Pitch Black (28 page)

After being widely condemned and after losing two sponsorship deals, Whelan provided an apology and stated that he meant no offence, and indeed had many, many Jewish friends. He received a six-week ban and a fine from the FA.

Whelan’s comments had been made after Wigan’s appointment of former Cardiff City football manager Malky Mackay in November 2014, when Mackay was under investigation from the FA for sending emails containing racist, sexist and homophobic comments. Mackay had been ousted from the manager’s job at Cardiff City in December 2013 following a public row with the club’s owner, Vincent Tan, and was about to be appointed as manager of Crystal Palace in August 2014 when a dossier was sent from Cardiff City to the FA with the allegations. The texts included derogatory comments about Jewish and Chinese people and, as a result, Mackay was charged by the FA.

The FA’s inquiry seemed to drag on and while it prepared its response, a discussion ensued as to whether racism was a product of society. The catalyst for this occurred in February 2015. Chelsea were playing a Champions League group stage game against Paris St Germain, and video footage emerged of Chelsea fans pushing a black commuter off the train on the Paris Métro while singing, ‘We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it.’

On the surface, the Chelsea fans’ unashamed celebration of their own bigotry was an act of defiance, but scratch the surface and what actually occurred was anger at the fact that the world they inhabited has now gone and isn’t coming back. To describe them as dinosaurs would be an insult to the curmudgeonly old grandfathers to whom the term is usually
applied: these fans weren’t floundering around in a world that was passing them by; rather, it was a desperate cry from those who know the game is up but refuse to give up the fight to turn back the clock, because to do so would spark the need to find new values, and they have no idea where to look for them. Their behaviour was like that of fans who cheer wildly, ecstatically and without a hint of irony when their team, 6–0 down in stoppage time, scores a consolation goal.

Chelsea immediately distanced itself from the behaviour of this group of fans and promised life bans. Manager José Mourinho seemed dumbfounded by their behaviour. The previous October, he had stated there was no racism in football when responding to questions asked of him about the Rooney Rule. For a few days, the club was under intense scrutiny, anxious to get this one right. Captain John Terry condemned the behaviour of the fans in his notes in the next match programme, the search for the culprits continued and the incident blew over.

At the start of the 2014/15 season, Chris Powell was appointed as manager of Championship outfit Huddersfield Town. A few weeks later, Keith Curle’s appointment at Carlisle doubled the number of black managers working throughout professional football to two and their appointments immediately re-energised the debate around how best to address the under-representation of black managers.

Of the black coaches who were in the frame to gain managerial appointments, Powell represented the best opportunity for a black manager to smash the glass ceiling, opening the way for others to be given managerial opportunities. Paul Ince’s
short, but ultimately ill-fated, tenure at Blackburn Rovers proved to be a disappointment as the hopes and goodwill he generated ultimately gave way to Ince being sacked after just six months in charge, having won only three games. Powell’s credentials for the mantle of black managerial prospect were built on solid foundations, given his impressive record to date and the general consensus that he had been unfortunate to have been sacked from his previous managerial post.

Powell was an England international, had been chairman of the PFA and had made over 600 league appearances in a playing career spanning twenty-four years. He had enjoyed a successful first stint at management until a combination of change of ownership, internal club politics and circumstances beyond his control contrived to cost him his job just as he felt he was on the verge of producing something special.

Powell’s father had arrived from Jamaica in the 1960s and immediately adopted West Ham as his team because he’d seen Clyde Best play for them. Powell’s older brother was a football fan, although not a player himself, so a love of the game was instilled into him from an early age. Despite living in south London, Powell was a Spurs fan. As a child, he regularly travelled to north London to visit extended family and was overawed by the sight of Tottenham’s White Hart Lane stadium, eventually adopting them as his team. From the age of thirteen, Powell regularly travelled by himself to White Hart Lane from his home in Tooting, paying his £1.10 entrance fee to stand on ‘The Shelf’ and be inspired by the exploits of Garth Crooks and Danny Thomas.

By this time, Powell had already shown promise as a left-winger and had been further inspired by the Three Degrees, particularly Laurie Cunningham, who, as a fellow left-winger, became the blueprint for how Powell wanted to develop.
He also, on occasion, went to watch Crystal Palace, the nearest side to home, where he sought to emulate another left-winger, Vince Hilaire. At school, Powell’s team had reached the final of the English Schools Trophy and won a share of the title after a draw, so bringing its players to the attention of a number of professional clubs. However, it wasn’t until shortly before he left school in 1986 that he and two others from his team were invited for a trial at Crystal Palace. In the event, of the three trialists, only Powell was offered an apprenticeship.

He considered his apprenticeship a good, tough schooling for life as well as for professional football, with discipline being very high for apprentices. A number of practices that in later years would almost certainly have violated health and safety regulations were commonplace, as were bullying and harassment. However, under the regime, Powell flourished and did well enough to earn himself a professional contract. By this time, he’d been converted from a left-winger to a left-back and had made his debut against Newport County, when he made a substitute appearance with ten minutes remaining of the League Cup tie.

His conversion to left-back had come about in a youth team game against Southampton, which included in their side the talented Wallace twins, Ray and Rod. Due to injuries to the regular left-back, Powell’s first game in his new position required him to mark none other than Matt Le Tissier. As he progressed into the Football Combination with Palace’s reserve side, he had to get used to the quicker pace, increased physicality and racist abuse from opponents as part of his footballing education.

Powell never experienced the sense of isolation that often characterised the dressing room experiences of many of
the earlier generations of black footballers. The Palace first team included Wright and Bright, John Salako, Richard Shaw, Andy Gray and Eric Young, and the multicultural nature of the team reflected Palace’s south London environment. There were also a number of black players at all levels of the club, from apprentices through to the first-team squad, and although, socially, the black players tended to gravitate towards each other, there was an easy mix between black and white players and a good spirit within the first team. The team spirit and collective ethos so carefully fostered by manager Steve Coppell was a key element of the team’s promotion to the top flight, FA Cup run and general success, so when Palace chairman Ron Noades made his remarks about his black players’ lack of intelligence and disinclination to perform in the winter months, Powell regarded his comments as ill judged at best and a cheap comment at worst. By this time, Powell had left Palace in search of first-team opportunities, but had listened to Noades’s comments in amazement, knowing the enormous impact they could have in the Palace dressing room.

Powell had moved to Southend at the end of the 1989/90 season, after a short period on loan at Aldershot, where he’d gone after only a handful of appearances in Palace’s first team. At Aldershot, he had played regular first-team football, but the club’s financial problems meant they were unable to sign him on a permanent basis. At Southend United he knew Andy Ansah, who would go on to become a football choreographer and consultant for TV and Hollywood films, and who helped convince him to sign for the club.

At Southend, he learned his trade and began to learn a little about management. At the time, managers were still able to rule by fear and intimidation and it was not uncommon for them to be merciless bullies. It wasn’t until players
began to receive more lucrative contracts, negotiated for them by agents, that this tactic fell out of use. At the end of his first season at Southend, Powell received a £75 a week pay rise, given by his manager David Webb as a bonus for promotion, which was done without negotiation by an agent or any other intermediary.

He began to attract the attention of bigger clubs and at the end of the 1993/94 season he was out of contract at Southend and about to go on holiday to Portugal when he received a phone call from Steve Perryman, the assistant manager at Spurs, who told him that the club had been watching him, they were keen on him and they had one or two deals to do but they definitely wanted him to come to White Hart Lane. Powell left for his holiday on a high, unable to quite comprehend the imminent dream move to his boyhood team, with the associated prospect of playing for Spurs at Highbury, Old Trafford, Anfield and elsewhere.

He returned from his best holiday ever having had no word from Spurs and began pre-season training with Southend. When he finally got the call, it wasn’t the news he was hoping for. Spurs had blown their entire budget on securing the signature of German World Cup winner Jürgen Klinsmann, and so the deal to sign Powell was now off.

During the following season, in December 1995, he received an offer to move to Manchester City in the Premier League. By this stage he’d had five and a half years at Southend and he was ready for a move to a bigger club, but again he was heartbroken as the move fell through when the clubs couldn’t agree a fee.

However, the following month he moved to Derby County, who were riding high in the Championship and challenging for promotion to the Premier League. In the event, Derby
won promotion to the Premier League and City were relegated to Division One, where they stayed for one season before being relegated to the third tier.

Derby converted Powell to a left wing-back, a position they felt he could adapt to comfortably given that he had been a marauding full-back and had formed a potent, eye-catching partnership down the left-hand side of the Southend team with Ricky Otto. Derby had a young dynamic coach in Steve McClaren, and manager Jim Smith was a tough and demanding presence around the club. The move as a whole was a significant change from Powell’s time at Southend, as Derby was a one-club city that had just been promoted to the Premier League and there was a genuine buzz around Derby and the surrounding area. The club’s promotion to the Premier League coincided, fittingly, with Derby’s final season at their famous Baseball Ground stadium before moving to their shiny new home at Pride Park. Personally, Powell had just got married and had moved to Derby to finally play in the top flight, ten years after becoming a professional footballer.

He played for Derby for just over two seasons before being moved on after a humiliating 4–0 defeat to Leicester City in a local derby at Pride Park. Leicester’s four goals had come inside the first fifteen minutes, and had all come from crosses from Derby’s left side. Although none of the goals were directly Powell’s fault, he was blamed and was subsequently dropped from the starting line-up. He eventually regained his place in the side but, in Smith’s mind, Powell wasn’t right, and when newly promoted Charlton made a bid for him, it was accepted and Powell was on his way. For Smith, the deal represented good business, given that he got a fee from
Charlton and he signed a replacement from Germany on a free transfer, but for Powell it was heart-breaking. He and his wife had settled in the East Midlands and he had become something of a fans’ favourite, but he returned to London determined to make the most of his time at Charlton. As for Smith, later he publicly admitted in a meeting with Powell, when Derby visited Charlton, that he’d made a mistake and that the deal had ended up being a piece of poor business.

At Charlton, he played alongside John Barnes, then towards the end of his playing days, who was, in Powell’s words, ‘a class elegant player in the centre of the park’ who helped to raise the profile of the club and proved to be inspirational in the dressing room. At the end of the 1998/99 season, the club was relegated, but, crucially, stuck with their manager, Alan Curbishley, won promotion as champions the following season and became Premier League mainstays until Curbishley resigned at the end of the 2005/06 season. On their return to the Premier League, they set about confounding critics, who expected them to spend the season battling against relegation. In fact, they started the season well and were to finish the campaign in ninth position, not too far from a place in Europe. Powell himself was playing extremely well, adding much needed solidity to an indifferent defence and valuable Premier League experience to the team as a whole.

He was driving into training one Friday, as the team were making their final preparations before travelling to Coventry for an important away fixture against the West Midlands outfit. As he drove into the training ground he noticed a few journalists hanging around, which was an unusual occurrence for Charlton, and was informed by the club press officer that the journalists were there following up an article on
the back pages of the
Daily Mail
that had stated that Powell was to be included in the England squad. He was surprised, as he’d heard nothing, and quickly dismissed the idea, but later he got a call to go to the manager’s office. Reckoning that, as it was the day before Saturday’s game, a summons to the manager’s office could only mean that he was to be dropped, he was stunned to be informed by Curbishley that a fax had been received from the FA and that he was to be included in Sven-Göran Eriksson’s first England squad.