Always Managing: My Autobiography (44 page)

It still wasn’t enough because of the miracle of Munich. How Chelsea won the Champions League that season I will never know, but they did, and because of that took the spot of the fourth-placed English team – which was us. I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life that night – I went to the match. Jamie invited me over – he said Sky had a box at the game and I should go as his guest. In any other circumstances it would have been a great night – Chelsea winning, with my nephew Frank Lampard captain of the team. But for me it was just horrendous. I won’t lie – for all that Frank and his dad have meant to me, I was desperate for Chelsea to lose. If they won, we were out of the Champions League, despite finishing two places and five points clear of them. Jamie felt the same, I could tell. Meanwhile, Ruud Gullit, who I had tremendous respect for as a player, was carrying on right in front of me like a lunatic. He had nothing riding on the game – Chelsea had sacked him, for heaven’s sake – but he didn’t care. And what a way for Tottenham to lose out. When the season started had we been offered two places clear of Chelsea we would have jumped at it. Now, it wasn’t even good enough for the Champions League.

You all know what happened. Chelsea were outplayed – as they had been by Barcelona, and by Napoli, in the previous rounds – Bayern Munich missed a last-minute penalty, conceded a late equaliser and then lost the penalty shoot-out. I was distraught. I felt like crying. All the while, Ruud was jumping around, cheering, singing, banging on the windows to draw the attention of the Chelsea players – and, when they looked up, in the background was me, feeling probably at my lowest as a football manager. In the end, I think Jamie got quite upset on my behalf. ‘Ruud, do us a favour, they sacked you, didn’t they?’ he said to him. ‘Ah, yes, but that was different people,’ said Ruud, and then carried on oblivious. I felt embarrassed being there, really, as if I was spoiling the party, but I still think his behaviour was over the top. Put it like this – I wouldn’t have done it to him, had the roles been reversed. He could see how I felt and, yes, I knew he was happy for Chelsea, but it was non-stop, and in the end it just pissed me off. There was one final humiliation to go. I had to walk past the Chelsea fans to get out of the stadium to where our car was parked to take us back to the hotel. They had all been kept behind and when they saw me they started singing, ‘Thursday night, Channel 5,’ – which is the time the Europa League matches are shown. Chelsea fans have always been great with me – I think because I’m Frank’s uncle – but that was difficult. I remembered it when I saw them all on the box a year later deliriously happy to be celebrating victory in … the Europa League final. We got back to the hotel and I went straight to bed. Next morning we headed home. ‘Get a top-class front man in for next season,’ I thought, ‘and the sky’s the limit for us.’ Little did I know I had twenty-five days left as Tottenham manager.

We had been through a lot together that year. There were people from Tottenham in the crown court every day during my trial, and our season had gone so well until the injuries intervened. Even taking away Chelsea’s Champions League win, we were close, just a point in it between us and Arsenal in third place. On the last day of the season Arsenal went to West Bromwich Albion who were missing their first-choice goalkeeper, Ben Foster, and the reserve, Márton Fülöp, had a complete nightmare. He was at fault for Arsenal’s first goal, and their third, and he could have done better with the second. Arsenal won 3–2. I’m not blaming Fülöp for Tottenham missing out on the Champions League – we had plenty of chances to secure the points ourselves – but it seemed that everything that could go wrong went wrong for us in the closing months of the season.

Yet I won’t let that cloud my time at Tottenham. We did well and I loved every minute of it. And I am proud of my record there. They had never seen Champions League football until I arrived – and haven’t since – and it’s not as if they were a top-four Premier League team in the recent past, either. They had finished behind West Ham three years on the spin when I was at Upton Park – so I think some people have short memories. Looking back, would I have survived even had Bayern Munich won the Champions League final? I just don’t know. I have no problem with Daniel Levy. He was the first person to ring me up to wish me luck when I took over at Queens Park Rangers, and even on the night I left Tottenham, the car phone rang and it was Daniel. ‘Harry, let’s keep in touch,’ he said. ‘I hope we can still be friends.’ I thought, ‘He’s got some front. He’s just sacked me and now he wants to be mates.’ But we have stayed in touch. I’m not one for grudges.

My departure wasn’t straightforward by any means. It certainly wasn’t a case of walking in and being sacked. In fact, we had previously been talking about extending my contract. I had a year left on my deal and had met Daniel, requesting a little more security. I had done a good job and didn’t think it right that I should enter the 2012–13 season with just a year left. Lose a few games and I’d be out of the door. I didn’t think that would be fair after taking Tottenham into the top four, so I was looking for another year, to add to the one remaining. That wasn’t unreasonable. Having had these discussions, I went to see Daniel again. ‘What’s happening, Daniel?’ I asked.

He seemed very unsure. ‘I don’t know, really,’ he said. ‘We can’t give you another year. You’ve got a year left on your contract. Maybe when we’ve come to the end of that? I need to look at a few things first. Maybe, Harry, we’ve just come to the end.’

I wasn’t happy, but I had to accept it.

If I looked back through the achievements in my career the job I did at Tottenham would be in the top three – beside winning promotion to the second tier with Bournemouth, and keeping Portsmouth in the Premier League. I got on fine with Daniel. I still do. He loaned me some of his players last season with Queens Park Rangers.

The season was over so I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to the players, which was a shame. We were going forward together, and I am convinced I would have got them into the Champions League last season, when they came fifth. Jan Vertonghen was already on his way to the club and he was a huge player for them. He was at our final game of the season, against Fulham.

It was 4 a.m. by the time the details of our parting company had been agreed. I had a little walk to clear my head, and then jumped
in a taxi. I felt choked. I had finished fourth with Tottenham but was still out of work. The voice that broke the spell was that of the taxi driver, a Tottenham fan. ‘Harry!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re doing a great job at our place, mate.’ What was I going to tell him? That I had just got the sack? When we pulled up at the hotel I asked him the fare. ‘No, no, I couldn’t take a fare off you, mate. Good luck next year. Great football we’re playing, mate. I’m loving it – absolutely loving it.’ I drove home and got back to my house at 7.30 a.m. The next day, I got up, had a round of golf and hoped the phone would ring.

For the first time since leaving West Ham United eleven years earlier, I was unemployed. It wasn’t easy. I’m not really one to be sitting around reading a newspaper or filling in the crossword. I’ve got to be doing, I’ve got to be active, whether it is a football match or a game of golf. I was asked to give my opinions on the European Championship tournament in Poland and Ukraine, but that didn’t feel right. If England did well, I could only sit there endorsing the Football Association’s decision to chose Roy Hodgson over me; if they failed, any criticism I made would sound like sour grapes at not getting the job. I couldn’t win. I went over to Abu Dhabi and did some television work there for the start of the Premier League season, and that felt different. It wasn’t as if every word I said would be pulled apart to fuel a headline. Secretly, though, I was dreading the winter months. I was happy to play golf every day in the warmth of summer, but when the bad weather and darker nights came in, I knew I would be stuck without football. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

Yet, in time, a strange thing happened. The longer I was out, the less bothered I became about getting back in. I was linked with loads of jobs, from Blackburn Rovers to coach of Russia, but none of it really interested me. I never thought I would feel that way about the game, but football had changed and so had my life. I was enjoying going about my day without the pressure; I was enjoying my freedom, not waking up every day with a weight on my shoulders. I went to New York with Sandra, because it was one place we always wanted to go together, and there was a further list of places we wanted to visit – Las Vegas and South Africa at the top – just cities and countries that had always been on our wish list, but football had got in the way. We had some nice breaks and were looking forward to more. Suddenly, I knew what guys like Joe Royle meant about enjoying retirement. Joe had been a manager the best part of twenty-five years – Oldham Athletic, Everton, Manchester City, Ipswich Town – but when I had bumped into him last he said he wasn’t at all concerned about getting back into football again. ‘The players don’t bother now,’ he said. ‘They don’t give a fuck. I couldn’t go back to it, Harry, it would drive me mad. I used to enjoy it, but not any more.’ There was a whole list of managers who didn’t seem to be missing the game – Alan Curbishley, George Graham, Dave Bassett. I began to feel the same.

I had taken a very part-time role at Bournemouth as an adviser, and that suited me perfectly. I loved the club, and genuinely wanted to help them, but it wasn’t a hands-on position. If anyone wanted my advice, I was there as a sounding board. Eddie Howe was the manager, who was one of my old players, and I said I would be as involved as he wanted me to be. I would have gone to Bournemouth’s
games anyway, just to watch a match, so it seemed a natural fit. They hadn’t won all season, but the first match I attended in my new capacity was away at Yeovil Town on 8 September – Richard Hughes scored after 35 minutes and we held on for a 1–0 win. This felt great. I kept my interest in football, but could stay close to home and take time off as I wished. The perfect life. And then the telephone rang, and it seemed as if I might be off to Kiev.

It seems a contradiction to say that having begun to get used to life as an ex-manager, I was prepared to throw it all in to manage the Ukrainian national team, but it really had appeal. For a start, the financial package was tremendous – more than I had ever earned as a manager in the Premier League – and the terms were favourable, too. I wouldn’t have to settle permanently in Ukraine. I could travel there for matches and stay some weekends when I would scout games. The rest of the time I would work from home in Bournemouth. They told me the flight times from London to Kiev and it really wasn’t a worse commute than going from Dorset to Tottenham. There were two flights a day, about two hours in the air. I wouldn’t be away from Sandra any more than I had been previously.

Paul Stretford, my agent, had been out there for two days talking to their people and came back with very positive reports. The deal was as good as done. They said I could have my own apartment in Kiev, or the best suite in a top hotel; they would give me a driver, credit cards, food and travel expenses and a salary of £5 million a year – net, plus bonuses. It was an amazing deal, the best I had ever heard. Jamie made me laugh. ‘If all that comes out,’ he said, ‘it will look as if you are only going there for the money.’ ‘Well, it does help,’ I told him.

‘Why me?’ you may think. The people at the Ukrainian Football Association explained the conundrum over dinner in London. Professionally, they wanted a man-motivator with experience to get their qualifying campaign back on track. Politically, they wanted an outsider. Somebody not at all connected to the Ukrainian football scene. As I understood it there had been a lot of infighting between their two main clubs, Dynamo Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk. Pick a man from Kyiv and he would exclude those from Donetsk, and vice versa. They wanted a coach with no club allegiance – in fact, I could even pick my own staff. It was my idea at the meeting to take someone like Andriy Shevchenko, who knew the country and could perhaps get the fans behind us. I was all for making a fresh start, but I thought I needed at least one person around familiar with the territory. I was really interested. I thought with a respected figure like Shevchenko onside we could make a difference.

Ukraine’s squad has some outstanding players and I knew they were very unlucky not to have beaten England at the European Championships in 2012 and then again in a World Cup qualifier at Wembley. Ukraine were playing catch-up in Group H, but I didn’t think their problems were insurmountable. Obviously, taking the job would have meant playing England – and for Ukraine to go to the World Cup, maybe England would have had to miss out, but I decided I could live with that. Remember what I said about club allegiances ending when a player signs professional terms? Well, the same applies. I love England, and nobody wants to see them do well more than me, but if I was manager of Ukraine I would feel very comfortable knocking them out – just as Fabio Capello would have gone all out to beat Italy. When it’s your job, it is different. Nobody held it against Jack Charlton that time the Republic of
Ireland beat England at the European Championships in 1988. There are so many foreign managers working in other countries, as professional people we can’t afford to think like that any more. Anyway, England did not want me – so why should I agonize about working for anybody else? I viewed it as a really interesting opportunity, new ground for me, and I was about a day away from agreeing the contract when Queens Park Rangers made contact.