Craig Bellamy - GoodFella (14 page)

But Dynamo were a tough team, particularly in Kiev. They played three at the back and Alan and I were both man-marked. My marker, a defender called Tiberiu Ghioane, followed me absolutely everywhere, which was a new experience for me. They were two goals up after an hour and I began to get frustrated. My knee was hurting and Ghioane was trying to rough me up.

In the last few minutes, he cleared the ball upfield and followed through so he made sure he kicked me. The game was already lost but he was getting to me. In stoppage time, he gave me a nudge in the back and I turned around to confront him. As I squared up to him, I head-butted him. It was a pathetic thing to do but I thought I might have got away with it. The referee didn’t see it and nor did the linesman. It wasn’t the best head-butt and to the fella’s credit, he didn’t even go down.

I played in the next match against Feyenoord at St James’ Park the following week. I hit the bar and had a shot cleared off the line by Brett Emerton but we lost 1-0 and everybody said that was the end of our chances of making it through to the next stage. Things got worse the next day when Uefa announced that they had reviewed television footage of my incident with Ghioane.

They released a statement. It said: ‘In the 91st minute, Craig Bellamy deliberately head-butted an opponent in the face. Since the referee did not see the incident, the decision was rendered on the basis of video evidence.’ I was given a three-game ban for violent conduct, which was heartbreaking. I had worked so hard to play in the Champions League and now I was going to miss out on two games against Juventus and the return against Kiev.

I’d be back for Feyenoord away but I thought we’d probably only have pride to play for by then. While I was suspended, we lost the next game to Juventus 2-0, courtesy of two goals from Alessandro Del Piero. We had lost our first three games. Our Champions League campaign was turning into an embarrassment.

The only positive was that the ban gave me a chance to go back to Colorado to see Richard Steadman again. I was worried that the operation on my knee had not been a success. I needed to have a check-up. Dr Steadman said he didn’t want to operate again. The patella tendon was healing, he said, but he gave me very specific instructions about my continued rehabilitation.

He said I needed to do less shooting and no double sessions. As far as I was concerned, they were the kind of instructions that meant I wouldn’t be able to play football again. ‘You can’t tell me to do this,’ I thought, ‘I’m a striker.’ Part of the manic drive I had stemmed from wanting to improve and training was where I did that. I always wanted to stay to the last second of every session. I loved being out there until the last kick. Now I was being told I couldn’t do that any more.

I hated leaving training and seeing the others doing extra finishing. I resented it. I grew bitter about it. I knew I needed to improve but I couldn’t do it unless I was practising and I couldn’t practise because I would put more stress on my tendon and then feel the effects a day later. I became a miserable bastard. I was horrible to be around. This was my career on the line and I became consumed by anxiety and anger.

I was playing off and on. I scored a few goals in the Premier League but I felt like I was getting away with it, not excelling. Some games I was brilliant but the next week I couldn’t do it again because my knee was suffering from the week before. There was one ray of light. We had beaten Juventus at St James’ Park and then we beat Kiev in the penultimate match of the group, too. That meant that if we beat Feyenoord at De Kuip and Kiev lost to Juventus, we would finish second in the group. It was an unlikely scenario but I was available for the Feyenoord game. It gave me something to aim for.

I love De Kuip. I love that stadium. It’s a beautiful ground, a real proper football ground. We trained there the night before the game and it was cold and crisp. It felt like a proper European night. I could tell it was going to be a great occasion. The next day, we got on the coach to go to the ground and there were loads of Feyenoord fans around our coach, banging and shouting. It was hostile but it was great.

Both teams had so much to play for because we could both qualify if we won. The warm-up was as hostile as anything, which is right up my street. If I need any extra motivation, that’s it. I love it when fans scream at me. It puts me right in the mood. For once, my knee felt great, too. I missed one good chance but then Alan flicked one on from a kick out by Shay Given just before half-time and I ran through and scored.

Four minutes after the break, Hugo Viana made it 2-0. We still thought it was unlikely we’d get through to the next phase of the competition because most people expected Kiev to beat a weakened Juventus side in Ukraine. Our main focus, really, was on finishing third and getting into the Uefa Cup, rather than finishing bottom of the group and going back home with nothing.

They sent on a big forward called Mariano Bombarda midway through the second half and he pulled one back. Then, with 20 minutes to go, they equalised. We were right under the cosh but every time we broke we looked like scoring. It was a brilliant game. A few minutes from the end, I thought it was all over. Paul Bosvelt shot from the edge of the box and I thought it was in. Time stood still, Shay didn’t even dive. But the shot flew a few inches wide.

We were holding on but then, in the last minute, we pumped a free-kick forward towards Alan. He won it in the air and suddenly Kieron was bursting into the box. He hit his shot low and to the keeper’s left and when he palmed it out, I ran on to it. It was almost on the byline by the time I got to it but I just thought ‘hit the target’. I hit it hard and true and even though the keeper got his body behind it, he couldn’t keep it out. “Extraordinary,” the television commentator bellowed when it went in.

It was extraordinary, too. It was a brilliant, brilliant night. I thought I’d salvaged a Uefa Cup place for us. I was delighted. The home crowd went silent. Sir Bobby was telling us to concentrate. Then the whistle went and next thing I knew someone said Juventus had beaten Kiev and we were into the next round of the Champions League. What a moment.

To be back on that stage after missing three games felt great. And to qualify in the dramatic way we did made it even better. No one had ever done that before: lost the first three games and then won the last three to qualify. It was a great thing for the city and the club. We were all on a high. I signed a new contract with Newcastle around that time. I got what I wanted. I don’t think Sir Alex Ferguson was too happy with me but it was the best thing for my career at that time.

The Champions League format that year meant the second round was another group stage and we were drawn with Inter Milan, Barcelona and Bayer Leverkusen. That sent the excitement soaring even higher on Tyneside. We were doing okay in the league – we were ninth in mid-November – but this season the focus was more on Europe.

Two weeks after the drama of the victory over Feyenoord in Rotterdam, we were lining up to face Inter at St James’ Park. It felt as though it would be another special night. I was going to be up against players of the calibre of Fabio Cannavaro, Javier Zanetti and Hernan Crespo. And I was about to make history. Just not the kind I hoped for.

I wandered down the tunnel to go out for the warm-up and Marco Materazzi was standing there with a teammate. I didn’t know that much about him then although he had already played for a season with Everton. He was later to gain notoriety for his ability to wind people up. He provoked Zinedine Zidane into head-butting him with taunts about Zidane’s sister in the 2006 World Cup final.

Materazzi stared at me as I walked down the tunnel. He never took his eyes off me. I thought the guy realised he was in for a hell of a game against me that night. Nothing could have been further from the truth, sadly. Inter went a goal up in the second minute when Domenico Morfeo turned in a cross from Zanetti. It was a terrible start but worse was to come.

Four minutes later, I ran after a ball down in the corner. As it went out of play, Materazzi grabbed at me and pinched me. It’s very rare in our game we get pinched. Well it is in my experience, anyway. I swung my arm round to say ‘fuck off’ and it caught him around his midriff. He hit the deck and he was rolling round. I thought ‘shit, this doesn’t look good’. I saw the linesman flagging and I knew straight away I was off. I felt sick to my stomach.

I didn’t mean to hit him. I’m not exactly Mike Tyson. I couldn’t deck someone of his size with a punch. He had reeled me in beautifully. I suppose you have to give him credit for that. I bet he was surprised how quickly I bit. It must have been the easiest night’s winding up he’d had for a long time. The referee showed me the red card. It was the fastest sending-off in Champions League history. I was out for another three games.

I felt terrible. I was desperately disappointed with myself. I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid. We lost the game 4-1 and I felt totally responsible. Most of the other players were brilliant with me. Alan didn’t say anything but then Alan never really did. I just felt I’d let everyone down. I walked through the mixed zone where the players speak to reporters after the game and I took the blame. Not that I had much choice.

I wasn’t going to ask for forgiveness or make excuses. But I thought it was right for me to take the brunt of it. I didn’t want to hide because I had let everyone down. After the Inter game, I had to face up to everything. It was a tough period but it was my own fault. One of the local radio stations gave me a lot of stick, the local paper ran a page of texts about what an idiot I had been. I had to swallow it. I had had enough praise in the good times.

My form in the league was okay and by Christmas we had crept up to sixth but I felt sick about being suspended for the Champions League game against Barcelona in the Nou Camp. What a missed opportunity that was. Again, all my own fault. We lost that match but then we beat Leverkusen home and away to give ourselves a chance of qualifying.

I played against Inter in the San Siro and we drew 2-2. My pal Materazzi wasn’t playing this time and I managed to avoid getting sent off. I set up our first for Alan and we went into the last game at home to Barcelona with an outside chance of making it into the quarter-finals. I missed a couple of good chances early on and when I did get a shot on target, Victor Valdes pushed it on to the post.

We pressed and pressed but Xavi and Gaizka Mendieta began to take control and Patrick Kluivert put them ahead after an hour. I missed a chance to equalise, then hit the bar before Thiago Motta put the game out of reach 15 minutes from the end. Nothing had gone my way but then perhaps I didn’t really deserve any luck. It felt like karma. I was being punished for my two red cards. The adventure was over.

14

Club And Country

B
y the time we were knocked out of the Champions League, I had become consumed with worry about the state of my knees. Sometimes, I think people simply don’t understand how an injury can take over a player’s life and dominate everything. That’s what it did to me. It even got to the point where the pain was so bad I felt I had to make a choice between Newcastle and Wales.

My mental state was up and down non-stop. I wasn’t sure how much time I had left in my career so I didn’t feel like I could look ahead. Tendinitis in the patella tendon is difficult to cope with. One minute you feel good and the next day you feel you can’t decelerate.

It feels like someone is digging a needle into your knee when you run. Because I am an explosive player and I decelerate fast and twist and turn, it was the worst thing for me. Closing players down is a big part of my game but my confidence about my ability to do that was shot to pieces.

In many ways, it happened at the worst time for me, too. For the first time since I had been involved with the Wales team, it felt as if we had a genuine chance of qualifying for a major tournament. Things had improved beyond measure since Mark Hughes took over from Bobby Gould in 1999 and even though we had struggled to make any impression in qualifying for the 2002 World Cup, we felt we had the players and the belief to make it to Portugal in 2004.

Sparky went out on a limb to get me flown out to Finland for the first of those Euro 2004 qualifiers and it paid off. We won the game 2-0 and even though I only came off the bench for the last 15 minutes, the fact that I was there at all was the final proof that the days of farce and amateurism under Bobby Gould were over. We were serious now and that fed into our performances.

A month after we won in Helsinki, we played Italy at the Millennium Stadium in front of a capacity crowd of 70,000 fans. It was an amazing atmosphere and the Italy team was every bit as impressive as it was when I had been dazzled by them a few years earlier in Bologna. It was still full of football gods: Buffon, Cannavaro, Nesta, Del Piero and Pirlo. What a team.

But this time, we were prepared. We weren’t in chaos. Nobody had been banished from the team hotel. We didn’t play charades any more. Sparky didn’t have wrestling matches with the centre forward. We prepared well and we had good players and we set about Italy with real purpose and verve.

We took the lead early. I made a bit of a break down the right after a nice pass from Simon Davies. I turned inside my man and slipped a ball back to Davies, who had timed his run well. He ran on to it and it sat up nicely for him. Buffon may have been expecting him to cross it but he took it early and lashed it past him into the far corner.

The stadium went wild but they equalised after half an hour. They won a free-kick on the edge of the box and every time that happened, we knew it spelt danger because of Del Piero’s excellence with the dead ball. I was so angry about the decision to award the free-kick that I was booked for protesting. It was utterly pointless. It wasn’t a Del Piero masterpiece this time but it deflected off Mark Delaney’s head and looped over Paul Jones into the net.

But we didn’t fade. Our heads didn’t go down. We kept going. Ryan Giggs hit the underside of the Italy bar with a brilliant free-kick and then, 20 minutes from the end, John Hartson played me in on Buffon with a clever pass that dissected Cannavaro and Nesta. My pace took me away from them and as Buffon rushed out, I nudged the ball around him. I took one touch, slid the ball into the net and then let the mayhem wash over me.

That was one of the best nights of my career. Not just because I scored the winner and it was the first time Wales had beaten a leading nation in a competitive match for a long while but because we deserved it, too. Probably 90 per cent of the games I won with Wales, our keeper had had a great night. But the victory over Italy wasn’t like that. Giovanni Trapattoni, the Italy manager, said afterwards that they were lucky they only lost 2-1.

I missed the next qualifier, a 2-0 win over Azerbaijan in Baku at the end of November, because of my knee problems. I had just scored the winner against Feyenoord but Sir Bobby knew how much I was struggling and he kept me out. It was billed as a club versus country row but I couldn’t have played. I was in too much pain. After the high of the victory over Italy, Wales fans were not happy.

“I’ve had some unbelievably rude faxes from Wales,” Sir Bobby said at the time. “I understand their frustration but they don’t know the facts and they shouldn’t waste our time. They’re crucifying us for not letting Craig go, but he’s been out for seven months.

“He wasn’t fit at the start of the season, he’s played and had a reaction, and he’s been away for three weeks getting right again. I would have loved Mark Hughes to have Craig available. He played against Feyenoord but he would have told you himself that he couldn’t have played against Azerbaijan.”

Still, we had three victories from three games. It was great to be involved in a national set-up surrounded by optimism at last. The next competitive fixture was in March 2003, at home to Azerbaijan, but by the time it arrived, I was battling with new issues.

My nan had just died suddenly and even though I’d driven down to Cardiff through the night in the immediate aftermath, I’d never had a chance to grieve properly. The games were coming thick and fast. Football doesn’t stop. I didn’t even go to her funeral because my dad thought I would become the centre of attention and it might turn into a bit of a circus.

I was really cut up about my nan. I’d been really close to her. She was a big part of my childhood. Sometimes, a football pitch can be an escape from that sort of grief but sometimes it can be a cruel place, too. Newcastle played Charlton at The Valley soon after she died that March and there was a point in the match where we were leading 2-0 and I ran on to a through ball but was flagged for being offside. The Charlton goalkeeper, Dean Kiely, seemed to think I was going to kick the ball back to him but I left it so I could get back in position.

“I hope your fucking mum dies of cancer,” he blurted out as he ran past.

I’ve heard that kind of stuff from fans before but I had never had it from an opposing player. I had to turn around to make sure he had said it.

“You wait,” I mouthed at him.

My head had totally gone. It was all I was thinking about. I went straight over to him at the final whistle. He wouldn’t even look at me. He tried to get out of my way. John Carver tried to get in between us but I followed him down to the tunnel and he went out of sight.

The following Monday, I read some interviews he’d done in the papers where he was talking about how I was always mouthy and lippy but Shearer was the complete gentleman. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to cover himself in case I told everybody what he had said. Nobody knew what he had said to me at that point but he made an oblique reference to it.

“He’s a fantastic player but he’s not shy and likes to wind people up,” Kiely said in his interviews. “But I’m not going to go home worrying what people call my mum or whatever. Maybe he thrives on that sort of thing but it seems to work both ways because you only have to look back to Newcastle’s Champions League game against Inter Milan when he got himself sent off.

“I truly believe in karma and if you live doing that sort of thing, the other side will eventually get you back. You’ve got both ends of the spectrum at Newcastle. On the one hand there’s Alan Shearer, who is rightly regarded as an ambassador for the game. And then there’s Craig Bellamy.”

Karma? What kind of karma do you get from saying you hope someone’s mum dies of cancer? I got a number for Kiely from Shay Given.

I rang him in front of a few of the boys when we were in the changing rooms at the Newcastle training ground. I switched it to loud speaker so everyone could hear.

He answered. I got straight into it.

“How dare you say that to me about my mum,” I said, “and then try to start covering yourself in case I came out and said something.”

“Look, I apologise,” Kiely said. “I was up all night thinking about it. I can’t believe I said it to you. My auntie died of cancer. I’m in shock I said it to you. All I can do is apologise.”

“Yeah, all right,” I said. I pressed the red button.

Even now, I can’t look at him. Prick. People have him down as this nice guy but what kind of person says that? I was just burying my nan. He wasn’t to know that but it doesn’t change what he said.

So I was ready to unravel when I got down to Cardiff for the week’s build-up to that Azerbaijan game. It was the first proper stay I’d had down there since she died. I went out with Speedo on the Sunday evening. We had earmarked it as our night out before training began in earnest the next day. I drank quite heavily. I started to let it all out, all the grief about my nan. It wasn’t the time or the place but it was the first chance I’d had. We drank on until after midnight and then Speedo said we should get a taxi back to the team hotel at the Vale of Glamorgan.

We were driving through Cardiff city centre on the way back when I saw a crowd of people outside a bar called Jumpin Jaks. I thought there was a place open. I told the cab to stop and opened the door to get out. Speedo told me to get back in but I was gone by then. I wouldn’t listen to him. I went to go in and the bouncers said they were shut.

I wouldn’t hear it, of course. I insisted there were people in there and that it was my right to go in. The bouncers said again that it was shut. I kept arguing. At that point, one of the bouncers grabbed me and threw me down the stairs leading to the bar. I know Cardiff. That happens. In fact, I was lucky I just got pushed.

Speedo saw what was going on and came and got me. He told me to get back in the cab. But by then, there was no chance of me doing that. I was fuming. I wanted an argument. Speedo knew what I was like. He saw there was no way he was going to convince me, so he got back in the cab and left.

I started having a go at the bouncers. One or two kids who were outside the place started slagging me off. I don’t blame them, really. I was acting like an idiot. Anyway, I told one of the kids to fuck off and things looked like they were going to get totally out of hand. At that point, a couple of other lads appeared and said they were staying in my hotel. They said they had a cab waiting and they’d give me a lift.

I’d had enough by then. I’d reached my limit. I didn’t want any more hassle. I felt weary all of a sudden. So I got in their cab. I had never met those lads before and I have never met them again to this day but in the cab on the way back to the hotel, I started crying. I was wailing about what the hell I was doing down there when I should be with my kids and my girlfriend. It was all coming out. Those lads must have wondered what the hell was happening. We arrived back at the hotel and they helped me into reception and said goodbye.

I went back to my room and I got it into my head that I was going back to Newcastle and that I didn’t want to play for Wales on Saturday. I was not in a fit state of mind, my knees weren’t great, I didn’t want to play. I rang Speedo and he told me to meet him in reception. Soon, Mark Hughes and his assistant, Mark Bowen, were there, too. It was 2am by now and they were all trying to convince me to stay.

But I was adamant I was going home. I rang my dad and told him to come and pick me up and take me up to Newcastle. I told him I didn’t want to play for Wales again. It was like a drunk stream of consciousness. Sparky told me to go to bed and sleep on it. He said if I still wanted to go back to Newcastle tomorrow, he would drive me up himself. He knew I’d change my mind in the morning. They all knew what had happened with my nan and they knew the state I was in.

Speedo was begging me. He said I could sleep in his room but I wouldn’t have any of it. My dad arrived and he told me to listen to them. But I refused and in the end, he agreed to take me. So we drove all the way back to Newcastle. I slept most of the way. We got there at dawn. Claire was astonished to see me.

I was still half drunk. I was warbling on about my knee and concentrating on Newcastle, which was what Bobby Robson always used to say I should do. I went to bed for a few hours, woke up about 11am and thought ‘what the hell have I done?’

I rang Bobby Robson and went to see him at the training ground. At first, he was saying ‘you can stay here, son’. But in the end he saw that I was full of remorse and that I was worried about what I’d done.

“You better get your arse back down there then, son,” he said.

I knew I had to go back. I apologised to Sir Bobby and then I rang Sparky and apologised to him, too. He just laughed.

“I knew this was going to happen,” he said. “See you tonight.”

But it wasn’t over. If only it had been that simple. My dad drove me back down to Cardiff and during the journey, the radio news was reporting that the police were looking to question me over an incident that happened outside a nightclub in the early hours of the morning in Cardiff.

I was puzzled as well as concerned. I could remember getting pushed down the stairs but not much else. I knew I hadn’t been in a fight. When I got back to the Vale of Glamorgan, Sparky said the police wanted to speak to me and the next day I went to be interviewed at the police station.

They started asking me how much I earned and stuff like that. I had a solicitor down from London. They said a complaint had been made that I racially abused a young teenager. That was news to me. I denied it. I gave my side of the story and the police guy said to me afterwards that a kid had made a complaint but that he hadn’t been particularly convincing.