Sober

by Tony Adams

  Out of Baku was a different matter. Travelling the 130 miles north-west out of the city to Gabala, not too far from the Georgian and southern Russian borders, took more than four hours, such was the state of the single-track roads winding through the isolated small towns and villages to the Caucasus mountains. There would frequently be cows on the road and people alongside the tarmac, including small children, trying to sell you whatever fruit and meat they could to make a living.

  When you got to within 10 miles of Gabala, you could see high on a hill two giant satellite dishes, apparently for monitoring communications, left over from the Soviet era and which would be dismantled some years later. In fact, the football team was known then as The Radars.

  Gabala was growing, I could see that as Alastair showed me and Gary around, with luxury hotels sprouting up and factories being built, all with Heydarov family money. Tale’s father Kamaladdin was a minister in the government – for what was called ‘Emergency Situations’ – and was also a prominent songwriter in the country, having apparently had several hits. He had given his son responsibility for running his company Gilan Industries, which was a trading and construction business, while he was in politics. The family were determined to make their home region of Gabala prosperous.

  The football club, however, had very little except a huge patch of land close to town on which to operate. The only real facility was a huge green hangar, a remnant from when the site had been a military base, which had housed tanks and helicopters in the old Soviet days. It served as home to everything, from dressing rooms to offices, though they were basic. There were six teams, from first team down through age groups, playing on one bumpy pitch and a poorly laid 3G pitch. There were no seats or terracing.

  I took in an Azerbaijan Premier League game, with Gabala beating FK Baku, who had won the national cup that season. A couple of hundred turned out to watch. Neither side was outstanding and I gauged the standard to be about the old Conference level. There was some potential there.

  I also watched the final Gabala game in Baku, a 4-0 defeat by Inter, who had already won the league, which comprised 12 clubs playing each other four times. I thought there was scope to do something with this team.

  Talking things over with Gary on the plane home – him wondering what was going on when I kept getting up to go to the toilet in my anxiety about flying – I began to think this might just work, though the situation had been far from promising. I was working on a mixture of raw gut instinct combined with facts and logic. In the end, it often comes down to the people involved rather than the circumstances.

  I had been particularly impressed by Tale and I thought about the old piece of advice that Sir Alex Ferguson used to give to budding managers: ‘Don’t pick a club, pick a chairman.’ In other words, work with someone who will give you a chance, no matter the status of the club. That crossed off a large percentage of people in England after my Portsmouth experience. From all the fuss around the English game, and listening to all the nonsense spoken, there weren’t too many who impressed me. Tale didn’t know much about football but he didn’t pretend to, and I liked that at the interview. He was a quiet, serious man, one to be reckoned with.

  Normally, managerial interviews take place in front of three guys – maybe the owner, chairman and chief executive – who all reckon they know more than you. They ask questions such as: ‘Do you play 4-4-2?’ or ‘Are you going to work on the defence?’ or ‘We are a counterattacking team. You won’t change that, will you?’ They’re supposedly interviewing you but really they would like to be doing the job themselves. Or at least the best parts of it, like picking the team.

  With Tale there was a humility and respect for me and my career. He said he wanted my information and knowledge. He was on my side and that was important. That would give me the mandate I required to accomplish all the things that needed doing if a good club was to be established.

  I also talked at length with Poppy. ‘I think I can do this,’ I said to her. ‘I can build my own squad, play the way I want, and I’m going to get time. I have the owner’s backing and he has resources. On top of all that, I get to have input in building a club and a stadium. Where am I going to get a remit like that in the UK?’

  When it all came out like that, what was not to like? I had been going round the M25 for the last 25 years and I wasn’t getting anywhere in England any more. I was ready for a new challenge and new country where I could further my experience and learn more, far away from the judgements of people who often didn’t know the reality of situations.

  Was I running away from the real challenge of management in England? I didn’t think so. It was about learning my trade properly, maybe to return to a good job one day, though that was being a bit of a Little Englander about it as there was plenty of good football, played by good clubs, all across the world. Anyway, I wanted it to be like it was when I was an Arsenal apprentice, learning in the South East Counties League on a Saturday morning, making mistakes but well away from the glare of the media and unforgiving owners and fans.

  Above all, I was clean and sober and I had the mental and emotional resources now to be able to confront this type of challenge, out of my comfort zone. I knew I could do this. Poppy agreed. She knew how frustrated I was growing at home and that I needed to be active. She also liked an adventure herself. She thought it would be exciting and fascinating for her and the children to come out there too.

  I was concerned about there being no formal meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous but I could make other arrangements. I would take tapes with me, by speakers talking about AA’s Twelve Steps, and also tap into websites that had speakers. A friend also had a friend in recovery working in Baku and we could meet for coffee. I took comfort too from the fact that Azerbaijan was a Muslim state and, while there were bars and clubs, they were not widespread and it would be a help not seeing booze everywhere in your face.

  And so I accepted the job, though before I went out for pre-season, I had one commitment that I had, and really wanted, to keep.

  13

  Why, Why, Why Gabala?

  In return for a bottle and a hangover,

  we have been given the Keys of the Kingdom.

  ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, here

  I spent the June before pre-season began at the end of that month getting my Gabala team together. That month was punctuated by something that was a real privilege to do and provided huge enjoyment. I was honoured to be asked to appear on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young, and it was wonderful picking my favourite songs as a soundtrack to my life. It would also prove to be an emotional experience.

  I included the first record I ever bought: ‘Boy About Town’ by the Jam, which probably said something about the cockiness of being 14 that I used, subconsciously, to mask my insecurity. I also picked ‘Let’s Groove’ by Earth, Wind and Fire, which reminded me of being young and carefree and out on a Saturday night after a game.

  Then there was ‘Sweet Caroline’ by Neil Diamond for my mum, and that track by Squeeze which was playing on the jukebox the day I got sober, ‘Black Coffee in Bed’. I also just had to pick the Arsenal FA Cup final song of 1971 – ‘Good Old Arsenal’.

  In between, Kirsty asked me in detail about my life, based on my conversation with a researcher who came to my home to get a list of songs and some background on me for the interviewer. It is an intimate setting, just you and Kirsty in a dark studio, and I began filling up when she asked me about my mother. These days, I get less emotional when I talk about how drinking brought me to my knees, but that day I also welled up when I recalled it. From Kirsty’s questions, I felt she understood a bit about alcoholism.

  It was a cathartic experience, and down the years I have been gratified by the number of people who said they heard it and were moved by it. I was also flattered that my contribution was chosen as one of the castaways’ choices in a book to mark 70 years of the programme in 2012.

  I picked as my favourite track Monty Python’
s ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ and my luxury item was – naturally – a football. That would take care of my physical wellbeing. To nurture my spiritual self, I chose as the book I was allowed the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. That too would be going with me to Azerbaijan, along with my hand-picked backroom staff.

  The physio, a recommendation by Gary Stevens, was a Muslim who was born in Iran but lived in England by the name of Faraz Sethi. Though just 24, he had worked at Watford and Colchester and I thought that he would be perfect, as he could adapt to the environment and help me adjust to the religion there. He was tough and ballsy, though some would later find him a little too much so for their liking.

  For my development coach, overseeing the academy we were going to build up, I recruited Daryl Willard, a skills coach in the Chelsea academy who had worked with Gary Stevens at a soccer school Gary had in Gibraltar. At first, the Azerbaijanis would think he was too young, as they preferred more mature coaches, but Daryl would do so well that he ended up becoming the technical director of the Azal club out there and would remain in Azerbaijan for more than six years.

  I also took on a Turkish guy by the name of Fatih Kavlak from the Qarabag club to do our technical analyses and physical warm-ups. Otherwise, pretty much everyone working around the club – directors, drivers, stadium operatives – was from the vice president’s family.

  I asked Gary to go and watch the Azerbaijan national team so we could see who might be worth recruiting from among the best in the country. It was important to get good Azerbaijanis due to the regulations on the number of domestic players who had to be in a club team and squad. At that time, it was four in a team, which would a few years later increase to five.

  When I arrived on 28 June for pre-season training, I resolved to give everyone a chance before making too many changes. The squad comprised mainly players from Latvia and Georgia, former Soviet republics too, but I did bring in some of my own, chiefly the Jamaica striker Deon Burton, who had been at many Football League clubs and had just been released by Charlton. He was a durable character up for the adventure, if a bit physical for the league. He would do well, go on to be leading scorer, though would get frustrated with referees.

  An old friend, Gary Walker, who owned and ran the Palm Beach soccer academy in Florida, also knew of young Brazilian players developed by the Sao Paulo academy and I took three with potential. They were all gambles and only one, Silva, really went on to do well.

  I also wanted to do pre-season in Gabala itself, to familiarise myself with our environment. Usually they went to the resort of Antalya in Turkey and I think I disorientated a few people around the club who didn’t like change. It saved the club $100,000 which I thought could be better spent elsewhere.

  It helped that Poppy and the kids came out with me – Atticus now six, Hector four and Iris six months – and we took six boxes of personal stuff to make the hotel rooms seem more homely. The first hotel we were in, the Riverside, looked from the outside like it had all mod cons, and advertised them, though it didn’t quite work out like that.

  It did have a new amusement park next door, but it was barely used during our time there. The kids loved it, especially having all the rides, the bumper cars, the waltzer and the skating rink, to themselves. The lovely young guy who ran it, Ismet, used to give me the keys so I could open and shut it for them myself if it was out of hours. It spoiled the kids for when they went to Chessington and had to queue.

  Just as the hotel’s professionalism in those days was a facade, so too at the club. Within days, I was wondering where to start with it all. In fact, that Tom Jones song ‘Delilah’ kept going through my head, though I would change the chorus to ‘Why, Why, Why Gabala?’

  On day one, there were no balls, bibs, or cones. It was like a Sunday league club. Then when the equipment did arrive, the next day the balls would not be pumped up properly. When I talked to people working around the training ground and the club about it all, they would just smile and nod, but actually they were showing me no respect.

  Apparently, they were used to people shouting at them. And so I did. First, I made them watch as I kicked every ball out of the training ground. I then assembled all the staff in the hall – the hangar that served as the venue for everything at the club – and lost it with them, by design. I didn’t wait for a translator to interpret my words. He was not needed. They got the picture. And from that day, the attitude changed.

  We did reasonably well in the first four games despite the circumstances of the club. Against the top teams – Neftchi Baku, Khazar Lankaran, Qarabag and Inter Baku – we won one and lost the other three by the odd goal. I recall my first press conference at an away game, against Lankaran. There was one cameraman and one reporter there and the conference consisted of two questions:

  ‘Do you like it here in Lankaran?’ was the first.

  ‘Yes, it’s very nice,’ I replied.

  ‘How long will you stay in Azerbaijan?’ was the second.

  ‘Hopefully a long time,’ was my reply.

  And that was it. Nothing about the game, which we had lost 1-0. I would have tried to be gracious in defeat. That would not always be reciprocated during my time in the country, however. I encountered a few managers who had plenty to say for themselves.

  Early on, I also held a ‘fans’ forum’ at Gabala. Around 20 people showed up. The first question I took was about whether David Beckham and/or Roberto Carlos would be coming to the club, as had been rumoured. I tried to give them a long, detailed, honest answer about where the club was, the budget and what we were seeking to achieve. Then came a question from the father of the Azerbaijani centre-forward I had substituted the previous day during a 1-0 win asking me why I had done it.

  It was all interesting stuff, learning about the local mentality, and I knew we would have a battle on our hands to build up the support, and the understanding, of the supporters. In those early days, whenever we went to an away game, we would take about 15 fans on a coach we provided and give them packed lunches. We also paid a few guys in the town to go around and drum up support for home games. Few stayed till the end of the match. They would certainly leave early if you were losing.

  By now Poppy and the kids had gone home, which didn’t help when so much was going wrong and I had no diversion from it. Attitudes may have changed a little within the club after my outburst but logistics and efficiency hadn’t. In fact, over the first six weeks of the season until the end of August, I made a list of things that needed to be fixed but took so long to get sorted – if indeed they did. The list stretched to 23 items.

  For a start, six teams at various age groups would all often turn up to train on the two pitches at the same time. Everyone was in the same colour shirts when training as we had no bibs. So we had to play skins v shirts. There were no showers after training, but then there were no towels even if there had been. The 25 towels and 100 pairs of white socks I ordered somehow didn’t arrive.

  Some of it was trivial but intensely frustrating as I compiled a to-do and to-get list: no microwave in the team bus, the toilets being locked, no DVD player on the bus, no treatment beds, no defibrillator (and one player had a heart problem), no ice machines, no mats, hurdles or mannequins. There was no internet on which to scout players and our website was rarely updated. Nor was the food for the players good enough.

  In addition, I had to sort out unpaid wages and cars for the staff that were promised. Deon Burton was not being reimbursed for taxis. Our long-term visas had not been sorted out and, indeed, our passports were being held so we were unable to go home for a week’s holiday during an international break.

  There were some amusing interludes, such as the day we arrived for training to find cows on the training ground. Apparently, after the military had withdrawn from the site, a local farmer was granted grazing rights in return for conceding the land. The problem was that the cows were on the synthetic pitch trying to eat that, and leaving cow pats all over it. After they were cl
eared up, I think a deal was done for the farmer to graze them elsewhere.

  I recall one game, too, when we were playing in the National Stadium against Qarabag, who had to play all their games in Baku because their region was the subject of a bitter dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the two countries were technically still at war. Before the game, there was dog mess on the pitch and I called the groundsman over. He duly moved it with a shovel – into a long jump pit next to the surrounding athletics track.

  There was another time when, before training, we were doing a light weights session in the gym I had set up inside the hangar when we heard a loud bang. We all went outside to find out what it was and saw, about 100 metres away, a group of soldiers on manoeuvres. In fact, they were chucking hand grenades into large mounds of earth that had been created by the work on new pitches.

  I was assured we would be fine to train but every now and then there would be a loud bang and the players hit the deck. After a while, we got used to it. At the end, I spoke to Fariz, the club VP. I told him that I wanted to respect the army’s activities but could they let us know in advance when they might be coming? In the event, they didn’t come back.

  I felt like I was constantly problem-solving and growing more annoyed by the week. One day, I wanted some tea after training but there was none. And so I went to a nearby catering college to get the students to provide it. A lot of it was teething troubles and miscommunication, but the doubt that I had done the right thing in coming here was growing. I felt as if I was swimming upstream.

  I was referring things to Alastair Saverimutto but it soon became clear that Fariz was actually running the club. All his men were around, observing all the time. It was tricky because the VP’s brother-in-law was the previous manager and the club was keeping him on. I made him the assessor of our opponents so that he wasn’t really around, but the reports were sketchy.