Gazza: My Story (13 page)

In the bath afterwards, we were all singing and shouting, having got through what we thought would be the toughest games. In the evening, some of us decided to go out and have a small drink as a modest celebration, which of course we weren’t supposed to do. Waddler, Chris Woods, Steve Bull, John Barnes, Terry Butcher, Steve McMahon, Bryan Robson and I sneaked out and found this local pub full of local Italian fans, who challenged us to a few rounds of arm-wrestling. Chris Woods, who was massive, had trouble with an equally massive opponent. It took all his strength to beat this bloke, but he did it in the end. We all cheered and ordered more drinks. Suddenly, we heard the sound of police sirens. Bobby Robson had found out we’d gone missing and sent the police to look for us. We ran like hell to get back into the hotel before he caught us. Chris Waddle and I made it back to our room, where we were joined by Bryan Robson, the England captain, a fellow Tynesider. I threw myself down on the bed, still laughing and messing around. ‘Come on, you Geordie bastard,’ Bryan was shouting at me. ‘You can’t take your fucking drink.’

Bryan began to try to tip me off my bed by lifting it up and turning it over. In the process he slipped – and the bed fell on his toe. There was blood everywhere. ‘Quick,’ I said, ‘wash it in the bidet.’ We rushed to our bidet and as the water cleared the blood we could see it was a really serious gash. Immediately we all sobered up. We knew it was so bad we’d have to call one of the physios to treat it. He came, took one look at Bryan’s toe and announced that he would have to call Bobby Robson. Oh God. Bobby was furious, of course. He was well aware we had all been drinking, and then mucking about, and that we must have done something really stupid. He demanded to know how it had happened.

I said that Bryan had been washing his feet in the bidet and had slipped. That was all it was, a pure accident. There’d been no larking around …

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Bobby. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’

Then he went off with Bryan to find the doctor.

And that was it. Our captain and key player was out of the World Cup, injured in a stupid prank. We never told Bobby the whole truth, and it never emerged elsewhere. Bryan was reported as having Achilles’ tendon
trouble, which he suffered from anyway. He had to return to England, and David Platt flew out to take his place.

The very next day, I was running across the grass as fast as I could, preparing to do a running dive into the pool, competing against Waddler to see who could do the longest dive. I fell and stubbed my toe. Oh fuck, I thought, I’ve broken it. Bobby was livid with me. ‘Now both my midfielders have buggered up their toes by being bloody stupid.’ Luckily, there were no bones broken and mine was OK the following day.

We had to beat Egypt to progress to the next stage, which we did, 1–0. I set up our goal with a free kick for Mark Wright, who headed it in at the far post.

We then left Sardinia for Bologna, where we were to play Belgium in the next round. On the plane, for something to do, to take my mind off the flight, I went into the cockpit and persuaded the pilot to show me how to fly. He explained which switches you flicked to make the aircraft go up, down or sideways. I wasn’t supposed to touch any of them myself, of course, but I grabbed one and pulled it, just to see how responsive it was, and the plane immediately went into a dive. Back in the cabin, Chris Woods had just started to stand up, and was thrown violently back into his seat. When he
heard it was me who’d caused the plane to dive, he said that once we landed, he was going to really thump me.

The game against Belgium turned out to be very exciting, despite the fact that there were no goals after ninety minutes. In extra time, we managed to summon up more energy and more inspiration than the Belgians, though it was extremely difficult to unlock their defence. About two minutes before the end, I made a surge from midfield which caught them on the hop, and they had to foul me to bring me down. I took the free kick, chipping in to Platty, who had come on as a sub, and he lashed it into the net. So we won 1–0, and we were in the quarter-finals.

In the bath afterwards we were all in high spirits, me especially. Shilts told Steve McMahon and me to calm down. McMahon told him to fuck off. There was a slightly nasty atmosphere for a bit, but not for long. Soon we were all the best of friends again. Everyone in the squad got on well, and there were never any rows. I suppose Chris Waddle and I were the daftest two, and Terry Butcher and Chris Woods could sometimes be pretty wild. As you might imagine, Gary Lineker was the most sensible one.

As in any team, there was plenty of good-humoured
baiting. Steve McMahon and John Barnes used to try to wind up Waddler and me by saying, ‘Show us your medals.’ Playing for Liverpool, they had won shedloads of silver while Chris and me, with Newcastle and Spurs, had won fuck all. Paul Parker was picked on once, just for being little. Some lads put a cover over him and pretended to wrap him up. It was a silly joke, nothing serious. Everyone liked him. It was just the sort of horseplay you get in any dressing room.

One evening Terry Butcher and Chris Woods were sitting having their team meal wearing their clothes back to front. Jackets, shirts and baseball caps, they had all of them on back to front. They started their meal with coffee, followed by pudding and ice cream, a main course and finishing with soup. They also drank a huge amount from some wine bottles, which actually contained nothing stronger than water, just to wind up Bobby and the coaching staff. When they had finished, they stood up and we noticed for the first time that they had no trousers on, just jockstraps. They walked backwards out of the dining room. They had kept straight faces throughout. Everyone cheered and clapped.

I got a cheer myself one day for diving into the swimming pool totally naked except for some toilet paper.
I’d wrapped myself in it. I can’t remember why now. I think I’d just been to the lav, noticed all these rolls of toilet paper and thought I’d make meself a cossie.

I know they sound stupid now, all those daft things, but they amused us then and helped to release the tension. You do have a lot of time on your hands between games, and people can get nervous or irritable or worried, so laughs and diversions that can break all that up are essential.

There was a lot of betting going on, too, with some of the lads running a book. People took punts on other games, not on ours. Right at the beginning I put some money on Cameroon to beat Argentina, just to be sociable, join in with the lads. No one expected it to happen and I won £800. We also used to gamble on horse races. We had videos of races sent out to us, and Shilts would tell us the names of the horses and the odds and we’d all put our bets on. I don’t follow the horses, or know much about the sport, but those who did were on the phone home to their mates, finding out which horse had won what race.

We had a lot of trouble with the press. They were printing all sorts of rubbish about us, including some shite about an Italian hostess – she was actually a translator –
who was helping to look after us. It was claimed that some of the lads were sleeping with her. I remember poor old Steve McMahon being named. It was all bollocks. Nobody slept with her. To cheer everyone up I made up a song we used to sing on the team coach, ‘Let’s All Shag a Hostess’. I can’t remember the rest of the words now, but I’m sure they must have been good.

The truth was there were no girls at all in our bedrooms during the whole of that World Cup. We might have had a few drinks when we were not supposed to, but there was no sex, please, even though we were British – not till the wives and girlfriends arrived. They were allowed to join us during a short break. Now that they couldn’t accuse us of sleeping with other women, the press tried another tack, suggesting that Bobby Robson was eyeing up one of the players’ wives, which was more bollocks. These attacks were pretty nasty, but in many ways enduring them together helped to unite us even more.

I had fallen out with Gail by this time, so I didn’t have a girlfriend to visit me. I was a bit pissed off about being left on my own to amuse myself while my team-mates spent time with their partners. I suppose I was jealous of the wives, and felt that they were taking their
husbands away from me. The couples started playing charades together. Eventually they asked me if I wanted to join in. I stood up and said, ‘Two syllables.’ After a pause I gave them the answer, ‘Fuck Off,’ and stormed out of the room. Yeah, it was childish. I was just fed up.

We were due to meet Cameroon in the quarter-finals. On the eve of the match, Bully, Chris Waddle, John Barnes and I decided to sneak into town. We couldn’t order any drinks in our rooms, and our doors always had to be left unlocked, so that Bobby could just walk in at night and check we were there. We were not supposed to leave the hotel without permission, either, but we just fancied a little break and a soothing pint. That was all. By chance, we’d bumped into Mick Harford, who wasn’t with the England camp, but had come out to watch the World Cup. He’d told us about a quiet place he knew, where, he assured us, we would not be spotted. And we weren’t.

But when we got back to the hotel, we saw Bobby Robson at the front door, waiting for us. Chris Waddle and John Barnes took a run and a jump over a wall and just disappeared in the dark. I thought, fuck me, I’m not doing that. I managed to work my way round the hotel, found a side door and crept in – only to walk straight into Bobby Robson. ‘Go to your room,’ he said,
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ On the way, I came across Chris Woods, just sitting on some steps with a bottle of wine. God knows how he’d got that.

It might sound as if some of us weren’t serious about playing football, but we were, we all were. We were desperate to do well in the World Cup. Chris and I used to fantasise the whole time about getting to the final and winning the trophy. None of us were looking for a wild night out before a game. We just wanted to relax for an hour away from the rules and regulations and hothouse atmosphere of our hotel base.

In the team meeting before the Cameroon game, Bobby showed us a video of Cameroon beating Argentina which, of course, had been a sensation. I don’t really enjoy team meetings – I find them pretty boring – so to pass the time, whenever Cameroon made a good pass, I went ‘Mmmmmmm,’ giving a sort of low hum of appreciation. When they gave the ball away, I groaned, ‘Oohhhh’ in disappointment. I was sat at the back, with Chris Waddle, who was soon joining in with my sympathetic noises. It wasn’t long before others took up the chorus, and eventually almost the whole room was going ‘Mmmmmmm’ when Cameroon did well and ‘Oohhhh’ when they made a mistake.

It took Bobby a while to twig what was going on, and when he did, he was absolutely livid that we were messing around in his team talk. He soon worked out that it was me who had started it.

‘Oh yes,’ he raged at me, ‘you can go fucking “Hmmmm, hmmmm” now, but you’ll be the first to go “Oohhhh” if we get fucking beaten by Cameroon!’

It’s not that I don’t listen or pay attention. It’s just that, as a player, I’ve never bothered much about opponents. I’ve always been more interested in my own game, and my team’s game. I have total faith in myself, and in the England team. So I have to admit that, when I was younger, I did often muck about a bit in team meetings.

In Italy, I also used to get bored when John Barnes came to our room and he and Chris Waddle started going on and on about formations and tactics, recapping team talks, and generally talking football non-stop. They would ask my opinion, partly to wind me up, because they knew I hadn’t been listening and didn’t really care. I’d put my fingers over my ears, say ‘I’m not listening, I’m not listening,’ and leave the room.

Well, in the Cameroon match, you can guess what happened. After disrupting the team meeting and being
told off by Bobby for not paying attention, I gave away a penalty. I fouled Roger Milla. I felt terrible about that. But on the plus side, I did help Gary Lineker to win his two penalties, and I could have scored myself. We eventually beat them 3–2. It was a good team performance and, my responsibility for that penalty apart, I enjoyed it. Most important of all, we were in the semi-finals.

We all wanted to celebrate afterwards, but Bobby wouldn’t let us. He said the tabloids would hammer us if any whisper of us drinking was heard. I had an idea. They served good milkshakes in the hotel bar, and I’d noticed that one variety looked very like a Baileys. So I asked the barman to give us Baileys in milkshake glasses, and to make them look like milkshakes by putting in umbrellas and all the other bits and pieces. I’d had about five of these when Bobby walked in.

He asked what I was drinking. I said a milkshake. He remarked that it looked good, and he would have one as well. I had to pull faces at the barman to make sure he made Bobby a real one, not the Baileys version.

One of the running jokes of the 1990 World Cup centred on David Platt, who’d flown out to replace Bryan Robson. He was for ever going on about Doug
Ellis, the chairman of Villa, who had this brilliant boat, or so Platty was always telling us, boasting about how he’d been on it. So whenever we saw some scruffy old boat, we’d all shout to Platty, ‘Hey, Platty! That must be Doug Ellis’s!’

We went to the seaside on one day off in Sardinia, and Chris Waddle, John Barnes and I went for a swim. About 300 yards out we came upon this big yacht. I said, ‘I bet that’s Doug Ellis’s.’ And fuck me, it was. We were invited on board and, with the help of other guests, got through about twenty bottles of his champagne.

Several visitors arrived that afternoon, including Nigel Kennedy, who played his violin. There was a pop star as well, who played the piano, but I can’t remember his name. Gary Lineker and his wife, Michelle, were there. She was standing sipping her champagne in the sun when I decided to leap on her as a friendly gesture. I landed on her back and we both went overboard. Gary was in a state of shock, seeing his wife disappear over the side of the yacht. But we were fine, though I admit we had a bit of a struggle getting back on board.

One of the jokes at Bobby’s expense was his fondness for military references. He always seemed to drag the war into his team talk. ‘Get stuck in, it’s a war, you
know,’ he’d say, or, ‘You have to fight as if it were a war-time battle.’ Gary Lineker opened a book and we all took bets on how many minutes it would be before Bobby used the word ‘war’ in his next team talk. Gary wrote ‘The War’ on a sheet of paper and pinned it to the wall, with the writing facing inwards so it couldn’t be seen. We all waited expectantly. Even I was listening intently for once to all Bobby’s tactics and stuff. The moment Bobby mentioned the war, as we all knew he would eventually, Gary jumped up and turned over the paper. Everyone cheered. Bobby took it all in good humour.