Being John Burridge, the court case was a big story at the time for the press. They were making out I was a bit of a Flash Harry, and even reported that I"d driven off after the hearing in my jeep with personalised plates. Yes, I had a personalised registration number my number plate was A 5AVE but, so what? It didn"t make me criminal kingpin, did it?
I was fined nearly 16,000 and I left the court feeling sick and depressed.
CHAPTER 24.
THE PRIORY TO THE LIFE OF REILLY.
"Not to put too fine a point on it, I became mentally ill. I knew I had to get away from England."
It was a feeling I thought I would never experience, but for the first time in my life I felt like I needed to get out of football, and get out of England, or I would end up losing my mind.
I felt suffocated after my energy-sapping spell in management at Blyth. I did enjoy the job immensely, up to a point, but it got to the intolerable stage where I ended up feeling like I was working myself towards an early grave. It was my own fault for trying to do too much and I"m not blaming anyone else. I tried to juggle the demands of being a manager with my coaching jobs at Leeds and Newcastle and helping out with the sportswear shops too. My state of mind was already fragile enough, but the court case over selling counterfeit goods was probably the straw that broke the camel"s back. Even though I felt that I was being made a scapegoat, I was ashamed to see my name plastered over all the headlines. I became paranoid that people were staring at me and talking about me in the street. People who should have known better seemed happy to judge me without having all the facts, and I knew they all just thought I was on the fiddle. I would probably have felt the same in their shoes, but it"s really hard to take when you"re on the receiving end.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I became mentally ill. I was overworked and way too stressed and eventually that made me suicidal. My age had finally caught up with me and my football career, and I knew there would be no turning the clock back and walking into a top team as their keeper again, even if I had wanted to. I had worked myself into the ground and gone a bit doolally. Weeks after I finished with Blyth, I just wanted to die. As I outlined at the start of the book, I sat in my room for three or four days at a time and wouldn"t come out. I really didn"t care if I died.
After I"d been overpowered in my bedroom, injected in the b.u.m with a sedative and dumped in the Priory, my first thought when I came to was to hatch an escape plan. The staff you find in these places are well trained in how to deal with difficult patients, and I"m sure I would have come firmly into that category in those first few weeks. I must have been a pain in the a.r.s.e. The fact that I"d been sectioned meant that I couldn"t just stroll through the front door and go home. I was there for a reason to make me better and it took me a bit of time to adjust and get my head around that. It wasn"t exactly One Flew Over the Cuckoo"s Nest though, and if you showed the right att.i.tude, then the staff did everything they could to help you get yourself together and get well again.
They started giving me some medication and I calmed down and became an easier patient to deal with. I had the odd setback, but after my initial freak-out at finding myself in there, I started to get a bit better each day. After a while, trust grew on both sides, and I would be allowed to put on my training kit and do a bit of training to help with my therapy. There was one day when I accidentally went out of the gates at the Priory and set off a full-scale alarm. I had only been planning to go for a 20-minute run 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back but as I was jogging down the road, I looked round and could see doctors coming after me and a nurse screaming at the top of her voice: "Johhhhhhn, come back!" They thought I was trying to make a break for it. The nurse had been about 400 yards behind me when I first spotted her, but after I"d jogged on a bit, the next thing I knew she was grabbing hold of my arm she must have been some sort of Olympic athlete to catch me because I was quite a fast runner! They took me back and even though I tried to explain to them that I only wanted to go for a run and I was planning to come back, they put a black mark against me and had me down as a potential escapee. I think I got double medication after that for a few days to stop me in my tracks.
After my group therapy, where I heard the poor woman"s tragic tale about losing her husband and her children in a car crash, I dug deep and got my head properly together. I had positive ideas swimming about my mind, and I just needed to harness them. The healthiest outlook I felt I could take was to try and somehow get a fresh start. I became determined to look forward and not back. I knew I definitely had to get away from England, or I"d run the risk of lapsing right back into depression.
When I came out of the Priory after three months, I thought that there had to be a better life than working your b.o.l.l.o.c.ks off, and not for a fortune either. I was lying on the settee one day and thought to myself: "There"s more to life than this. I"m sick of it p.i.s.sing down and blowing a gale." And that"s when I started thinking about opportunities abroad.
Because I had my coaching licence, I took the bull by the horns and rang up the Scottish Football a.s.sociation where I had sat all my badges and told them I was keen on a move abroad. They were really helpful and printed off a form and sent it to me in Durham, which I filled out and returned. After giving it a bit of thought, my first choice was America, my second choice was Australia and my third choice was Dubai. The SFA uploaded my CV and preferred destinations on to the FIFA coaching page, along with all my details, background and qualifications, and I didn"t have to wait long before I got a call. I was delighted to hear the voice of my old boss at Sheffield United, Ian Porterfield.
Ian said he"d noticed from the website that I might want to come to Dubai. "I can"t help you there, Budgie," he told me, "but I can do the next best thing I"m just a few hours away in Oman." I was upfront with him and explained to him that I"d been in hospital, but he said that wasn"t a problem and he asked me to come out and see him. I had nothing to lose, so I thought "what the h.e.l.l", and a few days later Janet and I got on a plane to Muscat. We stayed in a lovely hotel, and were immediately taken by how friendly the people were. The setting was stunning sunshine, mountains and beaches, and I was well impressed with all the heritage the place had to offer. I thought it was paradise. I had a good chat with Ian, who was in charge of the national team, and he told me he wanted me to come and join his backroom staff as goalkeeping coach. There wasn"t much to think about it was an offer I couldn"t possibly refuse. We kept the house on in Durham in case we ever returned, but our bags were packed for a new life.
To begin with, the team wasn"t that good and the federation wasn"t the most organised, but the lifestyle was absolutely wonderful and it was just what I needed at that time. I had gone from the Priory to living the life of Reilly. Unfortunately, the national team"s results were poor and Ian Porterfield was sacked. Coaches weren"t given long to get results, and unless they somehow put together an immediate winning run, then they would be dispensed with. I was panicking I thought I would be out too because it had been Ian who had brought me in, but the Oman FA were honourable people and not only were they happy to keep me on, but they let me take the national team for a few games while they looked for Ian"s successor. I was happy enough just doing the job on a caretaker basis, because I thought if I took the job permanently it would be like signing my death warrant. It was the kind of job that had a very short lifespan. After Ian"s departure, they first appointed a Brazilian coach, Valdeir Vieira, who was only in the post for a year between 1998 and 1999. He had been a career coach rather than a famous player, but when he left they got one of the biggest names in world football the brilliant full-back from Brazil"s 1970 World Cup-winning team, Carlos Alberto Torres. We got on like a house on fire, and I really enjoyed working under him. He didn"t speak an awful lot of English, but we were able to communicate and he had a brilliant sense of humour.
I found the work really rewarding and I did my best to embrace the culture of Oman, even learning Arabic and a bit of Swahili! Some of the favourite sayings that I would use to coach my goalkeepers were "Ruah alla Toule" (go straight), "Fawk alla Toule" (get up), "Ascut" (be quiet), "Box Filwadga" (punch him in the face) and "Murafani a Hafa Alrwajoul ila mustashfa" (rough translation: "next time, put this man in hospital!").
Even learning a few simple words of the local lingo shows that you are willing to make an effort, and my coaching style was always to talk to the players and encourage them the best I could. It earned me their respect. I couldn"t have stood the thought of having to go through a translator all the time; it would have frustrated the h.e.l.l out of me and it"s not my style anyway. I prefer to communicate with people directly.
I had been coaching in Oman for a couple of years, and was even still playing for the Army team to keep my fitness up, when my life was once again turned upside down. I had a near-death experience, and I consider myself very lucky to have survived.
I was on the road cycling back from a weight training session in the gym one day, when a van pulled in front of me in the cycle lane. Its door swung open without any warning and as I swerved to avoid it I was. .h.i.t by a car travelling at 70mph in the opposite direction. I don"t remember much, but I was knocked off my bike and dragged for 50 yards underneath the car.
My body was battered beyond recognition. The damage I suffered was pretty gruesome and all the medical work I needed does not make for pleasant reading: I had a partially severed left ear, 147 st.i.tches in my face, umpteen operations and skin grafts, 14 damaged teeth, a severely damaged shoulder, a damaged nervous system and one arm was left shorter than the other. People started calling me Steve Austin after the Six Million Dollar Man. But I was the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Budgie all mashed into one!
After that, I was registered 35 per cent disabled and became hooked on Prozac to keep my nerves together. I also needed a h.e.l.l of a lot of counselling. I had spent my whole life priding myself on my fitness, so it was a bitter pill to swallow. I felt like an invalid, and having found such a good life in Oman I felt I was back to square one. It was a terrible time, and I owe a lot to all those who got me through it. Thankfully, there was no question of me having to go home to England. My job was safe and everyone rallied round to make sure I got back on my feet.
I"ll never be allowed to say who was responsible for the accident, as I took them to court backed by the PFA and won compensation, but it was somebody high-profile. I"m just glad that justice was done and that my body was strong enough to heal to some extent. Lifting all those hay bales when I was 12, and a lifetime of weight training, had prepared me for the worst, and thankfully I lived to tell the tale.
CHAPTER 25.
A STAR IS BORN.
"The thing that struck me most about Ali Al-Habsi was that his dedication matched mine."
I got a lot of satisfaction from coaching goalkeepers in Oman they were eager to learn, and to watch them take on board what you"ve taught them and see them make progress before your eyes makes you very proud. It wasn"t long before I discovered my star pupil. I saw this 14-year-old lad playing in goal for a Third Division side and straight away I thought he was fantastic. He couldn"t speak a word of English and was huge for his age. His name was Ali Al-Habsi, and he would go on to become the first player from the Gulf to make it in the English Premier League, first with Bolton and then on loan at Wigan.
I took him under my wing and when I brought him to train with the first team, everyone thought I was crazy. The thing that struck me most about Ali Al-Habsi was that his dedication matched mine. When he was still at school, he lived 15 miles outside Muscat, but he would catch a ramshackle minibus to come and train with me. At 5am he would run one kilometre to the training ground, where I would have the cones set up, ready to put him through his paces before the sun got too hot. He did that every day for a year and a half and I knew he was going to be a professional.
I obviously still had a lot of contacts in England, so I rang Sir Alex Ferguson up at Manchester United, told him I thought the kid could make the grade, and arranged to bring him over for a trial. I went to the federation and asked for them to subsidise two plane tickets, and when they said no, I paid for them myself. We went over to the UK and I took him to United"s training centre at Carrington for a fortnight"s trial, where he was mixing in the company of stars like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ruud van Nistelrooy. I was standing behind the goal, talking to him in Arabic, and when he stood up to a hefty challenge from Van Nistelrooy I shouted to him: "Good, young man!"
Sir Alex thought he was brilliant, but because he was so young there was no way United could arrange a work permit for him, and reluctantly they had to drop their interest. The same problem arose when Manchester City were keen, but I kept trying and took him to Bolton where Sam Allardyce was the manager at the time. Sam is a very intelligent fella, and he worked out that if Ali played in another country for a couple of years, he would be able to build up his number of appearances with the national team and satisfy the demands of obtaining a work permit in the UK. So Ali Al-Habsi went to Lynn Oslo for a couple of years, and proved a sensation there, while also playing the 75 per cent of national games that you needed at the time to come to Britain on a work permit.
However, during my time trying to find Ali a club, I was sacked by the Oman FA basically for sticking up for him in a row with the national coach. Carlos Alberto had left by this time and they had a Czech coach called Milan Macala, with whom I never really saw eye-to-eye. By this time, Ali Al-Habsi had left school and got a job as a fireman, while we tried to get him a professional football club. But when I brought him back to Oman, Macala called him to one side and, in full earshot of me, said: "Ali, don"t pay heed to what John is saying to you. You will never be a professional player, you will be back here crying because you don"t have a job. In my country, the Czech Republic, we have 20 goalkeepers better than you."
When I overheard what Macala was telling him, I went berserk and punched him in the face. He was not only undermining me, he was doing Ali a ma.s.sive disservice. I was hauled before the federation the next day, after Macala complained that I had physically a.s.saulted him. I fought my corner and said he shouldn"t be saying things like that to a 16-year-old kid, even if he did feel he wasn"t any good. They said they didn"t want me to take Ali out of the federation and away to another country, but I said they couldn"t stop me. I didn"t like what I was hearing and told them: "Sack me then, I don"t care."
I was without a job again, but not for long I was soon approached by the biggest club in the region, Al Ain, and they gave me a great job in Abu Dhabi. The only problem was that it was too far away to commute on a daily basis, and I more or less had to live away from my wife for three years.
While I settled into my job, Ali Al-Habsi went from strength to strength. He was voted the best goalkeeper in Norway two years running and my phone never stopped I had Souness from Newcastle, Houllier from Liverpool, Stuart Pearce from City and Sir Alex from United all wanting to sign him, but I had shaken hands on a deal with Sam Allardyce. They were all offering crazy money because Ali was hot property, but I had to honour my handshake to Sam. Ali"s done brilliantly since he went to England and he hasn"t even reached his peak as a goalkeeper.
Abu Dhabi is still enormously rich and the Al Ain Football Club is the focus of a lot of the wealth in the region. Because Al Ain is the same distance inland from Dubai and Oman, it was a popular place. The chairman of the football club is the older brother of the Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, so you could imagine the kind of money we are talking about. Al Ain, in reality, are probably as rich as Manchester United. They only get 8,000 people at their games, but they have Sheik Hazza"s money bankrolling them and he probably has enough to buy United, and have plenty of change left over.
The job at Al Ain was fantastic and I was on mega money, but I found it a hard place to live because I prefer to be next to the sea. After being so settled in Oman, I found in comparison there was not a lot going on in Al Ain it really was the middle of the desert. When you"re inland in the desert, there is not much to do outdoors to keep your mind occupied because it can become unbearably hot. I was put up in fantastic accommodation, but I missed Janet, who couldn"t join me because she was busy pursuing her own career as an estate agent back in Muscat. Al Ain was only about a three-hour drive from Oman, but that"s way too far to be commuting back and forward each day, and I just had to stay there when I was working and pop back to Muscat whenever I could.
The culture in Abu Dhabi was an eye-opener, and I learned something new every day. The Sheikhs would do all their business between Sat.u.r.day and Wednesday, then return to Al Ain on a Thursday and Friday, which is the weekend in the Middle East. Sat.u.r.day is like a Monday morning in Britain, and that"s how it works. The Sheikhs might drive to Al Ain to spend time with one of their four wives, but having so many wives would be an expensive life. If you buy one wife a Rolex or a Rolls-Royce then you have to buy the other three exactly the same. That"s the rules, and you have to be a very wealthy man to have four wives. People will read this and think that"s horrible, but that"s just their culture it"s different and who are we to say it"s wrong? It"s very much a man"s world here though. There are no laws like England, where the wife gets half of the wealth in a divorce. Here, you only have to tell her in public three times, on three separate occasions, in front of friends and witnesses, that you want a divorce. I wasn"t shocked by any of this; I just find other cultures fascinating. I"ve lived here so long now, I know all the rules and regulations inside out and I"m used to it.
Working with the players could be a weird and wonderful experience too. One day a player, who was meant to be a full-time professional, came up to me and told me bold as bra.s.s: "I won"t be in at training tomorrow; I"m taking my mum shopping in Dubai." I couldn"t believe what I was hearing and told him he needed to come in to do some weight training. He obviously feared his mother more than he feared me because he said he still wasn"t coming. When I fined him a week"s wages for missing training, he was straight on the phone to the Sheikh to complain. Imagine something like that happening under Ron Saunders or Alex Miller! I must say though, the att.i.tude of players in the Gulf has come on in leaps and bounds since then and they have started to grasp what being a professional means and the rewards that hard work and dedication can bring.
I loved my job in Al Ain, but I couldn"t bear being apart from Janet and I missed Muscat. The Oman FA re-hired me, and I returned to work under their new German coach Bernd Stange. It was my a.s.sociation with Stange a brilliant character that led to the most bizarre job offer I had ever received...to go and work for Saddam Hussein!
CHAPTER 26.
SADDAM OR BE d.a.m.nED.
"If I took the job in Iraq, my boss would be Saddam Hussein!"
After Bernd Stange moved on from Oman, he landed the post as coach of Iraq, and it wasn"t long before he got in touch to say he wanted me to come and be his goalkeeping coach. The one little snag, as far as I could see, was that Saddam Hussein was still ruling the roost in Iraq at the time and his eldest son Uday was in charge of the football federation. Effectively, if I went there, my boss would be Saddam Hussein and more immediately I"d be working for Uday, who had an even worse reputation than Saddam!
I had already heard all the stories in the aftermath of the 2002 World Cup about Saudi Arabia"s players returning home in disgrace and having their faces slapped in public as a punishment because they had lost 8-0 to Germany. But being slapped was nothing compared to the stories you heard coming out of Iraq if their players had underperformed or returned from a particularly bad tournament. We heard that Uday had put some of his players in stocks before thrashing their feet with a cane. There was even talk of players being shot. There were also rumours about what went on within the football stadium in Iraq. The story went that because it was the biggest outdoor venue in the country, Saddam would use it get as many people as possible to come to his rallies, where he could rant and rave like Hitler. I was told that he actually used to take women who were accused of committing adultery out onto the pitch at half-time and have them shot in the goalmouth.
But Bernd insisted there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Because the war on Iraq was kicking off at the time, for safety reasons the Iraq football team could no longer train and play in their home country, and were based most of the time in neutral countries like Jordan. Bernd pushed and pushed and got the Iraqi FA with both Saddam and Uday"s names appearing on the top of the letterhead to send me a written offer of $200,000 a year to be their goalkeeping coach.
At first, I turned it down flat because of all the scare stories that I heard. But Bernd was quite upset that I had dismissed it out if hand and kept on at me, a.s.suring me it wasn"t bad and insisting that the threat of any violence had been lifted. My head had been full of all these rumours about executions and players getting whipped, and I naturally thought to myself: "What if one of my keepers makes a howler? I could get marched out of the dressing room and shot in the head!"
Bernd kept ringing me, urging me to keep an open mind, and eventually I thought "sod it" and agreed to come to Baghdad and listen to what Uday had to say. This sounds crazy, but one of the reasons I went was because I had always wanted to go there since I was a kid, because I used to watch the old film The Thief of Bagdad!
The plane I travelled on to Iraq was unbelievable. There was only one flight a week from the region to Baghdad, so it was the only one I could get. It was meant to be first cla.s.s, but it was an old converted Russian cargo plane, and I was one of only five or six pa.s.sengers on board. When we got into the air, I went down the back of the plane and I couldn"t believe what I saw. It was like a flying department store. There were kitchen sinks, car wheels, and a whole load of luxury items like shoes and salad cream it was rammed full of stuff Iraqis couldn"t get because of the sanctions against their country.
When I arrived, I was taken to a palace in Baghdad and given an amazing room. I only stayed the one night there, which was a pity, because it was old and ornate and obviously had a lot of history. The next day I was taken to another building and formally introduced to Uday, and even though I only spoke with him for 10 or15 minutes, he had immaculate English and came across as a nice guy. He didn"t seem cruel at all, although I know that you can"t judge someone by a brief meeting and I"m now aware of what he was capable of and his reputation as a butcher. I would have loved to have met Saddam as well, but funnily enough he was keeping a low profile at the time!
I went back to Oman and politely declined the job, but I would have liked to have worked for Iraq on a purely football basis because they had some magic players. I actually told Kevin Keegan when he was at Manchester City to sign a player called Nashat Akram. The kid was absolutely first cla.s.s and he went on trial at City. He pa.s.sed all the tests and Kevin wanted to sign him, but the British government wouldn"t give him a work permit. He had great tricks, could run box to box, was full of energy and could score goals. He played under Steve McClaren at Twente in Holland, and has 100 caps for Iraq now, but it"s a shame he wasn"t allowed to come to England because he would have been a star in the Premier League.
Without the benefit of my expertise, Bernd didn"t do too badly for himself with Iraq. He"s now coach of Belarus, and we stay in touch. Uday was less fortunate. He was hunted down and killed in a bunker by the Americans. When the FBI posted their list of most wanted war criminals, rating them by playing cards, Uday was rated as the Ace of Hearts. Now that more is known about his reign of terror, I can see he might not have been the best man to get on the wrong side of. According to the Iraq national team"s Wikipedia page: "Under Uday"s leadership, motivational lectures to the team included threats to cut off players" legs, while missed practices resulted in prison time and losses resulted in flogging with electric cable or baths in raw sewage, if penalties or an open goal was missed or own goals were scored then that person would have their feet whipped with thorns." It doesn"t mention what happened to goalkeeping coaches but I"m mighty relieved I didn"t get to find out.
I didn"t really have to take the job in Iraq anyway, because when I"m not coaching I don"t just sit about on my a.r.s.e. I need to be busy all the time and I"ve been lucky enough to land some regular work as a television pundit.
The media work is always great fun. I"ve had the odd bit of stick for what I"ve said, but I"m not one for sitting on the fence and if you get people talking about the show and a point that you"ve raised then that"s surely what it"s all about.
I started working for a Saudi station called ART (Arab Radio and Television Network) about six or seven years ago. It was the perfect way to keep up to date with English football, which has a ma.s.sive audience over here. To get paid for sitting watching live Premier League games and having my say on them is nice work if you can get it. I also got a regular gig alongside Joe Morrison on StarHub"s Football Channel, which is broadcast in Singapore, and a newspaper column for The Age newspaper here in Oman. I keep myself very busy and it"s nice being a local celeb.
I"m still working alongside Joe on Ten Sports (Taj Entertainment Network), which broadcasts right across Asia. I drive him totally nuts, but he loves me really despite what he might say! I gave him one of the most uncomfortable experiences of his broadcasting career during a game we covered. I had turned up in a tight-fitting suit, which I called my "Gimp Suit" it looked smashing, but it wasn"t the most practical thing to wear because by the time we"d been sitting under the studio lights for a few minutes, I was sweating buckets. The suit was getting wetter and wetter, and it started to look like PVC. I decided I had to take the suit off, so I watched the rest of the first half in my vest and pants. I was so engrossed in the game, I forgot how close we were to going live on air again, and when the producer popped his head round the door to give us our two-minute warning, I had to try to throw my suit back on as quickly as I could. But in my haste to strip off, the trousers had got all tangled and I couldn"t get the b.l.o.o.d.y things back on! When we got the countdown "5, 4, 3, 2, 1...and live" I was sitting behind my desk in my old apple-catchers trying to pretend like nothing was up. Joe was shifting about uncomfortably as ever the professional he tried to get on with his job, presenting the show and leading the half-time a.n.a.lysis, but he said later that every time he looked over at me he"d catch a glimpse of me scratching my nuts! We"re still going strong, and I always enjoy testing his professionalism to the limits!
We"ve had a lot of good guests in the studio, and it"s always nice to catch up with friends from the past in English football when they are over in the Middle East. I remember one time Gary O"Reilly, the former Tottenham and Palace defender, was a guest. It was the first time he had been on the show, so I got together with Joe Morrison beforehand and hatched a wind-up. He told Gary I"d forgotten to take my medication and that I suffered from severe Tourette"s syndrome and could potentially go loopy at any time during the live broadcast. Joe told him it had happened once or twice before and just to be professional and try and roll with it.
When Gary sat down, Joe and I pretended the cameras were rolling, and within seconds I started cranking up the volume of my voice and then twitching in my seat. You could see Gary tensing up, fearing an end to his own TV career. Joe asked him a question to him about the Champions League and then asked me what I thought. I put on my maddest face (and believe me, it is a mad one) and said: "Why don"t you just go and f.u.c.k off!" I then stood up and started rocking the set, calling everyone b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and shoving anyone who came my way. We got a couple of security guys to come and cart me away, and while Joe was trying to soothe Gary, I was still effing and blinding from the corridor. When I came back, we carried on and did the rest of the programme with the cameras actually rolling this time but Gary was a bag of nerves thinking I was going to kick off again. When we showed it to him later he took it well enough, although he called us a "bunch of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds" for st.i.tching him up. Gary"s done well for himself as a broadcaster, though, and he probably just puts the day I went loopy down to experience now!
I asked Joe to contribute a few choice words for this book of mine, and he said: "Budgie and I have fought with the Afghans during a "friendly" game in Safa Park, we have played together alongside the Arabs on the beach at sunset in Oman, driven through the desert night talking s.h.i.te about football and spent thousands of hours arguing about the Premier League in Studio One.
"I don"t believe he was a great goalkeeper (despite what he says), he is certainly not a great pundit (despite what he says) and he is absolutely not a great comedian (despite what he says) but he is a great character and he is great TV. Life needs colourful characters like Budgie and I believe that in football, as in television, the real characters are all disappearing. He is one of the last!"
I managed to cause quite a stir during my weekly appearances on StarHub, especially with my dress sense. For a game between a.r.s.enal and Manchester United I wore a yellow jacket over a bright pink shirt, and the local paper described me as a "camp European game-show host".
It didn"t bother me in the slightest. I took it as a compliment I like to stand out from the crowd, as you might have gathered. "If you think I"m outrageous now, I"ve got more clothes in my wardrobe that would really make an impact black leather suits and white ones with pink braids," I told the newspaper when they did an interview demanding to know what was on my clothes hangers at home. "I"m imploring StarHub to let me loose. Take the chains off me and let me wear what I want! I"d wear my catsuit, the leopard-skin suit. The bright orange leather one. With nothing underneath. Football is an entertaining game. People want to see entertainment. And television is visual, it"s about impact. I"m built like Tarzan 95kg of sheer muscle. I"d take my shirt off."
CHAPTER 27.
OMAN IN THE GLOAMING.
"I would have won more than 100 caps for England had I been a strapping six-footer! I didn"t do badly for myself, though, considering that in goalkeeping terms at least, I am a bit of a shorta.r.s.e."
After the battle to get back to fitness after my bicycle accident, life has been good again and I love it here in the Middle East. I live just beside the Indian Ocean. Janet and I own three houses in Oman, two within a new golf course complex plus a big cliff-top villa.
For anyone who doesn"t know where Oman is, it"s about a three-and-a-half hour drive from Dubai. Everyone has heard of Dubai now, but not everyone has heard of Muscat. I may be sounding like a representative for the Oman tourist board, but for me there is no contest I"m in one of the most stunning places in the world. If you went straight across the Indian Ocean as the crow flies, you would be in Goa in India.
Millions of pounds are spent advertising the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Qatar, but take it from someone who lives here there is only one naturally beautiful Gulf state and that is Oman. We have the mountains, the ocean and a picturesque city. The rest of the Gulf is mainly sand and desert, but here is very different and everyone is far more laid back. It"s also got everything that Dubai has, albeit on a smaller scale.
People think that you can"t drink in the Gulf, but let me educate you that"s a lot of bulls.h.i.t. There"s one or two places where you can"t drink like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but places like Oman, Bahrain, UAE and Qatar are as open as Britain. You can go and have a drink at any time. There are no pubs as such, as all the bars are contained within hotels, but they are nice and relaxed. There"s more of a cafe culture here and everything is a bit more relaxed. There isn"t anywhere near the level of drunkenness you see in Britain and, because of that, the crime rate is low. I can leave my car unlocked and not have to worry about it. You see guys heading to the beach for a kickabout after work instead of heading straight down to the pub. It"s all nice and laid back.
Sitting in my hammock watching the waves of the Indian Ocean rolling by, it"s impossible to say that I miss England and what the last few governments have let it become. When you earn 3,000 a week in England they"ll take half off you in tax. I don"t begrudge paying some tax, but the last time I was in England I had a problem with a couple of teeth I had damaged in my accident. One of my caps had fallen out and it would have been a 10-minute job to fix. But when I went to the surgery in Blackpool, they wouldn"t help me out, giving me all the "Are you registered, sir?" nonsense. I tried to tell them I"d paid millions of pounds in tax and played football for 32 years, but they weren"t having it. It bugged me, because there were people strolling in there who hadn"t paid one penny of tax.
It"s the rip-off nature of Britain that bugs me too. I drive a Hummer and if I went to a British petrol station it would cost me about 170 to fill it bottom to top. In the Middle East, it costs me 15 at the most to fill it. In Britain, you work your b.a.l.l.s off to earn a good salary and you get nothing back, but the government let anyone into the country and give them a house, free NHS and so on. The whole place is screwed up now. Me and Janet would never even think about going back. Sometimes I"ve flown back to Manchester, then got a train to Blackpool, and you see that the trains and stations are still like Victorian times, with people smoking and drinking their heads off on the trains. No wonder England"s skint. It"s full of freeloaders. I think it"s down to the politicians, and it"s wrong that people found guilty of fixing their expenses are still allowed to make the rules!
As you can see, I enjoy a good rant! I"ll never be too old to climb up on my soapbox and shout the odds. But, in all seriousness, I rarely miss Britain and I"m better off where I am now, with the sun on my back every day. I still keep as fit as I can, and still have the same 32-inch waist and 46-inch chest I had when I was playing. When I had my Oman job I worked maybe 60 days a year with the national team and the age group teams, and perhaps most importantly I"ve rediscovered my love of football and going to matches. I"ve come a long way from the headcase that was bundled into the Priory. I"ve got the odd regret about decisions I took in my football career, but there"s no point dwelling on them. My main regret is that I wasn"t two inches taller I would have won more than 100 caps for England had I been a strapping six-footer! I didn"t do badly for myself, though, considering that in goalkeeping terms at least, I am a bit of a shorta.r.s.e.
My position within the Oman national team allowed me to visit places I can"t even spell! I"ve been to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kathmandu, all over India and China, Korea, j.a.pan, Sri Lanka, Australia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Iraq and Iran places that are so interesting and where you can learn so much. You wouldn"t believe how many countries play football in Asia, and there are some b.l.o.o.d.y great players across the continent.
I honestly believe that in the next 20 years, an Asian country like India will be taking over football just wait and see. I always believe in looking ahead, and in the future you will see Indians playing in the Premier League. They will also be running the Premier League too, because there are more billionaires there than anywhere else in the world. I think it"s only a matter of time. China may yet emerge as a football superpower too. It"s a myth in England that people in China are small are they h.e.l.l! The goalkeeper is six foot six and they are a big solid side. People underestimate Asian football at their peril. After the rubbish I watched from England at the World Cup in South Africa I have to say that India, Saudi Arabia and India would all give them a game.
These teams are to be particularly feared in their home stadiums some of those grounds are frightening and volatile, to the extent that not only are you worrying about your safety, you"re actually worrying about your life. Once you"ve been to the Azadi Stadium in Tehran in front of 120,000 fanatical supporters, anywhere else would be a walk in the park. I bet you Iran would beat England if they played them in the Azadi. People talk about Barcelona and Real Madrid being hostile places to go you come to the Azadi and you"ll find out what hostile really means. You wouldn"t be able to see your hand in front of your face for the smoke and firecrackers.
It bugs me all the media hype about players like John Terry, who to me is nothing better than average. I"ve played with far better players than Terry. People should take a break from all the hype surrounding the Premier League and think more about what the rest of the world has to offer. There are a lot of players here in Asia who could very easily play in the Premier League, they just need to be discovered and given the chance. I brought over Ali Al-Habsi but there are countless more players in Asia that could make the grade.
I"m trying to bring the Middle East to the forefront of people"s minds. People think they all drive around in luxury cars, that"s rubbish, there are some tough areas too and as we know from the success of Brazil and Argentina, that"s often where you discover the best players because they are born with that gene that enables them to show the desire and hunger to fight their way to the top.
Sadly, my dream job with Oman was taken away from me by the national FA in January 2011. I"m still bitter about it, because I"ve done a h.e.l.l of a lot for football in the country and they"ve sacked me for mistakes made by someone else. Claude Le Roy was the coach, and because they wanted him to go, they decided they wanted rid of everyone to do with him. It was harsh on him, too, because he won Oman the Gulf Cup in 2009, beating a lot of bigger nations along the way. That raised the bar, I suppose, and when we failed to qualify for the Asian Cup in 2011, they felt the team was underachieving. Oman are ambitious, and I can"t fault them for that, but I do feel that they overreacted by giving us all the boot.
An interview I gave to Gulf News in September 2010, in which I called for backroom teams to be kept on and not be made to carry the can for the head coach, unfortunately fell on deaf ears. I said: "If you have a good doctor, physio, coach or ma.s.seur keep him sack the head coach. Hire and fire independently. Then when it comes to appointments, a coach should only bring his own a.s.sistants. Other than that, the backroom staff should remain. Fitness coaches, goalkeeping coaches and a.s.sistants do most of the work in training but they"re losing their jobs because the head coach isn"t up to it when it comes to matches.
"When a coach brings in his own people some of them are pizza delivery men who are brought in to keep the coach company with cups of coffee down the mall while they wait for training staff and coach shouldn"t be friends, they should just be good at their jobs. They"re laughing all the way to the bank, taking clubs to the cleaners, walking out with big compensation packages, and I doubt the majority could produce professional coaching licences if asked."
Sadly, Oman didn"t see it that way, and because Claude was sacked, we all got punished, regardless of the service we had given to the FA and what we could still offer the country. It"s so short-sighted. Gulf News phoned me after the sackings and I told them: "I"ve done nothing wrong. In fact I"ve done more than anyone else in the Gulf; I"ve produced a phenomenon that"s bigger than a Gulf Cup win. I"m very disappointed to have done so much for Oman, only to be treated in such a manner. I"m down in the dumps."
I"m not down in the dumps now, though life goes on, eh?
Football in the Middle East will come under the spotlight more and more in the next decade following FIFA"s decision to give Qatar the 2022 World Cup, but to be brutally honest I think it"s a disgrace to have it there. Qatar may be filthy rich, but at the moment the place is like a village. Having Zinedine Zidane to front the bid obviously helped their cause, but it just doesn"t seem right to have it there. If it"s held at the height of summertime, they would have to stage it indoors, in fully air-conditioned stadiums. They would have to build eight 60,000-seater stadiums. There is enough money to do that in Qatar, but it would be a ma.s.sive break from tradition. The sensible option, if they insist on playing it there, is to move the World Cup to the winter.
I actually met the president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, for the first time not long after Qatar won their World Cup bid. He had come to the Gulf to do some schmoozing, and visited Oman. He was touring our stadium and he saw that I had "JB" on my Omani training kit. He looked me up and down and pointed to my initials, and said: "JB? Joseph Blatter?" I replied: "Ha-ha, pleased to meet you. My name is Bond...James Bond!"
I daresay Qatar will deliver the World Cup, because the country is so rich it"s unbelievable. They already have brilliant indoor football fields, although to build enough stadiums to properly host a World Cup is a different matter. Their training ground reeks of money. Manchester United"s training ground at Carrington is the best I have seen, but the one they have built in Qatar makes United"s look old-fashioned!
Qatar may be ready for 2022, because of the money they have to prop up their bid, but I"m still scratching my head in disbelief that the biggest sporting event on the planet is heading there it is such a small country. The capital, Doha, is the size of a small Scottish city, so it"s basically like holding a world cup in Motherwell or Aberdeen! What I think they should have done is have one stadium here in Oman, one in Bahrain, one in UAE, Abu Dhabi and Dubai and make it a Gulf World Cup, but then I suppose you would be creating a new problem because the hosts usually qualify automatically. The bottom line is it"s just too hot in the summer here. People would get sunstroke the players and supporters. It"s the desert, for G.o.d"s sake. The best thing to do would be to share it around and hold the World Cup around Christmas time. It would be perfect conditions.