The team didn’t get the bounce everyone hoped for with the new manager. He experienced a 6-1 home defeat against Chelsea and a 4-0 away loss to Coventry, and other than wins against Fulham and West Ham and a draw with Arsenal, the club’s Premier League status was slowly disappearing.
Gross met Sol early on to discuss his style of captaincy. It was in the lobby of the team hotel. He sat down as sedately as possible, took a deep breath, and leant forward as if he was about to tell Sol the facts of life. The manager and captain were meeting together alone for the first time. Sol’s immediate thought was: Let’s hope this speech isn’t too long. It wasn’t normal for Sol to feel irritated but Gross seemed to bring it out in him. Gross moulded each syllable with care, waiting for it to connect with Sol before continuing. He needed Sol’s help to achieve the dream. He wanted him to be more connected with his team-mates; be the first at the training ground and greet everyone with a firm handshake, encourage him or her for the day ahead. Sol thought he was having a laugh. ‘Surely it’s how I am on the pitch that’s important. What I might say at half-time. But this meet and greet style is not for me.’ It was not like Sol to be so sharp in his opinion of others. But the team was flatlining and there was no room for concession in any of his relationships. He hated losing and it was becoming more prevalent.
‘Christian Gross was robotic, stressed and seemed to have no life in him. I knew as soon as he joined that he wouldn’t last long in the job,’ Sol says. Ramon Vega, Sol’s Swiss team-mate, said he didn’t recognise the man he knew from back home. He was not wrong. When Sol was on England duty and the team played away against Switzerland, Gross was there. ‘He was laughing, trying on a hat and making a fool of himself. And I thought if he’d been able to be more self-deprecating and a little less earnest, he would have been okay at Tottenham. The players would have taken to him,’ says Sol.
With the team sliding towards relegation, chairman Alan Sugar re-signed Jurgen Klinsmann on loan for the second half of the season. It proved to be a masterstroke. ‘He most definitely helped,’ says Sol. ‘He was a leader, inspired at times. He lifted the side.’ It was a side that couldn’t win. A side that had become stale, even bored, not only with the actual situation but also with the lack of further promise and potential to win trophies. ‘It was a difficult time. When you keep losing, you tend to go through the motions. That doesn’t mean you don’t give a hundred per cent but you say to yourself, I thought I was here to win?’
Alan Sugar got involved after the team’s poor form. He gathered the first-team squad at White Hart Lane and handed each one a black baseball bat. He clenched the handle of his bat and swung it in the air. ‘I want you to bat all your problems away and get us out of this crap,’ he snarled. ‘I still have the bat!’ says Sol.
Tottenham survived relegation by drawing and winning two of their last five games. They eventually finished fourteenth. Christian Gross survived getting the sack and lived for another day, or rather the start of a new season. Sol’s memory of Gross fades in importance like the sun behind the clouds. ‘It’s neither good nor bad. He never did something that surprised me and his dour management style probably reflected on the team.’
• • •
Christian Gross didn’t last long at Spurs the following season, 1998-99. He was sacked after ten months and only three games into the new campaign. His face, even after winning his last game away to Everton 1-0, was of a man due to be hanged later that day.
Chairman Alan Sugar didn’t waste time; he signed George Graham as his new manager. He asked David Pleat, Spurs’ director of football who’d stepped in as caretaker manager, if he had any problem with the appointment. Pleat said no. He respected Graham. He admitted it was a slight disappointment though; he had always hoped to get back his job as full-time manager, having been Tottenham boss for one season only back in 1986-87.
As an ex-Arsenal favourite, both as manager and as a player, George Graham was never going to be the most popular of appointments. To many at White Hart Lane, he wasn’t just Mr Arsenal, he represented their whole ideology. He would need to win, and win big, if he was going to appease the Tottenham fans.
For his first game, he watched from the stands. It would be left to David Pleat to give the team talk. Before Pleat began, Graham walked into the dressing room with Alan Sugar to introduce himself to the players. He stood up straight in front of them, and authoritatively held up his finger. He then acted with speed and clarity. ‘I’m going to work hard and I expect everyone below me to work hard.’ With that, he left the room smiling to himself that his first words were delivered with a little more spirit, even venom, than usual. His intent was clear. It was certainly heard by the players and his new chairman. But the words did not go down well with Sol: ‘From that very first moment, he lost me. I work hard anyway. If players don’t work hard in training or in the game, then deal with it individually and privately. But giving threats to the whole squad on your first meeting, and just before we were going out to play, wasn’t a good idea.’
Sol would find it difficult to recover from their first meeting. It gnawed away at him. To him, Graham’s self-righteous ultimatum was irritating, and his relationship with the Scot was never going to be straightforward from that point on. ‘He should have talked to the players individually,’ admits David Pleat, ‘but George had a style. He had a big reputation. He was probably just showing his authority. When he first arrived at the club, he wanted to cut the squad. Those he didn’t want could train elsewhere. I advised him against it. That sort of thing can cause unrest.’
Sol and Graham did not connect. Sol wasn’t keen on him and guessed Graham wasn’t particularly wild about him, either. It was quite a knee-jerk reaction from Sol. He needed to get over it as quickly as possible; George Graham was not going anywhere in the foreseeable future and Sol was, after all, his captain.
• • •
Leicester City 0 Tottenham 1, Worthington Cup Final, Wembley, 21 March 1999
Leicester City: Keller; Ullathorne, Taggart, Elliott, Walsh; Savage (Zagorakis 90), Izzett, Lennon, Guppy; Cottee, Heskey (Marshall 74). Unused subs: Arphexad; Campbell, Kaamark.
Tottenham Hotspur: Walker; Carr, Campbell, Vega, Edinburgh; Anderton, Freund, Nielsen, Ginola (Sinton 90); Ferdinand, Iversen. Unused subs: Baardsen, Young, Dominguez, Armstrong. Goals: Nielsen (90). Sent off: Edinburgh (60).
Att: 77,892. Ref: Terry Heilbron.
In a largely forgettable final, Tottenham go down to ten men with the harsh sending off of Justin Edinburgh after a tangle with Robbie Savage on the hour, but snatch a last-minute winner from the head of Dane Allan Nielsen. It’s rejoicing all round for Spurs fans as captain Sol Campbell lifts the trophy.
Eight months after taking charge, Graham lead Spurs to victory over Leicester City in the 1999 League Cup final. It was one of Sol’s finest days. He became the first black captain to lift a major trophy at Wembley. He wasn’t aware of the honour at the time, but reminisces with pride now. His brothers and mother were there to see the game. It would be the first and last time Wilhelmina would see him play professionally. ‘I felt so happy. I was so proud. He is the greatest to me. I didn’t have to go and see him again. I knew he would be all right,’ she says.
The day is a sea of memories: thousands upon thousands of Spurs fans with smiling faces and blue and white scarves tied to their necks and banners held aloft. Sol hugging the League Cup in his arms on the sacred Wembley turf. What music. What excitement. The Spurs choir singing their hymn ‘Glory, Glory, Tottenham Hotspur’ followed by a brief snatch of the Chas and Dave song ‘Ossie’s going to Wembley’. Ossie Ardiles, the man who brought Sol into the first team. Thank you, Ossie. Sol joins his team-mates on their lap of honour. I’ve worked for this. His voice, so rarely heard by the fans, is yelling out to them in excitement, ‘We’ve WON! Here’s the cup!’ Here are some of the faces that will one day fling scorn at Sol, but on this special day there is no hint of malice, just adoring celebration. No baying, no bitch
ing, no hatred. Just love. Hug your neighbour, we’ve won the cup!
‘If the game had gone into extra-time we would have been in trouble. I think we would have lost. We were dead on our feet,’ says Sol. But the Norwegian Steffen Iversen, using his pace, broke free on the right in stoppage time, his shot rebounded off Leicester keeper Kasey Keller and Allan Nielsen followed up with a diving header to score and send Tottenham fans into bliss.
The dressing room was also celebrating, except for Graham. ‘He didn’t seem that overjoyed,’ says Sol. But then again, we all have different ways of showing our happy side. Sol sits for a moment before taking off his kit to shower. The dressing room throbs to the sound of laughter. What a great day it has been. They say winning a football match in a final at Wembley is the best of feelings. It is. Enjoy. Enjoy what is beautiful. He remembered just for a moment the street he was born and brought up in. The street he worked to get out from, to be in the here and now. He is truly happy. He’s now established in the England team, had the taste of international captaincy and played in his first World Cup in France ’98. He is captain of Tottenham Hotspur and has just lifted their first trophy for eight years. This is part of his and the club’s history. All I want to do is continue to play well and win trophies; nothing is better. But without anyone realising, least of all Sol, winning the League Cup and relishing the day brings his departure from Tottenham a little closer.
The League Cup winning party was held at Sopwell House near St Albans. Sol left the party early to spend time with his then-girlfriend Michelle (who used to date his team-mate Justin Edinburgh’s brother) While his team-mates had their partners with them, Sol’s had remained at home. He felt he needed to keep the relationship secret from the gossipmongers – maybe if the press had found out it would have saved him from all the remarks about his sexuality.
The following season, Tottenham’s European adventure ends prematurely in November. ‘It was one of those nights you just want to rub from your memory,’ says Sol. Tottenham had lost 2-0 in the UEFA Cup second round second leg to FC Kaiserslautern. The disappointment was palpable from the Spurs fans. George Graham’s defensive strategy nearly paid off but two last-minute goals, one an own goal, saw the Germans through 2-1 on aggregate. It was another example for Sol of Tottenham not being ready to join the elite of Europe, or become one of the top teams in the Premier League. He had, after the Worthington Cup triumph, a faint optimism that the club shared the same ambition. He knew they needed to spend to re-live the joy that everyone connected to the club experienced that day at Wembley. It had been the perfect day.
Well, near perfect. There was something that had been shadowing him during those blissful hours of victory. Sol Campbell had been called up on a charge of assault.
• • •
Back on 3 October 1998, Tottenham had beaten Derby County 1-0 at Pride Park. David Pleat was still acting as caretaker manager; it would be his last game in the role before George Graham took over. ‘I was happy. We got three points and I scored the winner,’ Sol says.
After the game, Sol walked off the pitch towards the dressing room when Colin Calderwood dashed past him and confronted a Derby player, Francesco Baiano. A fight between a group of players broke out. Sol stood back. What’s happening? Is this serious? Difficult to judge the dividing line between playing and fighting, but this was serious all right. Spurs’ captain shouted: ‘Everyone stop fighting and get back to your dressing rooms!’ That was it. One big testosterone tussle, ending before it began. Sol wouldn’t have given it another thought until David Pleat, now back to being director of football, approached him after a training session two weeks later. He remembers lying on a bank of grass looking up at the sky and seeing clouds wrapped around the sun pulling tighter and tighter. It would be a sign of things to come.
Pleat paused and said to Sol, ‘We’ve received a letter from Derby County saying that when we played them, a scuffle started and you broke a steward’s arm.’ Sol wasn’t sure what Pleat had just said. He asked him to repeat himself. He did. Sol dismissed it. ‘Pay no attention,’ he said. ‘It’s a load of rubbish.’ And, because of the stony expression on Sol’s face, Pleat said, ‘Okay Sol, let’s leave it.’
Sol was irritated for a moment and then lost interest. It was nonsense, a wild accusation. But the story wouldn’t go away. Pleat approached Sol again a couple of weeks later. He was relaxing after a heavy training session and there he was, Pleat again. ‘Sol, about this incident at Derby. The police want to take a statement.’
‘Why?’ Sol asks. ‘There’s no truth in it.’
‘He never gave anything away with his facial expression. I never had an indication as to what was going on in his mind,’ recalls David Pleat. But inside, Sol was in turmoil. It was beginning to sink in that this wasn’t going to disappear.
Sol is accompanied to Tottenham police station, a mile up the road from White Hart Lane, by the club’s company secretary, John Ireland. He feels wronged and he begins to feel a little threatened. At the station he makes his statement. He speaks slowly and in detail about exactly what happened: about the scuffle, shouting at everyone to cool down. It is all pretty straightforward, which I imagine it is if you are telling the truth. When he is facing the officer, snippets of his childhood come back to him. It surprises him. How he felt imprisoned in his family home. Maybe there was a connection in how unsettled he felt.
Afterwards, Sol is paraded round the station. Some of the policemen are brought in from the back to shake hands with the great man, to pose for a photograph. Faces brighten. It wasn’t often you got the Tottenham skipper visiting the local constabulary.
The days pass and the whole episode is beginning to shadow Sol. Just going to the station made him feel uneasy. When you are accused of something that you are totally innocent of, it is like being trapped on a bolting carousel that one day will crash. This is how Sol is beginning to feel. The case escalates with Sol now asked to report to Derby police station. He thinks he will have to go through the same routine: a statement followed by a couple of posed photographs for the local constabulary. He’s nearly right. He hides in the back seat of the car as it pulls up in front of the station, so as to avoid the press pack who have heard the Tottenham skipper may be reporting there. He is now beginning to feel like a villain. He gives his fingerprints, has his police mugshot – ‘turn left, turn right, look straight ahead’ – taken. And then he is officially charged with assault, released on bail to appear before Derby City magistrates on 1 March.
This is getting out of control.
He’s had that thought many times over the last months. He’s getting angry. And confused. Maybe he knocked into the steward without knowing.
Am I already beginning to confuse fact and fiction, becoming the sort of person who tells a story with such realism that he believes it is true? How ironic.
He’s accused of being in a fight, which he wasn’t in, and now he’s embarking on his own fight over right and wrong. His football has not been affected. He is still playing well. These have been good days, great days. Football once again is his escape. But now the days are soiled. No-one can tell he’s in pain. Once again it is buried. He is becoming even more insular.
What will my mother say? What will she think of me? I have to act. NOW. Get my own people involved? Preferably put a line through it, even DELETE! It’s time for it to stop. Think! Think!
Dialogue continues in his head for weeks. And still no-one can tell him what is going on. Or they know and are keeping it to themselves. Paranoia sets in. To the outside world stands a strong man, but inside his mind is in turmoil.
Meanwhile, the club asks him to support them over a libel hearing with the Daily Mail. Chairman Alan Sugar is taking the paper to court over accusations that he is ‘miserly’ in his stewardship of Spurs. Their former striker, Teddy Sheringham, has accused Sugar and the club of lacking ambition. ‘I’m not mean!’ Sugar said to Sol, showing him bank statements. ‘Call that mean?’ Sol doesn’t want anythi
ng to do with it. Sugar had told Sol that for his new contract he would be the highest paid player at Tottenham, but when the club were requested to disclose their players’ salaries to the court in support of their libel case, it turned out David Ginola was earning more. ‘Typical Sugar!’ says Sol. Leave me alone. Don’t you understand I have my own problems?
‘The last thing I wanted to do was get involved in another court case,’ Sol says. Spurs feel let down by his attitude. Even George Graham comments he’s heard from the top that Sol isn’t being supportive of the club. It’s strange, every time he speaks to me, I have this image of him showing me his pips on his uniform. Ridiculous, really. He doesn’t understand what I have been going through. You’re my manager, you should support your player first, your captain. Sol felt, ever since Graham signed Tim Sherwood, the Blackburn Rovers captain, in February 1999 for a reported fee of £3 million, that he wanted Sherwood as his Spurs captain. Nothing was said directly. But Sol knew and wasn’t just going to give it up. He’s in a quandary. It’s about time I have it out with Graham. Isn’t part of my trouble that I avoid confrontation? If they were going to take the captaincy away from him, they would have to rip the armband off his sleeve. He had a glow of pride at the efficiency with which he’d taken to his role as captain. He had doubts at first, but now it was different. He was beginning to think he should have always been a captain: at Lilleshall, for Tottenham Youth when Keith Waldon asked him, for England...
Tim Sherwood was stirring. When Sol wasn’t playing, he took over the captaincy. After he scored once at White Hart Lane, he pointed at the captain’s armband. Not directly to Sol but at the crowd. He knew what he was doing. Sol didn’t react but a few weeks later when he was in the players’ tunnel before a match against Newcastle he overheard Alan Shearer, an old mate at Blackburn, saying to Sherwood, ‘Have you taken it off him yet?’ and the two chuckled like naughty schoolboys. Sol says: ‘I’ll never forget that time with Shearer. It gave me even more energy and desire to beat him when I came across him as an opposition player and manager.’ As for Sherwood, he couldn’t believe how the captaincy was getting to his head. Why are you getting Alan Shearer to fight your corner? Who the hell are you? You’ve only been at the club for five minutes. You have your swagger because you think you have George Graham behind you. ‘With Tim Sherwood, aside from the football, I couldn’t have any respect for him and his lack of character,’ says Sol.
Sol Campbell Page 9