FTBL_Planet

When Thomas Gravesen was at Everton, James McFadden says there were days you turned up at training and tried to stay out of his way. One morning Gravesen brings fireworks in. The physio is out running with the injured lads like he always is. Mid-50s and still one of the fittest people at the club. Then Gravesen comes out holding a big rocket. McFadden clocks it and thinks, this is going to be aimed at someone. And Gravesen does not disappoint. The physio is still moving, still running, and now there’s a rocket coming at him because Gravesen has decided this is funny. A young Wayne Rooney finds this hilarious and wants in on the “fun.” The pair of them end up having a “firework fight” inside the building. When David Moyse hears about this. He decides he once no part of the action and turns a blind eye to the incident. #football

When Sam Allardyce took Blackburn to Italy for pre-season, the trip was starting to feel a bit stale. They’d been away 12 days, and everybody was getting sick of each other. The club had organised a jet to take them from Italy to Croatia, so they could play their final game before heading home. They got to the plane and found a problem. There was too much weight on it. So now the players are stuck there, the travel plans are gone, and Sam is trying to get hold of the chairman to sort another plane. He can’t get through to him. So eventually he gives up on that and just sorts it himself. “Right, f*** it, I’ll get it.” He puts forty grand on his credit card to get a bigger private plane. Once that was done, Sam decided if he was sorting all that out, they were not going back quietly either. “We’re having a f****** night out tonight.” Blackburn then played the game, drew 0-0, and got back on the bus. Sam stood at the front with the microphone and laid down the plan. “Right, I expect everyone, and I mean f****** everyone, to be down in the bar in ten minutes. Everything will be sorted and we’re going on a night out. If you don’t turn up, you get fined.” So they went up, got changed, came back down, and found the bar already loaded up. Beers everywhere. Shots everywhere. Sam looked at it and gave them the next instruction. “Right, all this s*** needs to be drank in ten minutes.” Then he pointed outside. There was a row of taxis waiting. All paid for. “They know where they’re going. I’ll see you there.” So off they went. And when the players got to the nightclub and started looking for their table, they did not have to search too hard to find the manager. Sam was already in the middle of it. Dancing. The whole thing carried on until about four in the morning, Sam made sure there was no risk of the night dying after he left. “Here’s me credit card. If you need anything drinks, that’s my pin number. Stick it on that.” Next morning, everyone is hungover but nobody is in a bad mood. The gaffer has basically forced them to have a party out in Croatia, and covered all the costs himself. Big Sam’s generosity still wasn’t finished. He sent cards and flowers to the wives and girlfriends back home, to apologise for having them for a fortnight. #football

When Stiliyan Petrov decided he wanted one more go at football, it was not some throwaway idea that had come to him out of nowhere. He had been working towards it for a year and a half. He started with slow runs, then five-a-side, then 11-a-side, then half-pitch, then Sunday league, and by April 2016 he had got himself to the point where he told Aston Villa he was ready to come back in for pre-season. That was all he wanted. The chance to finish it properly. Football had been taken away from him in 2012 when he was diagnosed with acute leukaemia, and now he had dragged himself all the way back to the point where he thought he might have a chance to take a bit of it back. He trained with Villa’s Under-21s for months. They tested him and his fitness was getting close to where it had been when he retired. He knew the odds were against him, but that was not really the point anymore. The point was that he had got himself back on the grass and back in the conversation. “I’ve got it in my mind, even if it doesn’t happen, I’ve tried.” “It was taken away from me.” When Villa later offered him a coaching role instead of a playing chance, he turned it down because that was not what this had been about. “I just want to finish as a footballer because it was taken away from me.” “I didn’t want a pay off.” “I didn’t want to twist their hands about contracts or anything else.” He just wanted the ending back. By 2016 he had done enough work to believe he might be able to walk back into football on his own terms. Villa did not give him that chance. Petrov said they told him he would not get anything at the club as a player, and that was the part that hit him hardest after all the work he had put in. “I think I’ve lost my heart after that.” #football

When Gérard Houllier walked into the Liverpool dressing room for the first time, Neil Ruddock was already watching how he did the introductions. He went round the room and it all sounded fine enough. “Ahh, Robbie Fowler.” “Hello, David.” Then he got to Razor. “I’m sorry, what is your name?” Ruddock had been around long enough by then to think he did not really need introducing to anybody walking into English football. So he gave him the answer that came into his head. “Have you been in a coma for 15 years?” Everyone laughed. Houllier did not. Ruddock always said that was pretty much where the relationship started and finished in one go, because Houllier did not get his sense of humour at all. “He didn’t get my sense of humour. I think it was about a week later I was gone.” #football

When Gary Speed was playing for Bobby Robson at Newcastle, it did not take him long to realise what sort of manager he was dealing with. Bobby was warm with people. He understood players. And even when they behaved badly, his instinct was not always to go steaming in and make it worse. This became apparent after one particular incident. Bobby took him off in a game and Speed did not take it well at all. His reaction was to show Bobby his backside. And tell him too, “f*** off.” Once he got home, he instantly regretted it. The anger had gone, and now he just felt bad about it. So he rang Bobby to apologise. “Look gaffer, I’m really sorry.” Bobby’s answer was exactly what made him Bobby. “Don’t worry about it, son, these things happen.” Speed said that was the sort of thing that stayed with you. “He had such a big heart, it just made you roll your sleeves up.” #football

When Neil Warnock first took charge of Huddersfield, he brought one of his old superstitions with him. Sherry and raw eggs. It started because they kept winning and, in Warnock’s head, that meant nobody was allowed to stop doing it. So before games the players had to neck eggs and sherry and get on with it. There were “people throwing up everywhere.” The worse it got, the harder it was to get out of, because Huddersfield kept winning. And it did roll on. For about 15 matches. Warnock was known to be very superstitious, but even for him this seemed far fetched. Then Huddersfield finally lost. The players celebrated this defeat more than any win they ever had, because it finally meant they could stop drinking Sherry and raw eggs. #football

When Jimmy Bullard went away with Hull to Slovenia in the summer of 2011, he had finally got to a point where he thought he could be himself again. It was his first full pre-season in four years and he thought he could “bring some of my old stuff back.” Instead it turned into the moment Hull had been waiting for. Bullard was one of the biggest earners at the club, Hull were trying to cut costs, and after what the club called “indiscretions on a pre-season tour of Slovenia.” He was suspended while they investigated what had happened. A few weeks later Hull moved to terminate his contract altogether. “The club has given notice to terminate the contract of Jimmy Bullard.” He was only 32, still under contract for another two years, and now the whole thing had become a legal fight as well as a football one. He went after compensation, and the dispute did not end with Hull simply washing their hands of him. He was claiming for £2.5 million and accepted an out-of-court settlement in March. “I’m celebrating to this day. Thank you Hull City for changing my life. I’m dropping cash everywhere, I’m bleeding cash.” #football

When Gianluca Vialli took charge of Chelsea in February 1998, Ruud Gullit had only just been sacked and the first game waiting for him was not exactly a gentle one. It was Arsenal in the League Cup semi-final second leg. Chelsea had lost the first leg at Highbury and now had to turn it round at Stamford Bridge with a new manager whose first team-talk could not have been feeling especially calm. So Vialli walked into the dressing room carrying champagne. He handed a glass to every player, raised his own, and toasted them. “All the best to all of you.” He topped the glasses up again. And toasted a second time. He then topped them up for a final time, finishing the bottle, and toasted one last time. “Now let’s get f****** into em!” Graeme Le Saux later said it was typical of him, a man who was confident in himself, believed in what he was doing, and wanted the best for his players. Chelsea went out and battered Arsenal 3-1. Mark Hughes scored. Roberto Di Matteo scored. Dan Petrescu scored. And Vialli’s first night in charge ended with Chelsea overturning the tie and going through 4-3 on aggregate. When they got back into the changing room, it wasn’t all smiles for Vialli. “F*** sake boys, why did we drink all that champagne before, we should’ve saved it to celebrate now.” #football

When Kenny Dalglish left Liverpool, the dressing room expected the next manager to come in and keep things much as they were. Then Alan Hansen walked through the door and told them the board had offered him the job and he had taken it. That got everyone’s attention straight away. “There’s going to be a lot of changes around here. No more days off.” “Your drinking has got out of hand, and it’s going to have to stop. Every Sunday after every match, we are going to come in and watch the video of the game, and we will be training every day.” Jan Mølby said they all just looked at each other in amazement. Steve Nicol could not believe what he was hearing. “He’s been here for God knows how many years, and he’s going to change all the rules? The one rule at this club is that you don’t change anything!” Hansen then stormed out the room, leaving everybody with their jaws on the floor. Jan Mølby started muttering away. “I never liked that Scottish t*** anyway.” Then Hansen walked back in. He was laughing his head off. “Only joking. I’m not going to be manager. I’m just retiring.” So now Liverpool have lost their manager, lost their most influential player. And yet are still relieved that they can still drink, and not have to train every day. #football

When Philippe Albert joined Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle, he realised quite quickly this was not one of those clubs where the manager kept himself above everyone else. Keegan was right in the middle of it. Albert said when you spoke to him, “you just want one thing: to join the club.” He did not need to start selling the money side or giving the big hard pitch. He just had that pull about him. Then you got there and saw how he ran the place. Once a month, usually on a Monday night, Keegan took everybody out for a meal. Coaches. First team. Reserves. Some would head home after it, some would carry on into town, some would end up mixing with the supporters. That was part of the feel of the whole club under Keegan. It was not distant. It was not cold. Everybody was in it together. The same thing carried over on away trips. Albert said the journeys back from London could be five or six hours on the coach, so Steve Watson would bring videos and Viz comics and the whole thing would just turn into a laugh. Before they got onto the motorway, Keegan would stop the coach at a petrol station, get off, buy drinks out of his own pocket, and bring them back on for the players. Red wine. White wine. Lager. Water. Soft drinks. When they got to a certain point on the M1, Keegan would buy fish and chips for the lot of them as well. That was how Albert remembered him. The manager who made the place feel alive. Keegan was always the last one in after training because he stayed out signing autographs. If there were 800 people waiting, he would sign for every one of them. And one time two players once tried to leave early, Keegan grabbed them by the neck and told them: “You go back. Sign for those people — they are paying your wages.” That was Kevin. #football

When Middlesbrough played Newcastle at the Riverside in December 1998, the game stopped being about football for a minute. Two female streakers got onto the pitch in front of 36,000 people. They had knocked back a couple of whiskies beforehand, run out in the freezing cold, and one of them had only one idea. She went straight for Gazza. She jumps at him and tries to climb on his back. Gazza saw her coming and just started backing away across the pitch laughing, trying to dodge the whole thing without really escaping it. He just kept muttering while giggling, “Please don’t do this to me.” The streaker kept going after him while Gazza carried on retreating. The whole ground watched Paul Gascoigne getting chased round the Riverside by a topless woman in the middle of a match. At one point he ended up near the goalpost still laughing while the stewards finally got hold of them and started taking them away. Gazza later claimed it was the highlight of his Middlesbrough career. #footbal

When the Crazy Gang went to Anfield in 1987, they were walking into a place most players treated with a bit of respect. You came down the tunnel, saw the “This Is Anfield” sign hanging there, and that was meant to mean something. For a lot of away players, it did. The problem for Liverpool was that Wimbledon were not really built for sentiment. “Certain players spat at the ‘This Is Anfield’ sign going down the tunnel.” And that still was not enough for Vinnie Jones. Vinnie got hold of a marker pen, went up to Liverpool’s famous sign, and wrote underneath it: “BOTHERED.” Wimbledon won the match 2-1. #football

When Roy Keane was still a teenager at Nottingham Forest, Brian Clough kept the game simple for him. “Get it, and pass it to another player in a red shirt.” Then Forest played Crystal Palace in the FA Cup. Keane hit a back-pass that went wrong, Palace scored from it, and Clough did not let it go. Keane went in after the game expecting worst. And even still, it turned out to be worse than expectations. “When I walked into the dressing room after the game, Clough punched me straight in the face.” Keane hit the floor. Then Clough stood over him and carried on. “Don’t pass the ball back to the goalkeeper.” Keane said he was too shocked to do much else except nod along. “My honeymoon with Clough and professional football was over.” The better part of it was that Keane did not even really argue the point afterwards. “It was the best thing he ever did for me.” He came in the next morning and trained. Said nothing to anyone. “He was upset. He was heated. He punched me. I remember thinking, I still think you’re a brilliant manager.” Clough was asked about it years later. “I only ever hit Roy the once. He got up, so I couldn’t have hit him very hard.” #football

When Ray Parlour was a young Arsenal player going out with Tony Adams in Essex, he was still living with his mum and dad. So when he got chatting to a girl at Epping Forest Country Club and asked if she wanted to come back to his house, he had a problem straight away. She said yes. He did not exactly have a house to take her back to. So Ray went to Tony. He asked if he could use his place instead, and Tony handed over the keys no questions asked. Ray knew where the house was, they got in a cab, and on the way there the girl looked around at the houses and said, “Oh, you are doing all right for yourself?” Ray just carried on with it. Tony had a swimming pool, so now the plan had become going back there for a swim and a few drinks. They got to the house, walked up the path, and Ray went in full of confidence. “Come on in!” As soon as he opened the door, the alarm started beeping. Ray found the box under the stairs and tried to crack it himself. Tony wore number six, so he punched in 6666. Nothing. Then 0000. Nothing. “It’s Tony, it can’t be too hard to guess!” So he made the next bad decision and started pulling wires out of the alarm to try and disconnect it. The siren then went off properly, blasting round the house, and the whole system was wired straight to the police for a quick response. Within two minutes a police car turned up outside. Now Ray was stood there in Tony Adams’ house, with a girl beside him, the alarm screaming, and police asking the obvious question. “Is this your house?” “Yes . . . Well, not exactly.” The police did not know who he was, so they arrested him there and then. Ray tried telling them he was Tony’s mate and tried phoning Tony, but Epping Forest Country Club was in the middle of nowhere and there was no reception. Parlour was arrested on the spot, and the girl was sent home by the police confused. Parlour went on to find out that Tony’s alarm was “1234.” “I knew he was a f****** idiot.” #football

When Ireland got the week off in South Korea between the Saudi Arabia and Spain matches, Mick McCarthy gave the lads a bit of room to breathe. He wanted them to watch Spain’s game in the Irish bar in the team hotel. They could have a few beers. “Nothing stupid and no sneaking out.” Once Mick specifically said no sneaking out, that was more or less the challenge set. Niall Quinn took charge of it like he always did when there was entertainment to be organised. “If enough of us go out, Mick can’t send us all home.” Soon there were about fifteen of them in. The plan was to drift out of the hotel bar in ones and twos, head down to the shopping level in the basement, and meet at Entrance B before making a break for another Irish bar Quinn had heard about. The only flaw in the plan was that none of them knew which door was Entrance B because every sign in the place was in Korean. So now there were fifteen Ireland players wandering around the basement of a shopping mall in South Korea with no idea where they were meant to be going. Eventually they all found each other and Quinn led them off to this other Irish bar. The owner cleared the place out. Inside there was just the Irish squad. The owner started taking photos of all of them in the pub, beer in hand, absolutely delighted with himself that he had the Ireland players. Everybody swore him to secrecy. “Mick must never know we broke curfew!” They got back in one piece. The next day Mick knew they had had a few beers in the hotel, so he ran the balls off them in training. What he did not know was that fifteen of them had gone quite a bit further than that and were all suffering. Then that night Mick and Taff went out themselves for a few pints. And of all the places they could have ended up, they walked into the same Irish bar. Mick looked up and there were photos of his players plastered all over the walls. Beer in hand. The owner had blown them up to poster size and stuck them on any bit of wall he could find. He was made up when Mick walked in as well. The camera came back out, and he even told him he was never taking the pictures of the Ireland players and the Ireland manager off the wall. Mick could have gone through them the next day. Instead he came in casual. Asked them about their “night off.” Asked if they had enjoyed themselves. Quinny gave him the straight face version. They had watched the game in the hotel, had a few beers, and gone to bed. Mick just started laughing. He told them there were some photos of a lookalike team that looked well in the Irish bar. #football

When Harry Redknapp was trying to get a tune out of Roman Pavlyuchenko at Tottenham, the biggest problem was not really talent. He knew he could finish. The problem was getting him to do enough work in between. So one day Harry tried sorting it out the simple way. Pavlyuchenko’s English was not great, so everything had to go through an interpreter. Harry told him if he did not play any better in the first half, he would “pull him off at half-time.” Which as a phrase can have quite the double meaning. Pavlyuchenko looked at him and said he was thrilled. Harry was taken aback and asked what he meant. Pavlyuchenko’s answer was that back in Russia, when they went in at half-time, all they got was an orange. So the idea of getting pulled off sounded fantastic. Pavlyuchenko in broken English wanted to clear it up. “Make sure you ask my wife first!” Harry just laughed about it. “Forget about it, do what you want.” It was the same sort of problem Harry had run into with him on the training ground as well. He would be shouting instructions, and this bloke kept running onto the pitch to pass them on. After a while Harry asked who he was. It turned out it was Pavlyuchenko’s interpreter. By the end of the session Harry reckoned the interpreter had done more work than Pavlyuchenko had. #football

When Dean Windass played against Robbie Savage, Paul Jewell gave him one warning before they had even gone out to warm up. “Don’t get involved with Savage.” “I won’t, gaffer.” Then he went out there and almost straight away Savage started. “Now then, fatty.” Windass wanted to batter him before a ball had even been kicked. Savage didn’t stop there. “You’re a fat pub player.” Stuff like that, over and over again. Leicester battered Bradford 3-0 and Windass never really got near him because he was too busy boiling over. At one stage he went right over the top of Savage and got booked. With about 15 minutes left, Jewell had seen enough and hauled him off. So now Windass was sat on the bench, still raging, while Savage was waving over at him. After the game Jewell went mad. “What did I tell you about Savage?” Windass was in tears of anger. Then he went down the tunnel and saw Gerry Taggart on his phone. “Tags, you got a players’ bar?” “Yeah, just on the right-hand side there.” “Will Robbie Savage be there?” “Yeah, yeah.” “Why?” “I’m going to batter him.” Taggart wasn’t in the mood to back his teammate. “I’ll come watch.” So the two of them headed in. Savage was down at the end of the bar and Windass spot him straight away Then, as he got closer, Savage started waving at him again. “You won’t be waving in a minute.” He got right up to him and Savage said: “Do you want a pint, mate?” “You what?” Then Savage took it one further. “Have you met my mum and dad?” Windass looked and there was an older couple there, and now the whole thing had changed because he could hardly lamp Robbie Savage in front of his parents. So instead he had to stand there and shake hands. “Hello, Mr and Mrs Savage.” Savage offered him a drink again. “No, no, no. I’ve got to get off. All the best. Well played.” Then Windass walked back to the coach and Taggart delivered the final blow. “That wasn’t his mum and dad, it was just some random couple.” “He absolutely done me.” #football

When England’s quarter-final with Spain at Euro 96 went to penalties, Stuart Pearce had already known for six years what people remembered him for. Italia 90 had followed him everywhere. He thought about that miss every single day. So when the shoot-out came at Wembley, Pearce was not waiting around on the halfway line hoping his name would not come up. He went to Terry Venables and told him he was taking one. Venables looked at him and asked: “Are you f****** sure?” If there was a penalty to be taken, he was not going to stand there and let somebody else do it when he felt he should be walking up himself. Six years earlier he had missed in a World Cup semi-final against West Germany and it had wrecked him. Now England were back in a shoot-out, this time against Spain, and Pearce had decided before the kick was even placed that he was not hiding from it again. England were already 2-1 up in the shoot-out when Pearce started the walk. David Seaman later said the possibility of Stuart Pearce taking one had been a huge part of that build-up because everybody in the ground knew exactly what it meant. Then he hit it. Not pretty. Just leathered, hard enough, low enough, and in. And the second it crossed the line, six years came out of him all at once. He wheeled away screaming, fists clenched, face twisted, as if the whole thing had been sat there in him since Turin and had finally found somewhere to go. England won the shoot-out 4-2. #football

When Harry Redknapp got invited to open a betting shop in Ilford, he did not fancy going. So they asked if John Hartson would do it instead. Harry knew Hartson liked a bet and could not really see any problem with that. The arrangement sounded harmless enough. “We’ll pay him.” “Tell him, we’ll give him an account with £5,000 in it.” So off Hartson went. Harry more or less forgot about it. Then about three months later the same people got back in touch. “It’s about John Hartson,” they told him. “He owes us £100,000.” One minute Hartson had been sent along to do a favour, have his picture taken and enjoy himself a bit. A few months later he had somehow turned that into a six-figure problem. Harry had to get involved and sort it. He managed to get them down to about a third of it, which was still an absurd amount of money to be untangling from what was meant to be a straightforward little appearance. And that, in Harry’s mind, was the moment he understood John Hartson was not someone you handled like everybody else. He could win games for you, flatten centre-halves and score for fun. But he could also be given £5,000 at the opening of a betting shop and come back owing £100,000. #football

When Dwight Yorke and Graeme Souness clashed at Blackburn, it started in a six-a-side game on the training ground. Yorke went in on his manager, Souness went back in on him. Souness flew into the tackle hard enough that it left a gash in Yorke’s shin “so deep that you could see the white of his bone.” Then it carried on inside. Yorke was absolutely tearing into Souness in front of Blackburn’s chief executive. “Graeme Souness, the big hard man who bullies his own players?” Souness hears and starts firing back by branding Yorke “a f****** playboy.” The pair of them square up. Souness clocks him, Yorke clocks him back. They shake hands, and in Souness’ mind the matter was squashed. “These things happen on training grounds every week in football and you move on.” #football

When Bolton went to Ipswich for the second leg of the play-off semi-final in May 2000, Sam Allardyce already knew the game was going to be tense. The first leg had finished 2-2. The second one turned into chaos. Barry Knight gave Ipswich three penalties over the night, sent off two Bolton players, booked a stack of them, and by the end Allardyce thought he had just watched the worst refereeing performance of his life. Bolton lost 5-3 after extra time and Sam did not even try to dress it up afterwards. “Bordering on criminal, that was.” That got him into trouble straight away. The FA hauled him in over what he had said on television, which was fair enough because by then he had made it perfectly clear he thought Knight had “completely lost it.” So Sam turned up to the tribunal with his own plan. He brought an edited video. A tape of the game, cut together as his defence, so the panel could sit there and watch exactly what he thought Barry Knight had done to Bolton that night. “When I was hauled in front of a tribunal for what I’d said on TV, I presented an edited video for my defence and you could see how embarrassed the tribunal was by his performance.” the FA didn’t budge. Allardyce was fined for his comments after the match, along with Bolton captain Guðni Bergsson and Paul Warhurst over what was said about Knight’s display. #football