My knee felt unstable and I started to spiral into depression. I didn’t leave my house except to go to training. I wouldn’t take my kids to school because I didn’t want to be in the car too long in case my knee stiffened up. I wouldn’t go out with the kids because I didn’t want to walk around in case my knee reacted. I went out for an easy jog once and it swelled up even after that.
I really feared for my career. I thought ‘this is how it is going to end’. I just couldn’t get the swelling down no matter what I did. It left me miserable. I felt like I was letting everyone down. I wasn’t nice to be around. I didn’t speak to anyone. My wife bore the brunt as usual. I never took her anywhere. I locked myself in my own world.
What an irony that was. I was playing for my home-town club so I could spend time with my family and yet I couldn’t have been further away. I wasn’t there. I was in the house every day but I slept in a different bed to my wife. I even had an altitude chamber built specially for my bed, so I ended up camped out in that a lot because I thought that would help my knee. I was a poor husband and I was a poor father at that time. I thought this was the end of my career and I started trying to prepare myself for that.
I was worried about the reaction in Cardiff. More than anywhere else, I didn’t want to let people down in my home town. It was the one place I wanted to be remembered. I didn’t want to be a failure here. I always wanted to be a hero here more than anywhere else. It is where I am from. It is where I grew up. It is where so many of my friends are, where my family is, where my kids are.
I wanted to be able to achieve something with the club that no one else had been able to achieve and to be remembered for that. I am not saying I wanted a statue but I wanted the affection that would come with having been able to do something for my own people.
And the crushing, awful thing was that I just wasn’t able to do that. It pushed me into the destructive cycle of isolating myself from everyone. I hardly spoke to the other players. My friends had seen more of me when I lived away. I had enjoyed better quality time with my wife and kids when I was away. I tortured myself and I tortured the people who love me most by being so distant.
Eventually, around Christmas, the misery started to lift a little bit. The work I had been doing on my knee, the rest it had been getting between matches, finally began to pay dividends. It took me a while to get my sharpness back. I still had to get up to speed, but I started to feel better. My confidence returned. I started to play to my potential.
By the beginning of February, I felt sharp again. We played Swansea at the Liberty Stadium, both of us near the top of the table, both of us vying to be the first Welsh club to make it in to the Premier League, both of us desperate not to be beaten to the honour by our most bitter rival. It wasn’t a great game but with five minutes left, Aaron Ramsey, who was on loan to us from Arsenal, passed me the ball 20 yards out and I curled it round the Swansea keeper, Dorus de Vries, for the winner. It was the first time Cardiff had beaten Swansea on their own patch since 1997 and I knew how much it meant to the fans. Like I said, I was one of them. That goal, that win, brought me a lot of happiness.
It also took us above Swansea and into third place in the table, behind QPR and Nottingham Forest. I felt we had a good chance of automatic promotion. QPR were away and gone but I felt it would be between us, Swansea and Norwich for second place. I did realise quite quickly, though, that it was a hell of a difficult division to get out of.
The quality of football is not the same as the Premier League and there are a lot of managers with the same philosophy which basically revolves around playing safe, percentage football. A couple of clubs played differently, like Norwich and Swansea. They played a diamond formation and tried to pass the ball and by and large, they were rewarded for it.
Some managers got success from being brave and some didn’t. The ones who didn’t were gone pretty quickly and replaced by managers who are more ‘Championship’. By that, I mean a switch in play is fairly rare, patience on the ball is rare, keeping hold of possession for more than a couple of passes is rare. Decision making on the ball is not at the same level. That’s why we were playing in the Championship.
It wasn’t a great dressing room at Cardiff that season. Dave Jones had been at the club since 2005. He had got the club to the play-offs and to the FA Cup final. He had done a great job for Cardiff and that should always be remembered. But by the time I joined the club, training was easy going. It wasn’t intense. A couple of times, a player just didn’t bother turning up for training and it seemed to go almost unnoticed.
Michael Chopra’s problems with gambling are well known now but he was so caught up in his betting that he would be pawing over his phone at half-time in matches to check how his wagers had fared. Once, during the match against Bristol City at Ashton Gate on New Year’s Day, one of the coaches hid his phone because they wanted him to concentrate on the half-time team talk. When he came in at the interval and couldn’t find it, he went mad. He said he wasn’t going out for the second half until he found it. And he meant it. I was looking at this scene unfolding and thinking ‘what the fuck is going on here?’
We would be travelling to a game on a Friday and the horse racing would be on the television. Fucking hell. I had to bite my lip a lot. Sometimes it was unbearable but I didn’t go crazy about it at first because I was caught up in my own self-pity about my knee. My own insecurities and self-doubt came to the fore more than they ever had.
But as the season approached its climax, the fitter and sharper I got and the more able I felt to start saying what I felt. There had been no point me digging anybody out before that. How could I when I wasn’t playing up to the standards I set myself either? But I got to a point in the season when I couldn’t accept what I was seeing from some of my teammates.
We played Barnsley at the Cardiff City Stadium in the middle of March and allowed them to come from behind twice. The second time they equalised, in the last minute, was a particularly sloppy goal to concede. The game finished 2-2 and we dropped to fourth in the table. That was it for me then. I went back into the dressing room after the game and let it all go.
“This is bullshit,” I started yelling. “We are not training at anywhere near the intensity we need. If someone doesn’t track a runner in training, how do we expect them to track a runner in a game? That’s what just happened now. That’s why we conceded that goal. But it’s fine. No one says anything.”
I didn’t have a direct go at Dave Jones but I had a go at his fitness people, his coaches and one or two players as well. And I felt better.
“We’ve got nine games left,” I told them. “We win all nine and we are promoted. We win eight and we are promoted. Let’s fucking get this together now and save what we have got otherwise we won’t even make the play-offs.”
I felt fresh by then. I felt fit and I felt ready. I was ready to make an impact and I wanted the rest of them to get on board. I thought we could do it. No one could catch QPR, although there was a suggestion towards the end of the season that they might be docked points for some player irregularities. I’m glad that didn’t happen. They deserved to go up.
But we had a chance of second. It was between us and Norwich. With three games left, we beat Preston at Deepdale to send them down. Norwich were playing Derby at Carrow Road and if they got anything other than a win, we would move ahead of them into second place.
Robbie Savage was playing for Derby at the time and I spoke to him the day before their game with Norwich. I told him that if they won, I would give them £30,000 to share between them all. Pay for a night out, have a meal, do whatever you want. I told Sav I’d even give them the money if they got a draw. That’s how desperate I was.
And you know what happened? They were drawing 2-2 and we were back in the dressing room at Deepdale after beating Preston. We thought Norwich had blown it and then they fucking won it in the fifth minute of injury time. I looked at our players when that result came in and they were on the floor.
; I tried to rally them.
“Good luck to Norwich for doing that,” I said, “but fuck it, we’ll go and win the next game. There’s still everything to play for.”
We had a full week then until our final home game of the season, against Middlesbrough. During that week, there were two Player of the Year parties. It was the worst timing ever. I couldn’t believe it. Everyone was patting each other on the back and saying we were going up. We had too many weak characters and after one of the awards ceremonies, four or five players went out on the lash in the city centre.
Training that week was poor. Even in the warm-up before the Middlesbrough game, I kicked the ball away in disgust twice because everything was just so sloppy. I knew what was going to go down. I knew what was happening. We weren’t ready. We didn’t look like a team with a defiant mentality. We were 3-0 down after 21 minutes and that was the way it stayed. Norwich won 1-0 at Portsmouth and claimed the second automatic promotion spot. We were in the play-offs.
I had another go at the players after the game. I said I knew players had gone out on the lash in the week and now we had all paid for it. We went to Turf Moor to play Burnley in our last game and drew. We didn’t even finish third in the end. Swansea finished above us so we were to play Reading in one semi-final and Swansea were to face Forest in the other.
Out of the four sides in the play-offs, Swansea were the best. No two ways about it. If we had had to play Swansea over two legs, Swansea probably would have been too strong for us. But if we got past Reading and they beat Forest, I thought we had a better chance against them in a one-off game at Wembley. In the heat of a South Wales derby and the tension of a final, I thought we might be able to beat them.
Forest and Swansea drew 0-0 at the City Ground in the first leg of their semi-final. We played Reading the next day at the Madejski Stadium.
My hamstrings felt incredibly tight and after about 15 minutes one of them went. I limped around for a couple of minutes and then I had to come off. It was only a strain but I knew it was probably the end of my involvement in the play-offs. We played well enough in the rest of the match and got a 0-0 draw.
Everybody was tipping us as the favourites to go through now. People were making plans for Cardiff-Swansea at Wembley. Security plans were swinging into action. People were talking about service stations on the M4 being closed on the day of the final because they were so worried about fighting between the rival sets of fans.
Swansea kept their side of the bargain when they beat Forest 3-1 at the Liberty in their second leg. But when I got to the Cardiff City Stadium a couple of hours before our second leg against Reading and saw the lads in the changing rooms, I had a bad feeling about it. We had gone mentally. We weren’t strong enough. We were scared of it. There was a lot of pressure on us in Cardiff in front of our home fans who had come so close in past seasons. It was a game for characters and for people to take responsibility and we didn’t have the mentality to rise to that.
We started well but then we conceded a comedy goal. They say that usually goals are conceded when teams make consecutive errors. Well, this was a quadruple fuck-up. Jlloyd Samuel attempted a long back pass from near the halfway line but it smacked into Kevin McNaughton’s head. It ricocheted towards goal and our keeper, Stephen Bywater, came hurtling out to try and clear it from Shane Long.
But Bywater miskicked the attempted clearance and it cannoned into Long. He reacted instinctively and lobbed the ball towards the empty net from the edge of the area. It looped slowly into the goal. There was less than half an hour gone but it was such a ridiculous goal that it left us totally deflated. They scored again just before half-time and finished things off six minutes from the end. We lost 3-0. The dream of winning promotion was over.
I watched the game from my box at the stadium. It was painful. I had to be a man and go down and congratulate the Reading players afterwards and see everyone. Then I went on a two-day drinking binge to try to escape the pain. It doesn’t make it better. It never has. But it was the only way I could cope with it. I am not a huge drinker but sometimes it can numb the pain. Then it comes back worse.
The fact that Swansea won the play-off final and were promoted added an edge to the disappointment. I wanted them to go up because they are a Welsh side and I admired their style of play. But I was also aware that it was a bitter blow for Cardiff fans who were still reeling from the manner of our defeat against Reading. We were supposed to be the first Welsh side in the Premier League, not Swansea.
I felt like I had let everyone down. I’d played well towards the end of the season and helped to give us a real chance of automatic promotion. But it wasn’t enough. I was out for too long. I came back too late. I tortured myself about whether I should have tried to come back earlier. I analysed everything over and over again and drove myself mad.
I had a miserable summer. I didn’t know where I was going to end up. There wasn’t really any chance of me staying at Cardiff. They would have had to buy me outright from Manchester City and they didn’t have the money either to pay the transfer fee or to pay my wages. Dave Jones was fired and Malky Mackay, the Watford boss, got the job. I had played with Malky at Norwich City. I liked him and admired him. I thought it was a wise choice.
He came round to my house to see me. We had a frank discussion. I told him I felt the club was nowhere near right in things like sports science, nutrition and professionalism. He needed to get all that right. His year was going to be all about gaining his identity as a manager for the club and improving its professionalism. He knew the best he could hope for that season was the play-offs again. I liked his plans and we agreed to keep in touch but I wanted one more shot at the Premier League.
Spurs were interested and so were Liverpool. But it was only interest. Nothing concrete. So I was left with no option but to go back to City. I wasn’t in Mancini’s plans, of course, but I made up my mind to train hard and try and make the most of a bad situation. I had to get into good shape so that when a club did come in for me, I would be ready to go.
At the start of pre-season training, I was told to report with the Elite Development Squad, which is like a mix between the youth team and the reserves. It was also a euphemism for a holding pen for a group of outcasts and rejects.
There were a lot of good kids in the squad and there was also me, Adebayor, Nedum Onuoha, Roque Santa Cruz and Wayne Bridge. Part of me felt a little bit embarrassed, a bit demeaned. I would never treat an established player like that if I was a club manager. I have had 70 caps for my country. I had been a good player for City. And, even after the odd difference I had had with Mancini, to be told I was with the kids disappointed me. I expected it, I suppose, and it was obvious my only real option was to suck it up.
So I trained as hard as I could. I didn’t take any short cuts. I wanted to set a good example to the kids, not degrade them. I remembered when I was a kid at Norwich, the older players who used to come down to train us now and again were pricks. Their attitude was shite. They moaned at you. They wouldn’t try.
I wasn’t going to do that. I wanted to conduct myself better than that. Maybe I was at an age where I was starting to think about more than just myself. I was starting to think about my responsibilities to the game a little bit. I moaned, of course, but that’s normal for me. It wasn’t because I was with the kids.
I played at some of the outposts of football in the north west. I played at Hyde. I played at Altrincham. I played at Stalybridge Celtic. Hardly any fans there. Rubbish changing rooms. Week nights under dim lights. Kids trying to make a name for themselves. I tried my hardest.
I had the option not to play in the games but I wanted to play. I wanted to make sure that whoever was watching, they could see I was showing the right attitude and trying to improve the young players around me. I gained some satisfaction from making the best of a bad situation.
When the season drew a bit closer, some players who had been on tour in the States with the first team filtered back down to us
. One of them was the manager’s son, Filippo Mancini. That was really the only time when the situation tested me. But I kept my head down and got on with it.
I had one more year left on my contract at City and as the season approached, they began to negotiate a deal to pay me off. Garry Cook was in charge of that and I think he admired the way I had knuckled down and tried to set an example to the kids. Before the season began, we came to an agreement. It was a very fair settlement.
I think they thought I would go to QPR and I did speak to Neil Warnock, who was the manager there at the time. Stoke offered a really good deal, too. But the interest from Liverpool and Spurs was getting stronger.
On transfer deadline day at the end of August, I was training with Wales in Cardiff in preparation for the home game against Montenegro and both Damien Comolli, Liverpool’s director of football, and the Spurs boss, Harry Redknapp, were ringing me.
Liverpool took the initiative. They sent a helicopter to Cardiff to pick me up and fly me to Merseyside. As soon as we landed in Liverpool, Harry was on the phone telling me not to sign. I told him I would do my medical and see what happened. I wanted a two-year deal and both Spurs and Liverpool agreed to that. I was still undecided.
There was an element of farce about deadline day, as there often seems to be. I was in Liverpool’s MRI scanner at one point when the lady who was operating it turned it off because she said my adviser needed to speak to me.
He said Spurs had matched the deal Liverpool were offering me and had even waived the need for me to do a medical. They had laid on an office and were going to fax the contract to it for me to sign.
It was tough. I thought Tottenham were probably the better team but Liverpool were in my heart. I had unfinished business at Liverpool, too.
It had never really felt right playing under Rafa and I wanted to have better memories of playing for the club I loved.
Kenny Dalglish, one of my great heroes, was in charge now, too. I decided to sign for Liverpool.
Craig Bellamy - GoodFella Page 27