself one on one with the goalkeeper. I took it round him but he dragged me out wide and I thought my chance might have gone but I drilled it in from a tight angle.

That goal meant a hell of a lot to me. More than almost any other goal I’ve scored. After everything I had been through, it was a symbol of recovery, a sign that everything was going to be okay. To people like Neil Adams, to the fans, to Premier League managers who might want to sign me, it sent out the message that I was back.

8

Signing Off

I
didn’t want the season to end. I was fit again and I wanted to keep on playing. I would have played all summer if I could. I did get a bit of an extension when the new Wales manager, Mark Hughes, called me into the squad for the June friendlies against Brazil and Portugal.

I’d missed the first ever game at the Millennium Stadium, a 2-1 defeat to Finland in March when Jari Litmanen had run the show. But Sparky called me up for that game just so I could be part of the occasion, which was something I really appreciated. Then I came on for about 20 minutes against Brazil, who included Rivaldo and Cafu. And then I started against Portugal in Chaves against stars like Figo and Rui Costa. I’d worked hard to fulfil the dream of playing against great talents like them.

I went on holiday for a few weeks but I never stopped training. I couldn’t wait for the new season to start. And the closer it came, the more phone calls I started to get telling me that other clubs were interested. I wasn’t even back in pre-season training when I got a call from an agent who said that Newcastle wanted to sign me. He asked if I would like to go there. “Of course I would,” I told him.

But before the season began, I was told that Wimbledon had bid £3.5m for me. Bryan Hamilton called me in and said it had been knocked back. He said going to Wimbledon was no good for me or for Norwich. They had just been relegated so it wasn’t as if they could offer me Premier League football, and Norwich wanted more than £3.5m.

Hamilton was aware of Newcastle’s interest. Bobby Robson was the boss at St James’ Park and he and our manager were friends because of their Ipswich connection. Norwich kept waiting for the Newcastle bid to come but Newcastle kept stalling. They wanted to get Duncan Ferguson out and they knew Everton wanted him. But they needed the money from that deal to sign me.

I felt very unsettled. I was a young kid who had just done my cruciate and I wanted to sort the situation out. I played in the first game of the season against Barnsley and then the following Monday, Hamilton called me. He asked me where I was. I told him I was at home. He said he was coming round. When he arrived, he sat down and made a bit of small talk. Then he said Norwich had accepted an offer of £6m from Coventry.

He asked me what I wanted to do. He said Norwich would offer me a new contract, although the terms wouldn’t match what Coventry had offered. I was a naïve kid back then so I asked him why they were offering me a new contract if they had accepted a bid from another club. Hamilton was straight with me. He said it was too much money for them to turn down. I guess they had to be seen to be offering me a new contract to try to save face with the fans. They were making me look like the bad guy.

I said it was unfair. Hamilton said it was just politics. I told him I didn’t want to go to Coventry. He said he realised that. He said he knew I wanted to go to Newcastle but Norwich still hadn’t received a bid from them yet. I was almost pleading by then. I asked him if we could wait for a while to see if the Newcastle bid materialised.

He said that was one option. But he also said that Norwich had given Coventry permission to talk to me and that the manager, Gordon Strachan, and the chairman, Bryan Richardson, were driving down to meet me as we were speaking. He asked me to go and hear what they had to say. He said there was no pressure on me to make a decision and that if I didn’t like their offer, we could wait and see what Newcastle came up with.

I didn’t know what to do. The club said Strachan and Richardson were going to meet me at a place called Dunston Hall, a country house hotel in an Elizabethan-style mansion a few miles south of Norwich. It was all in motion already. It felt like I was being rail-roaded into something. I kept thinking that I didn’t want to sign for Coventry. I wanted to sign for Newcastle. This wasn’t what I had envisaged.

I felt I couldn’t refuse to meet them. I thought I’d just listen and then walk away. I didn’t have an agent at that time. I had a financial adviser called Jonathan, so I rang him and asked his advice. He was just as nervous about it as me. He didn’t know what to do. He just dealt with my financial stuff. Jon said he would get straight up there and would make sure I didn’t get stitched up.

I set off for Dunston Hall. While I was in the car, my phone rang. It was Bobby Robson.

“Speak to them by all means, son,” he said, “but whatever you do don’t sign. We’ll have made our bid in the next 24 hours.”

A couple of minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, it was David Stonehouse, the Newcastle chief executive. He said pretty much the same thing.

I got to the hotel and Strachan and Richardson were waiting for me. Strachan spoke brilliantly about football, his philosophy and his plans for the club. He was up front. He said Coventry weren’t a top Premier League club but they worked hard. He said he would work night and day to help me become the player I wanted to become. He really impressed me but Coventry as a club didn’t. I had set my heart on Newcastle.

Then things got messy. As I was talking to Strachan, Jon walked in with John Fashanu. I was open-mouthed. I had never met him before. I had no idea what he was doing suddenly presenting himself at the negotiations for my transfer deal. I took Jon aside and asked him what was going on. It turned out he had got to know Fashanu over the last few months.

When I had called Jon to tell him that I was going to the meeting at Dunston Hall, Jon had phoned Fashanu to ask for advice. And before he knew it, Fashanu had invited himself along as well. He said he would come along to make sure I didn’t get taken for a ride and offered to look over the contract while we were at the hotel as well. Jon didn’t really know what to do so he accepted his offer.

After they had been gone for a little while, Strachan marched over to where Jon and I were sitting.

“What’s your arrangement with John Fashanu?” he asked.

“I haven’t got a clue,” I said.

“You know he might be trying to get paid money for this,” Strachan said. “He could want a percentage.”

I didn’t know if this was true but I looked over at Jon and his face went white because I think he realised how embarrassing this was. He went to speak to Fashanu and left me with Strachan. “I’m sorry,” I said “This is a mess. It’s nothing to do with me.”

My brain felt scrambled. Strachan was a decent bloke. I didn’t want to appear like an idiot in front of him. But this all looked so amateurish. I felt guilty. I felt embarrassed. It was just a nightmare.

Strachan told me what they were offering me. It was a lot of money. Credit to Coventry. They were up front about it. Newcastle had told me they were going to offer me a straight five-year contract worth £12,000 a week. Coventry were offering me a five-year deal worth £18,000 a week to start with and going up to £25,000 a week by the final year.

It was a huge jump in salary for me and Strachan and Richardson pitched it well to me, too. They knew what I had gone through with my cruciate ligament injury. They knew how I would have been worried about my future. They pointed out to me that if I signed, I would never have to work again after football and my family would be taken care of for life. That struck a chord with me. It wasn’t long ago when I feared I might not have a career any more.

They were persuasive. I also felt undermined by the mess with Fashanu. I wanted to save face with Strachan. I felt stressed. My chest was tight because I’m asthmatic. I was struggling to breathe properly because I was so tense. I was in a state. So I did what everybody had told me not to do. I told Strachan I’d sign. I shook his hand. And then I went home.

I felt a sense of dread about what I’d done. I just didn’t want to go to Coventry. I didn’t feel comfortable. I felt that, with the players they had, Coventry were going to have a difficult season. They would look to me to lift them out of it but I wasn’t sure I could do it. I had been out for a long, long time and I knew that I was bound to have ups and downs.

I knew I might be inconsistent and there would be times when I might need a rest. I still didn’t know how my knee was going to react when I was back playing regular football week after week. At Newcastle, I would be around really good players and I would have space to be rested for a week if I needed it. That wouldn’t happen at Coventry.

I knew at Coventry, not only would I be straight into the side but everybody would be looking to me. They would need me to score 20 goals that season or else they would be relegated. I looked through the team and I knew it was going to be hard work. They had lost Robbie Keane to Inter Milan and Gary McAllister to Liverpool. They were important players.

The next day, Jon picked me up and took me back to the Norwich training ground to get my boots. There were a few people there and I said goodbye to one or two of the reserve boys and to Steve Foley, who had been such a big influence on me and had helped my career so much. When we drove away, I knew I was never going to come back.

It felt sad. I knew I was going to leave Norwich at some time or another and I had been hoping for a move to a Premier League club for a while. But when it actually happens, it still catches you by surprise. I had been there since I was 11 years old. I had worked very hard but that didn’t change the fact that I owed the club a lot.

They persevered with me as an individual. They could have got rid of me in the early days when I was so homesick that I was almost begging them to kick me out. But they didn’t. They were different class. They brought me up right in football, with passing and keeping the ball on the deck. That was their philosophy on the game and that was how they wanted to produce young players and I was a beneficiary.

I was educated well in the game at Norwich. They shaped me. Even when I was in the youth team, we were doing step classes and other things that were thought curious then but turned out to be ahead of their time. As a club, they were open and innovative and I bought into that. It was a good grounding.

But I knew I needed to improve as a player and I knew I needed to move up to the Premier League to do that. I had just come back from a big injury and I didn’t know if I would get the opportunity again. I was still in a dreadful quandary about Newcastle but it had started to seem as if their bid would never arrive. I should have been more patient.

After we left the Norwich training ground, I travelled down to Coventry as promised. I still had the feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach but it was like the move had gathered this momentum and I just couldn’t stop it. Bobby Robson phoned again. He said the bid was coming in but I told him that unless it actually arrived with Norwich, there was nothing I could do. He told me he would phone back as soon as he could.

That conversation made me feel even worse. I didn’t have a clue what to do. I had given my word to Strachan and I didn’t want to go back on that. But when I parked at Highfield Road and got out of my car, I stood around for a while. I didn’t want to go through the doors because I knew there would be no way back then. I stood there for half an hour, waiting for Bobby Robson to call me back but my phone didn’t ring.

Eventually, I went inside. I met the directors who gave me a very warm welcome. Then I sat down and signed the contract. Even as I was signing it, I thought ‘what am I doing?’ but the die was cast. It was too late to back out. I was taken to the training ground then. My first thought was that it wasn’t as good as Norwich’s. I said hello to the players and then went to a hotel in Henley-in-Arden that would be my home for the next few weeks.

When I got to my room, I switched my phone back on. There was a message. I started to listen to it.

It was from Bobby Robson.

“Hello son,” he said. “Good news. Our bid’s in.”