• • •
At the end of the 1993-94 season, which ended with Spurs finishing a lowly fifteenth and unsuccessful in both domestic cup competitions, Sol received a phone call from manager Ossie Ardiles. In broken English and rather formally, like he was announcing the winners at a school prizewinning ceremony, Ardiles said: ‘Sol, the club would like to offer you a new four-year contract.’ It was what he was hoping for, maybe even expected, but more importantly he had a manager who believed in him. ‘You are the future of this club,’ he was told. This hackneyed phrase for young players seemed genuine coming from Ardiles. There was no doubting his words were sincere. He was sincere. He was a good man.
Sol asked Sky Andrew to negotiate on his behalf. He had first met Sky while at Lilleshall and the two had hit it off well. Even though they weren’t officially working together yet as sports manager and client, Sol trusted Sky. That was already a positive. He didn’t trust many. ‘He was the most intense person I have ever met when it comes to trust,’ says Sky. The deal went smoothly. Sol would receive nearly four times as much as the £200 a week he was currently earning.
Sky Andrew speaks of Ossie Ardiles with the upmost respect for how he conducted the business. ‘It was straightforward. None of this backwards and forwards. He repeated to me what he had said to Sol, that he believed he was the club’s future.’
‘The reason the deal went so smoothly was that Ossie played a lot of table tennis and Sky was a professional player,’ Sol jokes. Sky merely shrugs his shoulders at Sol’s quip. ‘In the end, I helped him out as a friend. I received no commission.’
Sol was now earning enough money to buy his first house in Dale Gardens, Woodford Green in Essex. Sky would also help negotiate the property deal. It was something Sol had dreamed of ever since he was a boy: having his very own space. He could now live with a degree of unregimented freedom. He was leaving behind the noise and claustrophobia of his family home. It was as if he could finally release the fingers out from his ears.
During the summer, Tottenham bought the ex-German captain Jurgen Klinsmann from Monaco for £2 million. How the fans love an exciting signing. Players are no different. They respected what Klinsmann had achieved in the game. He was a World Cup winner, after all. And, although he arrived in the country with a reputation for being a diver, he dispelled it in one of the great PR moves of modern time with a self-deprecating celebratory dive after his debut goal against Sheffield Wednesday on the opening day of the season.
Klinsmann’s acknowledgement meant a lot to his team-mates. When he said Sol was ‘one of the best young backs in world football,’ his words encouraged Sol’s growing confidence. ‘He was a great player and a huge presence around the club. He had a temper though, if we lost. He wouldn’t sit down and listen to any prolonged post-mortem. Instead, he’d grab his towel and storm off to the shower muttering a mixture of English and German that we should have done better. He certainly wasn’t a good loser.’
The 1994-95 season began at Spurs, as with every club around the globe, with high optimism. With the marquee signing of Klinsmann, alongside those of Romanians Ilie Dumitrescu and Gheorghe Popescu, there was an air of excitement at White Hart Lane; a belief that the team had those three essential ingredients – talent, self-belief and luck – nicely mixed. And even if the first couple of games were lost, as long as the play was exciting, the board and fans wouldn’t totally give up on hope. They still had many games left to rescue their season. Didn’t they?
At least Sol was now a regular in the first team and would remain so for the rest of his time at Tottenham. He wore the number 23 shirt. ‘I like numbers. I feel connected to some. And twenty-three was given to me by chance when they handed out the squad numbers at the beginning of the season. We were still at the time when high numbers were not the norm for first-team regulars, so it felt different. It felt good every time I looked at it.’ He would wear number 23 for the next five seasons until George Graham wanted his first team to wear the classic one to eleven. ‘Yes, that really pissed me off,’ remembers Sol.
Steve Perryman worked with the players in training and also individually. ‘He took his time to stay behind when the squad had finished the training session to train with me one-to-one,’ says Sol. ‘We would go back to White Hart Lane and work on the astroturf above the car park. Ossie would watch from the sidelines.’ They were still searching for Sol’s best position but it didn’t bother him, he just wanted to play, even though at the beginning of the season he would be cruelly exposed by the tactics.
Attacking football was in abundance, but defensively the team was exposed and terrible. The attitude of you score five and we score six seemed never to have been so true. ‘The tactics were wrong because no-one was experienced enough to hold the back line and play that type of football. It just came too early for me. When I played for Arsenal, it was not far from what Tottenham were trying to achieve, but of course we had the players.’
Clubs don’t like losing, however entertaining they are. After a dire run of results, Ardiles and Perryman were fired unceremoniously. The dismissal still rancors with Perryman: ‘In my day, Bill Nicholson ran the club. Yes, there were directors but I never met them. In fact, I had to ask a team-mate who those old men in suits were.’
‘Well, they direct the club.’
‘What does that mean?’ Perryman queried.
‘Well, if Bill Nicholson wants something, he gives the green light.’
Perryman believes that interference from the boardroom restricted his and Ossie’s ability to manage. ‘Sol being a young player didn’t have the attention he should have had,’ says Perryman. ‘I was deeply disappointed that my work with Sol had been cut short. I do remember Sol looking on as a spectator and wishing that we weren’t going. He didn’t say anything, he was always quiet, but I could read his face. I wanted to tell him more. I wanted to tell him what was going on behind the scenes. But I know he must have seen how disrespectful the club was. As a serious young man, I am sure he was affected by the club’s behaviour.’
The insinuation is clear: that watching the club treating two of their most respected figures, legends to all the fans, so dismissively may have affected the team. Sol was indeed disappointed in the way the club treated Ardiles and Perryman. ‘Steve Perryman guided me through my first season and I will be forever grateful. His experience and knowledge had an influence. It was important to have someone like him so close at the beginning of my first-team career. So yes, I was sad to see them go. And of course these are the men that brought me into the first team. Did I judge the club? I used to think about things but judge them at that time? No.’
Steve Perryman is asked one question more than any other from Tottenham supporters: Were you disappointed that Sol left Spurs for Arsenal? The question is asked probably because Perryman is Tottenham’s more loyal player, making 653 appearances. His answer is so: ‘At first I didn’t like that he went to Arsenal. But having said that, everyone is told that when you decide to leave your first club, it’s the biggest wrench in your career. Normally, when it takes such a long time to make the first move, second and third moves are very quick. The fact that he decided to leave Tottenham and stayed with Arsenal and won all those trophies makes me think that maybe he did, after all, make the right move.’
• • •
It’s November 1994 and Gerry Francis has become the new Spurs manager. His first game in charge is a 4-3 home defeat against Aston Villa.
Training became more intense. Sol would never experience such intense routines again, in his entire career. Francis was popular with the players but he was an authoritarian; if there was one thing Gerry Francis believed in, it was hard work. Every Tuesday, he had this strict running session. He ordered his players to run from box to box; from one penalty box to the other. Back and forwards. To the halfway line and back. An assortment of short and longer sprints. The players were all noise, the air full of curses. Sol cursed a lot. Again and again, until it was over and the sq
uad were all smiles, simply because they had nailed it and survived yet another Tuesday session.
By Christmas, the season had picked up and was full of promise. ‘We had a good team. One of the best teams I played in for Spurs,’ Sol says. ‘Klinsmann, Sheringham, Barmby, Anderton, Popescu.’
The FA Cup run was a highlight, Spurs winning away against Liverpool (a Klinsmann winner) and reaching the semi-final. It was played at Elland Road against Everton. Tottenham were expected to reach the final but it turned out to be a big disappointment for the club. Everton dominated the game in the early minutes and never let go. Tottenham lost 4-1. Sol missed the game due to injury. He’d had a hamstring injury and was down to play but that morning failed a fitness test. ‘I watched the game from the tunnel. When I was injured it was the place I liked watching from.’ Gary Mabbutt thinks if Sol had played that day, Spurs would have gone through to the final. ‘I was very disappointed to hear Sol would not be playing. I think if Sol had been fit, we would have won the game; that’s how important he was to our team.’
Klinsmann took up his option to leave the club after just one season, much to the disappointment of fans and the anger of his chairman. He had scored twenty league goals and was voted the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year in 1995. Spurs finished a respectable seventh, two places off a UEFA Cup place. Like so many seasons for Tottenham, it was nearly there, that is, forever nearly ready to challenge for the top four…But the race for the top in the coming seasons would constantly change, moving further and further away from Spurs.
• • •
The following seasons, Tottenham struggled in mid-table mediocrity. They finished eighth in 1995-96 and tenth the following season. Sol was becoming frustrated. Just when there was a chance to move things forward, he felt there was a resistance to do so.
He was still enjoying his football. He had won his first senior England cap against Hungary in May 1996 and had been a member of Terry Venables’ Euro ’96 squad. He was thriving in his role as Tottenham captain and proud to be playing for them, but there was just something that stopped the club from making that leap to join the leading teams. It was beginning to nag. ‘They see quality and they try to nick it, for less money, trying to get away with it, even though what is in front of you is a masterpiece,’ says Sol.
Sol in the meantime had signed a new contact for three years. Gerry Francis met with Sky Andrew. It wasn’t to be the calmest of meetings; the opposite to his first contract negotiation with Ossie Ardiles. Firstly, Gerry Francis did not like table tennis as Ossie had; and secondly, he did not seem to like Sky Andrew very much. When Sky made demands for his client, he faced a barrage of abuse. ‘He [Francis] called me many names and threatened to run me out of the business. He wasn’t the easiest man to deal with,’ Sky says through gritted teeth, ‘but we got there in the end.’
• • •
It was at White Hart Lane, after training, that manager Gerry Francis approached Sol.
‘Sol, I want you to be our captain.’
He was playing more than the current captain David Howells, and Francis had decided to make a change. As when Keith Waldon put the question to him about captaining the youth team, Sol asked Francis whether he had time to think about it.
‘Yes. You have the weekend, no longer,’ Francis replied.
Sol didn’t show his manager any emotion. It was as if he didn’t care and walked away from the brief meeting with the nonchalance of a man who knew he was wanted. He went out at the weekend with friends. The team had won and he was in a good mood. Ah, victory can so help the mood. He relaxed. He didn’t tell any of his friends what he was considering, what had been offered. He would, like with most things, make the decision alone. He felt a sense of relief that his manager had recognised him. It is the best feeling when the manager believes in you. He hadn’t even thought about becoming captain until the morning he was approached, but now the question had been asked, he knew it would be difficult to turn down. ‘I thought about saying, “Look, when David Howells is unfit I’ll stand in.” I know sometimes choosing a new captain can cause trouble. I was sensitive to that. But, by the end of the weekend, I decided to go for it, and do the best job I possibly could.’
On the Monday he spoke to Francis and accepted the captaincy. He was proud to do so, even though no-one would be able to tell from the outside. His name would join other legends from the club. He thought of Danny Blanchflower, Dave Mackay, Steve Perryman and ‘Mabbsy’ (Gary Mabbutt). These are good people. Wonderful players who lead by example. I plan to be like that. There weren’t any big perks that came with the job. No big fanfare, no special car parking space, maybe some free tickets, but that didn’t bother him either way. The news leaked out and it was accepted without complaint from anyone.
Sol never told his father about the honour. ‘It wasn’t discussed,’ he says. ‘There was no point.’ His father only heard of it in the pub when one of Sewell’s friends mentioned it.
‘I didn’t know your son was captain of Tottenham.’
‘Nor did I,’ Sewell replied and went up and ordered another drink.
• • •
In July 1997, Tottenham bought David Ginola from Newcastle, with Les Ferdinand following soon afterwards, for a combined transfer fee of £8.5 million. ‘David was so strong and very skilful,’ says Sol. ‘Yes, there’s a feeling he could have done more with his talent but I had little to complain about. The team used to moan that he didn’t run back to defend, but as his captain I used to encourage him to get back. It was no point just shouting the words. You had to coerce him. He had to be man-managed. He certainly had the stamina to get back. He used to run forward the whole length of the pitch at least three times in a game, and sometimes even more.’
Sol recalls a match in Ginola’s early days at White Hart Lane. It’s half-time and Sol is dying for a leak. There is no ‘Excuse me sir, I have to go.’ He just shuffles away uneasily as manager Gerry Francis is turning up for his team talk. As he enters the lavatory, Sol thinks it’s deserted, until he hears movement coming from inside one of the cubicles. He then notices a plume of smoke rising to the ceiling. Is someone smoking in there? At half-time? Surely not. He looks down and sees a recently stubbed out cigarette on the floor. Whoever’s in there is already onto his second. He sees the football boots. He recognises them. He smiles. Who else could it be?
The lavatory bursts into a flush and then abruptly stops. The door opens smartly and out steps the culprit… none other than David Ginola. They don’t exchange a word; instead, Ginola strides back and joins the rest of the players as the team talk continues. By the time Sol returns, Ginola is sipping a shot of espresso. He drinks it down in one. ‘Aaaahh,’ he sighs. The half-time break comes to a close and Ginola stands up ready to play the second half. Sol chuckles to himself. A shot of espresso and a cigarette for half-time: the new diet for the professional footballer. As Sol walks back onto the pitch, Ginola take a deep breath and sprints past his captain with renewed energy. Sol shakes his head. Whatever it takes…if he keeps playing like he has this season, who cares how he spends his half-time?
Les Ferdinand had mentioned to Sol the season before that he was thinking about joining Tottenham. They were in a nightclub when he asked Sol about it. What Sol actually said surprised him. ‘You’re doing so well here, Les. Why would you want to move?’ It was true; Ferdinand had gained the respect of the Geordies by scoring fifty goals in eighty-four games and helping them challenge for the Premier League title. Why can’t Spurs be challenging? Sol questioned himself for the thousandth time. I need to be in a team that has the chance to win the league. Frustration had resurfaced. ‘I would never try to persuade him not to join. Never! I was a Tottenham player and had been since I was fourteen, but I honestly couldn’t understand why Les was considering leaving a team that was challenging for the league title.’
Ferdinand had already made up his mind. He had supported Tottenham since he was a kid, and always dreamed of wearin
g the white shirt, playing his football at White Hart Lane. When he joined, injuries stalled his first months but, by the end of the season, his goals helped save Spurs from relegation. Ferdinand eventually played in two League Cup finals for the club (winning the first and losing the second) and scored the 10,000th goal in Premier League history for Spurs in December 2001.
After a very poor start to the season, Gerry Francis’s reign had come to an end in November. He resigned with Spurs struggling. ‘When the papers start saying the manager has three games to save his job, you know it is only matter of time,’ says Sol. And indeed it was. Chris Hughton took over as caretaker boss for one week, which included one game, a 1-0 home defeat to Crystal Palace on 24 November. ‘I would have liked Chris to take over. I’ve always had great belief in him.’ But the idea was never discussed. ‘I always knew it was a temporary role,’ says Hughton.
The job was given instead to Christian Gross, a Swiss who had success in his native country with Grasshoppers Zurich, winning two league championships and the domestic Swiss Cup. Perhaps he was Spurs’ answer to Arsene Wenger. Gross needed little persuading. Looking like he could be cast as a sergeant major in Dad’s Army, he was known to be good at organising people. He arrived believing he could save a once-great club and get them back to those halcyon days, but feared he might have a shortage of good players to make the dream possible.
Gross was unknown when he first arrived in the UK, but not for long. When he was late from Heathrow for his first press conference and brandished his underground ticket with the words, ‘I want this to become my ticket to the dreams,’ it was going to be a long road. The press had found their joke and weren’t about to let it go.
Sol Campbell Page 8