by Simon Hughes
Later, when Spackman was managing Sheffield United and Nicol was a player with Sheffield Wednesday, the pair met up for a pint.
‘I went home at about midnight and I left Steve in the pub. The next morning I got a call off his missus. “Where’s Steven?” She later found him in the utility room with one leg hanging outside the dog flap. His key was in his pocket, but for some reason Steve had climbed through the dog flap and fallen asleep.’
Nicol’s antics away from the pitch never affected his performances on it.
‘Steve has to be one of the most underrated players in Liverpool’s history. If the manager asked him to play anywhere, he’d do it well. He was a drinker, and all the lads took the piss out of him because he could be daft, but you only have to look at his success as a coach in America to understand that he wasn’t as silly as some people may have thought.’
When out in the city centre, the Liverpool squad would bump into players from Everton.
‘Howard Kendall used to take his players for a Chinese at the Yuet Ben [on Upper Duke Street in Liverpool’s city centre] whenever the team had a bad result. It was intended to boost spirits. We went for a Chinese regularly, too. When I first signed for Liverpool, I was invited by all the squad to go for a meal with their wives. I was alone because I’d just driven up from London. I remember the restaurant had a table that twizzled around. One of the lads did it and all the food fell on Ronnie Whelan’s wife, Elaine. There was a fridge there and Rushy was in charge of replenishments, so he made sure everybody had a drink. I was thinking, “Is this Liverpool Football Club – is this really what they do?”’
Inside a fiercely competitive dressing-room, Spackman says that he fitted in well – despite being one of only two southern-born players in the squad. Since Bill Shankly became manager in 1959, the club had targeted players with a northern background – initially an idea to help new signings settle quickly. ‘We concentrated on Lancashire and other players nearby, and we picked up Alec Lindsay and Steve Heighway. Bill wanted locally based lads, and even fellas like Clemence and Keegan weren’t too far away. We didn’t bring them from hundreds of miles away and that helped them settle,’ chief scout Geoff Twentyman once said. Few southerners played for Liverpool with any distinction throughout Shankly’s reign and then after him until Paul Walsh signed for the club in 1984, unless you include Phil Neal, who was born in Irchester and sometimes talks with a pseudo-Cockney accent. Considering Neil Ruddock (born in Wandsworth), Phil Babb (Lambeth) and David James (Watford) were all signed in the ’90s with no success as well as not really feeling like Liverpool players, it’s understandable why Shankly and Twentyman preferred to shop in the north. Yet Spackman was different.
‘I loved the fact that I was an “outsider” inside the best team in the country,’ Spackman says. ‘Living in London is quite tough, and you have to be streetwise. So I was quite prepared for Liverpool. If you couldn’t handle it, it would have been easy to go under. It had a positive effect on team performances as well, because if you came through it, it made you supremely confident on the pitch. You began to feel that the banter at Liverpool was supreme to everywhere else and that if an opposing player tried to take the piss during a game, you’d be prepared with something to throw back at him because you were a Liverpool player and Liverpool players were quick in the mind. It almost made you feel like all the other players in the other teams across the league were stupid.’
In 1987–88, Liverpool made a lot of teams look stupid, swaggering to the title with games to spare. It could have been a double had they beaten Wimbledon in the FA Cup final.
‘Wimbledon were a side who weren’t afraid to talk on the pitch,’ Spackman says. ‘We knew that from the occasions when we’d beaten them in the league. Always talking, trying to wind you up and put you off your game – it was the Wimbledon way. But they didn’t bully us. That was all hype from the media. There were stories about them psyching us out in the tunnel, but it was a load of rubbish. I remember there was a story in one of the papers with Vinny Jones saying he was going to bite Kenny’s ear off and spit it on the floor. It was total bravado. Vinny was all about reputation, but all of the Liverpool lads could see through him because he was so obvious.
‘We lost because they got in front and they defended really well afterwards. We didn’t defend the set play well enough. Had we scored first, we’d have probably won the game. Tactically, they put Dennis Wise out on the right to stop Barnesy, and it worked for them. It just wasn’t to be. The signs were there when me and Gary Gillespie collided the week before the match and had to play with bandages around our heads. But we should have been good enough to beat them.’
When Spackman went away on holiday that summer, he hoped to return to Melwood as a regular fixture in Liverpool’s midfield. Instead, Ronnie Whelan took his place, and by February 1989 Spackman was gone.
‘I felt like I was doing enough to be in the team. I was training well. But me and Rushy [who’d returned from Juventus] were usually the subs, and it was getting to me. I desperately wanted to play. I was hot-headed and asked Kenny for a transfer.’
He regrets the decision.
‘It was my choice to leave and I went back to London with QPR. Within weeks, I was thinking, “What have I done?” My ego probably got in the way of making the right decision. I should have stayed.’
Spackman soon moved to Glasgow Rangers after falling out with boss Trevor Francis.
‘Trevor came in as player-manager and I was asked a question by a TV presenter about whether he was as good as Kenny Dalglish. I said that you couldn’t compare Trevor to Kenny, because Trevor was just a novice trying to find his feet, while Kenny had a lot more experience. Kenny had won a lot more than Trevor. He didn’t like it, so he sold me. I wanted to move anyway, and in the end Trevor got the sack and I went to Glasgow. So I can’t grumble.’
As the ’80s became the ’90s, Rangers were a club on the up.
‘When Graeme Souness became Rangers manager, he turned them into Liverpool by playing the Liverpool way and training the Liverpool way. He really did turn the club around, and for a period they were probably the biggest club in Britain in terms of stadium, support, success and finance. He knew exactly what he wanted and signed a lot of players, including me.
‘Graeme spoke to me about Liverpool all the time, and when the job actually came up [after Dalglish resigned in 1991], I think he was frightened that John Toshack was going to get it. He was really keen on returning to the club because, even though he was happy at Rangers, he was having a lot of problems with the SFA and getting fined all the time. He was a major success as a player, and he really thought that he could do the same as a manager. Graeme tried to sign me back for Liverpool at the same time he signed Mark Walters, but David Murray, the Rangers chairman, wouldn’t let me go. I would have loved to have gone back with Graeme. With hindsight, maybe he will admit that he tried to change things too quickly by throwing the baby out with the bathwater by getting rid of people that could have helped him.’
After another spell at Stamford Bridge with Chelsea, Spackman tried management with Sheffield United and Barnsley.
‘At Sheffield, I took over from Howard Kendall, who had built a very good team. I added to the squad of players and we were doing very well. On the week I eventually resigned, we were fourth from top in the Championship, with a great chance of going up given the run-in we had. We were also in the quarter-final of the FA Cup as well. [They eventually lost to Newcastle, managed by Kenny Dalglish.] Unfortunately, the chairman and chief executive started selling players without my permission. I was arriving at training on a Thursday, two days before a match, to be told that Brian Deane was going to Benfica and Jan Fjørtoft was going to Barnsley. Ten days later, Don Hutchinson was sold to Everton. So I resigned out of principle. I was young to it at the time and maybe I acted too hastily, but I thought we had a good chance of success and it was being undermined. I soon got a call from Roy Evans asking me to come to Liverpool as a f
irst-team coach, but Gérard Houllier was appointed as joint-manager instead.’
As my time with Spackman comes towards an end, he talks about his current ‘project’ at the Glenn Hoddle Academy in Spain. ‘It’s a place where young footballers that have been released by clubs get a second chance. And it means I get to spend four months of the year in the sun.’
He finishes by explaining that a major regret from his time at Liverpool was not scoring a single goal.
‘I hit a post once against Manchester United. But the only time I scored at Anfield was for Chelsea in front of the Kop end. It was a penalty against Bruce. And he did the wobbly legs.’
CHAPTER NINE
GENIUS, John Barnes
JOHN BARNES SEEMS RESTLESS.
It appears that he doesn’t want to be here, waiting for yet another television appearance. He’d probably rather be on a touchline, pointing players in the right direction; he’d rather be in a dugout, slumped with exasperation when his instructions have been misunderstood; he’d rather be in the office, planning training routines that may or may not help his side to three points.
Brief spells in charge of Celtic and Tranmere Rovers did not work out, although an intervening 12 months with the Jamaican national team was more successful. ‘People forget about that,’ he says regretfully.
Barnes’s attire may indicate that he is relaxed. But there is an impression that he is not. He sports a silver-coloured silk shirt, buttoned three-quarters of the way to the top, revealing a few strands of chest fuzz. He also wears blue jeans that have certainly been ironed. There are also those brown sandals with his toes poking out the end. These days he is a little more round than the brilliant athlete who became Footballer of the Year in 1988.
He sits opposite me on a leather couch at the studios of Liverpool Football Club’s official television channel, located in the centre of the city. He twitches and re-adjusts his posture constantly. One minute his arm is draped across the suite. Then he jolts forward and suddenly his legs are crossed like the fleshy tangled roots of an oak tree. He can’t get comfortable.
‘I have media contracts with companies in South Africa, Dubai and Malaysia,’ he says. ‘But I want to manage or get a steady job at home, be closer to my family. At this stage of my life, I still think it’s what I do best.’ Barnes still lives on Wirral, and has seven children, three from his second marriage.
He pauses, then adds, ‘Quite quickly, people forget about you. It’s difficult to get back in.’
Barnes naturally talks at the kind of pace at which he used to dribble a ball. His passion for the game has not diminished, despite disappointments in management and the lack of opportunities to prove himself again. He admits that Celtic, particularly, was toxic for his reputation. At Parkhead, his voice carried limited authority, the fans wanted Kenny Dalglish, and ‘the goldfish bowl’ of Glasgow magnified his mistakes, such as when he referred to opponents in a press conference as ‘Dundee’, when really they were Dundee United. It prompted headlines across national newspapers like ‘Barnes does not know who Celtic are facing’. A significant lesson, however, was learnt.
‘It taught me a lot but one thing above all,’ he says, leaning forward again. ‘My thinking towards football used to revolve around concerning myself with what happens on the pitch: with the players, the matches. But now you have to know more about the people you are working for. That’s the owners and directors. What goes on off the field really impacts on what goes on on it, when really all you want to do is get on with your job.’ José Mourinho and Rafael Benítez would concur. In every managerial position they have held over the last decade, there has been a fight for a controlling influence, albeit sometimes out of choice. ‘Without being the main man, you can do nothing,’ Barnes insists.
For a decade after Celtic, Barnes applied for a host of jobs and in many cases was denied even an interview. At Tranmere, he was given a chance but was sacked after less than four months in charge.
‘I just wasn’t given enough time,’ he says bluntly, without explaining the problems that went on in the boardroom at Prenton Park. Jason McAteer, his assistant, once told me in an interview that Barnes’s playing budget was halved within a month of arriving at the club. ‘What chance did we have?’ McAteer wondered.
Barnes says now that, despite his appetite for returning to management, he would only take a job if the circumstances were right. ‘I’m happy to manage at any level. I’d rather be a number one with a Conference than be a number two in the Premier League. But I’d need to be able to trust the people I work with. Without trust amongst the people that really matter at a football club, you’re always going to struggle.’
Barnes has a balanced perspective on life. He says his values stem from a childhood amongst army brigadiers and generals in a prosperous barrack suburb of Kingston, Jamaica. His father, a colonel in Jamaica’s Defence Force, and his mother, a senior academic lecturer on science of the mind, raised their children with a mixture of discipline and positive thinking.
Barnes was brought up with a sense of self-assurance. He understood that racism was institutionalised in the UK but viewed it as a belief of the uneducated. It didn’t affect him like it might others. In his eyes, he was always better than that. Just as Howard Gayle was a creation of his upbringing, so was Barnes. Gayle was used to confronting racism for as long as he can remember; Barnes did not have to.
Barnes’s personality meant that he was the kind of person that everybody could get on with. His ability helped, too. When Everton supporters hurled bananas at him at Goodison Park during an FA Cup tie in 1988, he responded by delicately flicking them with his heel back towards the touchline. His reaction on the pitch epitomised the player. Moments later he would glide down the wing and arch a cross for Ray Houghton to score at the Park End.
‘I grew up in a middle-class family and I had no self-esteem issues at all. For someone to call me a black this or that doesn’t make any sense to me. I consider people who use those words as ignorant. Why should I let it affect me when it doesn’t? That’s why I can’t give advice about what to do in that situation, because you have to be true to your own beliefs. If you have to kick some guy in the chest, like Eric Cantona did [when being abused], that’s what you have to do. You can’t be judge and jury, because everyone is different.’
Barnes displays an impressive meld of intelligence and understanding (a word he uses regularly) that makes him try to look at the opposite point of view to appreciate a subject matter better.
‘Racist comments remain inside football stadiums today, but the chanting, at least in this country, has gone,’ he says. ‘But that doesn’t mean the problem has disappeared. Does that mean that racism doesn’t exist? Or does it just mean that a person says nothing for 90 minutes, but for the rest of the week thinks and says otherwise? Football can try to take a lead, but people need to be educated properly to get rid of racism in society. It is not – and never has been – just football’s problem.’
Barnes arrived in England during the early winter months of 1976. It was a time of social chaos and political shifts. A Labour government grappled with power only to let it slip during a period of sharp economic decline. The National Front, a political party that advocated the expulsion of Britain’s non-white residents, claimed limited but significant success during elections. When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, many NF supporters absconded to her new Conservatism. The majority of these defectors were from the white working class – a demographic that also dominated the English football scene.
In front of the terraces, black players were being introduced on the pitch. At Nottingham Forest, Viv Anderson was marauding up the wing from a full-back position and was soon to become the first black player to represent England; while at West Bromwich Albion and Watford, Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Luther Blissett were becoming key protagonists in emerging teams.
The profile of black footballers was on the rise. But so was the terrace opposition to them. I
n 1978, the National Front launched recruitment and propaganda campaigns outside many London clubs, most prominently at Chelsea and Millwall.
Yet Barnes, aged 12, was shielded. In London, his family first lived in the Selfridge Hotel near Oxford Street before moving into the affluent area of Hampstead. Barnes was enrolled into one of the more reputable inner-city state schools, Marylebone Grammar.
Barnes liked football, but it was not an obsession. Before entering a career in the military, his father, Kenneth, had played as an amateur, managed and become president of the Jamaican national team and the FA. Although the West Indies is more famous for its cricket, and Jamaica, indeed, has provided both batting guile and bowling force, with Michael Holding and Courtney Walsh hailing from the island, football is unchallenged as the sport of the people.
‘Cricket is for Barbados and Antigua,’ Barnes insists. ‘My footballing heroes were all West German. I fell in love with the team of 1974. I could not take my eyes off Franz Beckenbauer and Wolfgang Overath. I’d choose them over Pelé any day of the week. My first pair of boots were also made by adidas.’
Aged 16, Barnes joined Sudbury Court in the Middlesex Premier Division. Scouts soon became interested in the teenager with muscular thighs and ballet feet. Representatives from Ipswich Town, Watford and Queens Park Rangers all paid visits. Barnes, however, had no ambition of becoming a footballer, insisting he wanted to complete his education by taking up a degree in the United States. Undeterred, Watford finally persuaded him to sign a short-term contract at Vicarage Road.