How to Be a Footballer

CONTENTS Cover About the Book About the Author Title Page Prologue Dressing-rooms Superstitions Cars Defenders Tattoos Training grounds Clothes Volleys Team bus Droughts Celebrations Interviews Houses Transfers Music Abuse Headers Haircuts Goalkeepers Going Out Champions League vs FA Cup Endorsements Hotels Social media Gerrard Picture Section Acknowledgements Photo Credits Copyright ABOUT THE BOOK You become a footballer because you love football. And then you are a footballer, and you’re suddenly in the strangest, most baffling world of all. A world where one team-mate comes to training in a bright red suit with matching top-hat, cane and glasses, without any actual glass in them, and another has so many sports cars they forget they have left a Porsche at the train station. Even when their surname is incorporated in the registration plate. So walk with me into the dressing-room, to find out which players refuse to touch a football before a game, to discover why a load of millionaires never have any shower-gel, and to hear what Cristiano Ronaldo says when he looks at himself in the mirror. ABOUT THE AUTHOR First things first: yes I am very tall, no the weather isn’t different up here, and no I don’t play basketball. Glad that’s out the way. I’ve been a professional footballer for 20 years, have 42 England caps, have scored over 100 Premier League goals and hold the record for the most headed goals in Premier League history. I’ve been at a fair few clubs too, including Queens Park Rangers, Portsmouth, Aston Villa, Norwich, Southampton, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Tottenham Hotspur, Stoke and England. In my time I’ve been promoted, relegated, won trophies, gone months without scoring, been bought, sold, loaned and abused-and I’ve loved almost every moment of it. PROLOGUE I always wanted to be a footballer. Of course I did. Not a basketball player, as I get asked on a daily basis, or a roofer who doesn’t need to use a ladder, or a zookeeper who can talk to the giraffes face to face. We’ll get on to all that business in a while. In the meantime, no, the weather isn’t different up here, thanks for asking. Glad we’ve got that out of the way. Now. You become a footballer because you love football, because you spent your childhood doing overhead kicks against the fencing round the tennis courts in the local park, because you watched the World Cup on telly and fell in love with the goals and the kits and the passion and the excitement and the team song with the rap bit in it. You become a footballer because you keep going, even when a director of football keeps sending you out on loan to non-league clubs, when your early appearances are greeted by laughter and chants of ‘Freak! Freak! Freak!’ and ‘Does the circus know you’re here?’ and you walk off at half-time to see your dad wrestling with a load of fans who’ve been abusing his son in front of his face. You become a footballer because you can trap a ball much better than anyone expects of a bloke your shape, and volley it in a way that confuses people who have set ideas about what a player your size is for, and then learn to head it as well as everyone assumes you could anyway. You become a footballer because you love football. And then you are a footballer, and you’re suddenly in the strangest, funniest, most baffling world of all. A world where one team-mate comes to training in a bright-red suit with matching top hat and cane and glasses without any glass in them, and another spends his evening hiring a Ferrari, parking it outside a nightclub and then lying on the bonnet directly in the eyeline of all the girls coming out. A world where players buy cars so big they can’t park them or become so blasé about how many sports cars they own that they forget they have left a Porsche at the train station. Even when their surname is incorporated in the registration plate. You look around you, and you try to make sense of it all. The player who gets a tattoo of a chimpanzee wearing glasses and Beats by Dre headphones and kissing the barrel of a gun. The team-mate whose preparation for a big game is turning up with a Tesco’s bag containing the same four items of food every single time. The fellow striker who sends a tweet and then replies to it as if it’s a text message from a stranger, starting a conversation with himself that the whole world can see. I’ve seen football change over the past 20 years. I’ve been promoted, relegated, won big trophies, gone months without scoring, played for my country at World Cups, been bought, sold, loaned and abused. I think I have a good understanding now of how it works: the tactics, the transfers, the endorsements and the nights out, the glory nights, the wild celebrations, the times when you can’t score even when you’re two yards out and the goalkeeper is lying on his back behind you. I’ve made my own mistakes. I don’t have any tattoos, but that’s mainly because none of my limbs are wide enough to support a visible image. I have owned ridiculous cars, at least until an infamous run-in with Roy Keane put me right. I have stood in terrible nightclubs listening to music I hated, at least until ten days in Ayia Napa taught me a lesson I could never forget. There have been clothes I have bought that cost more than the industrial sewing machines on which they were made. I have never carried a Louis Vuitton man-bag which contains nothing but my own personal hairdryer, but it was close. And so the time feels right to take you inside this world – past the bouncers, round the velvet rope, into the madness and fun and weirdness of life as a footballer. To take you with me onto the team bus and show you how the rules work on who can sit where and with whom, to open the door on footballers’ houses and try to understand when an orangery became a must-have accessory. To come with me on a night out, where I will be badgered by strangers to do the Robot and fellow players will walk around in caps, despite caps being banned, and sunglasses, despite the fact that it’s a nightclub and thus already very dark. Walk with me into the dressing-room, to find out which players refuse to touch a football before a game, to discover why a load of millionaires never have any shower gel, to hear what Cristiano Ronaldo says when he looks at himself in the mirror. Lurk on the back post to understand the perfect technique for heading that incoming cross into the top corner or cracking it on the volley with the outside of your foot if it swings behind you. Listen to the stories about how to beat that particular defender there and why the full- back charging in at you is not to be messed with and why that goalkeeper is quite honestly the strangest person you will ever share a penalty area with. We will go into post-match interviews, make fools of ourselves on social media and try to ensure that we never again pay £250 for a haircut that should have cost a tenner. We’ll be coached and cajoled by Harry Redknapp, upset Rafa Benítez with an ill-judged leather jacket and be soothed by the sound of an accordion played by Tord Grip. There will be some very bad music and some very bad decisions. But it will be fun, all of it, and like nothing you have seen or read before. I am Peter Crouch. This is How to Be a Footballer. Shall we? DRESSING-ROOMS Come with me inside football. Come with me into the inner sanctum, and to all the other secret places in football too. The dressing-room. Sixteen players, the manager, all the assistants, the medical staff. And yet the man who has all the power is the kitman. Once the kitman has chosen a peg for you, that’s it. Every home match you will be given the same spot. In every away dressing-room the order of players will be the same. Try and sit in a different place and there will be uproar: why are you doing this, and why are you doing this now, just before kick-off in a game we have to win? There will be method behind his system. You might be put in a little row of mates, or grouped together by position. Striker with strike partner, central defender with central defender, goalkeeper on the end by himself. At home your locker will be numbered, with a framed photo of you in action by your spot. Ideally with you looking dominant, or scoring a goal, or generally looking heroic. A little glance at it just before you head out onto the pitch, like a visual pat on the back, a fist-pump, a ‘you’ve got this, big man’. The dressing-room at the stadium is a different place to the training ground. They might serve the same purpose but the vibe is far more serious. You meet before matches at the training ground, take the coach to the stadium, and the fun stops.

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