Sol Campbell

by Simon Astaire

  The game ends in victory for the youth. ‘We didn’t just beat them one-nil. It was the way we did it. We totally outplayed them, ran them off the field and played with intelligence. It could have been luck, it could have been that the first team was having an off day, but I saw and felt I was not that far away from them. I was catching up fast.’

  • • •

  Sol remembers one of the Spurs senior players with deep affection: Paul Gascoigne. After his serious cruciate ligament injury in the 1991 FA Cup final against Nottingham Forest, his multi-million pound transfer to the Rome club Lazio was put on hold. It looked as if the door had been firmly slammed. Lazio, though, gave Gazza time, to see if he could regain his fitness before completely pulling out of the deal. His struggle for fitness became the daily diet of the sports pages; watching him go from despair to optimism, from walking with crutches to sprinting round an empty running track. Football supporters cheered him on; we always loved and had empathy for Gazza. We still do.

  Spurs had arranged their youth team to play with Gazza in two matches for the Lazio officials who were visiting London to check on his fitness and make a final decision on whether to go ahead with the transfer; the first game on Friday, the next on the Saturday. It was a success. Gazza played exquisitely, dribbling past defenders and leaving them with the feeling that something had suddenly brushed against them in a ghost train at a funfair. He came through both games without a problem. The transfer was back on. After the Saturday game, Sol and the other youth players were changing when Gazza walked in. He went round and handed each youth player £50 (more than their weekly wage) as a thank you for helping him out. After the game, before doing anything else, he’d got straight into his car and gone to his local bank. It was big-hearted and thoughtful and has never been forgotten by Sol. His life may now be gloomy but in the glorious days of the past, Gazza had the innate ability to connect with others, not just through his generosity but also through his humour and sublime skill on the football pitch.

  • • •

  Keith Waldon asked Sol at seventeen to be captain of the youth team. At first he avoided giving him a straight answer, instead asking: ‘Can I think about it?’ He would give the same reaction to Gerry Francis when he was asked to be captain of the first team a few years later.

  Sol was mature beyond his years and a natural leader; the staff could see how other players responded to him. He was not too vocal on the field but his presence and growing influence affected his team-mates. His type of authority was something coaches looked for in a potential captain. But in the end, Sol turned the offer down because he felt more comfortable under the radar.

  ‘I never understood why. He never explained. That wasn’t something he did,’ Waldon says. Looking back now, Sol says, ‘I just wanted to play football. Also, I was still quite shy and didn’t want to show too much too early. I needed to build up slow, step by step.’ Waldon was still working on his best position. ‘Sol was quite clearly going to be a very physical presence wherever he played. He was only sixteen or seventeen, but still unsure on how the game should be played at any particular time.’ Waldon thought he was probably going to play at full-back or at centre-half but he had worked out a plan to train Sol to become one of the best in one of those positions in the country. He knew if you played in defence, it was much easier as everything was going on ahead of you. So he devised for Sol to play up front or in midfield, so that he could appreciate the field all around him rather than have the tunnel vision he had for the ball as a defender; basically, to train him to understand how the whole pitch worked rather than just one-third.

  When Sol played up front, he got better in controlling the ball with a finer instinct and also to head the ball with better timing and accuracy. ‘For a future England centre-half his heading was woeful,’ remembers Waldon. ‘We call it in football: “having the accuracy of a fifty-pence piece.” The ball can end up anywhere! His timing of the jump was not very good, so he had some technical deficiencies that still needed some work.’

  As his second year in the youth was closing, Sol was growing more and more frustrated. He was going through that phase of a young man’s life where he didn’t think he was being properly recognised. Waldon, though, was still unsure about how far Sol was going to reach, still uncertain about his technical ability. But Sol was unaware of what others thought; in his mind, players who weren’t as talented were getting their chance in the first team and he wasn’t. ‘I may have had doubts about how far he was going to get, but I had no doubt he was a special talent that still needed to be nurtured. My job with Sol was not finished,’ says Waldon. And yet Sol felt forgotten. He had scored on his Spurs first-team debut in December 1992 but hadn’t played again that season. After only three years at the club, he was already thinking about leaving Tottenham and dreamed about joining Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest. Now they’re the type of team I’d like to play for. It may have been a fleeting thought but he remembers it still, and when he returned after playing for England Under-18s against Spain, to make matters worse he found that a couple of his youth team-mates had been picked for the first team ahead of him. His insecurity over his worth in the eyes of his coaches was escalating. What more do I have to do? I’m the only Spurs player in the England Under-18s. I scored on my Spurs debut and now what? Where am I? What’s going on? He felt a millstone around his neck and thought he was being dragged down.

  He moaned to fellow trainee Jeff Minton. It was the first time he’d opened up about how unhappy he was becoming. It was unlike Sol to confide in anyone. Jeff listened to Sol and reassured him that everything would be all right. Perhaps we all feel this way, Jeff suggested.

  ‘I was livid,’ he says. ‘I had just played for England in Spain and no-one had come out to see me. Whenever I went off to play for England, I felt alone, not supported by the club. It was a shame because I’d enjoyed my time with the youth. We had a great side and I had the upmost respect for Keith Waldon and Pat Holland, the youth team managers.’

  Holland says, ‘Very rarely do I speak to a manager telling him this or that boy will one day make the first team but I told Terry Venables that about Sol. I saw it with two boys, him and Ledley King.’ With nearly fifteen years in top flight football as a player and coach, Holland was well aware of the pitfalls facing youth players trying to break into the first team. ‘It’s a big bridge to cross, to be calm and face the challenge. Sol had that ability. You never knew what he was thinking but you knew he would never let you down…Whenever we travelled away and there was a spare single room on offer, Sol was the first to put up his hand. He always wanted it when most boys liked to share, wanted the company.’

  ‘I was lucky to have Pat Holland at that stage in my career,’ says Sol. ‘I respected him. As an ex-player, he was understanding of what we were going through.’

  • • •

  ‘Every young player thinks he should be playing in the first team. He was no different to how I felt at his age.’ Manager Terry Venables had been a Tottenham player in the late Sixties, making 115 league appearances and scoring 19 goals. He returned to White Hart Lane in November 1987 as manager, and led the club to FA Cup success in 1991, a year after finishing third in the league. In June of that year he was appointed chief executive by Alan Sugar. Over the following seasons, the Spurs team was managed by Peter Shreeves and then jointly by Ray Clemence and Doug Livermore. Venables would eventually fall foul of the club as his relationship deteriorated rapidly with Sugar, to the extent that he was dismissed in May 1993 in acrimonious circumstances. Sol confesses to knowing little about what was happening behind the scenes during this time, but his memory of Venables is of a good man-manager who retained a strong influence with the first team. ‘He loved characters in his team and of course players with ability, but the type of players who combined both were his favourite,’ says Sol. Players liked him. He was one of them. He understood them.

  Sol is still aggrieved. He goes out for drinks with his friends but doesn�
��t feel particularly sociable so leaves early, to get back to East London. He travels on the District line from Barking to Plaistow. As the tube train pulls out of the station, he shuffles with relief that he is back on his own turf. The carriage is empty. During the week, it would be so crowded that he wouldn’t find a seat. He’s tempted to stretch out his legs and take it easy when he feels something close, like the flap of a blind in a cool breeze. He looks round, a little startled, but there is nothing; only his imagination. He sits up straight as the train is coming to the next station, spluttering over the rails.

  Nobody gets on or off the carriage, or so he thinks. As the train leaves the station and darts into the dark, he hears a sound. Like a moan, a grumble. The lights in the carriage suddenly flash on and off and back on again. Sitting opposite Sol is an old man with the greenest eyes and the greyest of beards, looking straight at him. Should he laugh, smile or pretend to ignore? He chooses to ignore him. But this doesn’t help. The old man stands up, sways and then staggers over to where Sol is sitting.

  Sol is not sure if he is drunk. He doesn’t smell of drink but he looks as if he hasn’t had a good night’s rest for a long time. He leans over Sol. ‘You should have faith. You are going to surprise everyone.’ And then the old man looks at Sol once again and straightens up as the train reels into another station. He doesn’t look back and, in what seems like one movement, walks out of the carriage. As the train moves away from the platform, Sol gets up and cranes his neck to see if he can still see the old man. But there is nothing. The platform is empty. It is still. And he notices a large clock hanging over the exit, which has stopped, and he wonders if in fact the clock had ever worked at all.

  • • •

  The following week, the club offered Sol a two-year contract. The PFA negotiated the terms and he signed rather grudgingly. He still felt unwanted, as if there was an underlying lack of faith in his true talent, but those involved in the club have no memory of having any doubt that his future was full of promise.

  That summer of 1993, England were hosting the UEFA European Under-18 Championship and Sol joined up with his international colleagues. In the squad with Sol were names such as Nicky Butt, Robbie Fowler, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes. The team went on to win the tournament with a 1-0 win over Turkey in the final at the City Ground. Sol would end the tournament with two man of the match awards. The Guardian described him as being ‘as solid as an Ottoman’. It was in this tournament that the manager, the softly spoken Ted Powell, perceptively moved him from the midfield into the back four.

  During the summer, Tottenham employed Ossie Ardiles as their new manager and Steve Perryman as his assistant. Employing two Spurs legends was not a bad idea. Alan Sugar and Terry Venables were fighting it out in court to get control of the club, and Spurs had leapt from back to front-page news. Ardiles and Perryman had both seen Sol in the Under-18 tournament and liked what they saw. Perryman had kept in contact with Spurs since first leaving, and had heard about Sol a number of times. John Moncur and Keith Waldon had not held back their praise, so it was no surprise to them that his performances were getting recognition. They had been advised Sol could play in a number of positions. He was six feet two inches tall and was incredibly nimble, with fast feet, which is rare to find in an athlete of his size. ‘People forget how fast I was,’ Sol says. The news from the coaches and what they had recently witnessed made the management excited by the prospect. They were short of players in a number of key positions, especially in central defence and up front. They thought Sol could be their answer for either position. It is a management’s dream to have a true talent among its ranks. ‘We saw him as a back at first, but when we saw him up close, we noticed what other coaches were saying: he had the ability to play up front. It’s asking a lot of a young player to play in different positions but we didn’t doubt that if we asked him, he would be able to do it,’ says Perryman.

  It was a couple of days after England had won the tournament that Sol got a call. He would have to go without this year’s summer holiday and report back to Tottenham for the start of pre-season training. That was going to be just a week after the tournament. He didn’t care; it was the call he’d been waiting for.

  Ardiles and Perryman were impressed with Sol. Perryman remembers that time: ‘Sol was like a shining light with regards to all those problems Ossie and I had to deal with at the club at that time. He was a young player, but he wasn’t typical of any of the other young players we had come across. We were confident; we knew he was someone who was going to hold his own. He wasn’t flash, he was modest and he didn’t get above himself. He was also very considerate and respectful to both Ossie and me. From the very beginning he was a joy to work with.’

  Sol was not chosen to play up front when he played the opening games of the 1993-94 season. He was first used at left-back in place of the injured Justin Edinburgh and then took over at right-back from Dean Austin. Spurs won three out of their first four league matches, and Sol played for twenty consecutive games for the first team from the start of the season. After that run, Perryman had no doubt that Sol was going to reach the top. ‘It’s a difficult science to determine how far you can go in your career. When you see a boy at eighteen as Sol was, it becomes a little easier. Sol’s physical power and strength were overwhelming but the one thing that I saw more in Sol than virtually anyone I’ve ever worked with was his self-belief. Ossie and I used to study his hard work, and whatever he learned, and we trained him to do, he would act on it. He learned very quickly and was keen to be educated.’

  There were times after training that Ardiles and Perryman would stop off at a local Italian and find Sol sitting alone, eating his lunch. They would go over to say hello and then leave him in peace. They would notice how he conducted himself. Relaxed in his own company, eating quickly but careful in what he ordered. Eyebrows raised, a weary smile. Always sipping water between bites and after the meal taking a bottle of water away with him. They thought he’d been educated on what to eat. Ardiles indicated with a slightly cupped right hand and fingers pinched together moving in a clockwise circle over his stomach: Sol knows how to eat. It was true, he certainly liked his food and ate a lot to fill his frame, but he had always eaten healthily. This was not a time in football when clubs advised on a player’s diet. It was rare to see someone look after himself in the way Sol did. It was not something the young players in those days really knew about or understood how important diet was. ‘They would usually restore their lost energy from a hard training session with something less healthy than pasta and vegetables,’ says Perryman.

  Eat carefully first, a wise man said, and then have fun. ‘I was always careful what I ate. It was natural for me. I had a European sensibility when it came to food,’ Sol says.

  • • •

  White Hart Lane, which had suddenly become the embodiment of everything good in Sol’s life (how things will change), stood in silence for one of their fallen heroes, Danny Blanchflower, the former captain of the Spurs double-winning side who played for the club 337 times. It was 18 December 1993. Danny had died nine days before.

  Sol stands appropriately to attention as if playing a game of statues. A minute’s silence as a sign of respect, he thinks, is beautiful. He looks at the stands. Not a sound. No noise. The supporters pay homage to one of their former greats. How they loved him. How they respect their former captains, especially those who have captained a cup-winning side. They stay in supporters’ hearts forever, unless of course... Sol looks down to the ground. He shows tremendous cool for someone so young. He will be a substitute today. His streak of twenty games in the first team since the beginning of the season has come to an end. He’s been told they need more experience in defence. But it changes nothing. He is part of the team now. The dispute over the club’s ownership does not bother him. He reads the papers but afterwards puts them down, not giving them another thought. Today’s opponents are Liverpool. They will fight out a 3-3 draw.

  The silence co
ntinues. Some grass cuttings from the pitch have flown into Ossie’s eye in the middle of the minute’s silence. It seems as if he is weeping for an instant. He discreetly rubs his eye with his index finger. The tears would not go amiss. One legend to another. Blanchflower was a great player, a supreme tactician, a fine gentleman. He was also very guarded about his private life. When Eamonn Andrews said the immortal words, ‘This is your life,’ he quickly replied, ‘No, it’s not’ and walked out. He was the first person to turn it down.

  Sol thinks of Blanchflower. They met on a number of occasions. He was still part of the club right up to his last year, before he became so sick that he had to go into a nursing home. How they had spoken. How he’d come to watch the youth. How he had encouraged. He had only become aware of his true greatness in recent months. Before, he knew he was the former captain of the finest Spurs team but now he had learned he was so much more. Sol would try to repeat his success. For Tottenham Hotspur. ‘I will always give my best to this club,’ he vows, ‘in every game I play.’

  When the minute’s silence is over, there is a general outflowing of breath, immediately followed by cheers and applause.