Craig Bellamy - GoodFella (25 page)

I don’t know whether Manu had a big problem with Van Persie (there were rumours afterwards that they had disliked each other when they were teammates at Arsenal) but it all seemed rather strange. I’d had a really good game and the team had played superbly but no one was talking about that. They were talking about Adebayor and how long he was going to be banned for. If the celebration didn’t get him, the stamp would.

In the end, he was banned for three matches for violent conduct for the stamp and escaped with a £25,000 fine and a suspended ban for the celebration. But that was enough. It pricked our bubble. It deprived us of him for the next game against Manchester United at Old Trafford and when he came back at the beginning of October, he wasn’t the same player. The magic had gone. The momentum had been lost.

The derby against United was an amazing match. We were still confident even without Adebayor but they were gunning for us.

There was extra needle because of Carlos and he got a lot of stick even in the warm-up. Carlos wasn’t back to full fitness then but he is a warrior. I’ve seen heart in a lot of top players but his heart is as big as anyone’s. I got on very well with him. He’s a great guy. We had the same work ethic and a good understanding.

I enjoyed his attitude. He made me want to be better. Just watching him took me on to another level. Even when things weren’t going well for him personally, he still made good decisions and still chased balls that looked like lost causes. When you are watching him at close hand, it inspires you to try to do the same things.

The United players said he wasn’t a good trainer but he put so much into games, it took him a long time to recover. His body looked battered after a game. He was tired for a few days afterwards. Everything was about Saturday for him. He didn’t let you down on Saturday. I have never seen a guy put their body through as much as him. He does not look like an athlete so imagine the hard work he has to put in to perform like one. I tell you this, you would want to go to war with him every time.

Old Trafford was baying for blood and two minutes into the game, Rooney scored. They were laughing. Same old City, always losing. They were expecting a rout. We all looked at each other. It was the last thing we needed. The last thing Sparky had said was ‘don’t concede early’. Well, Plan A was straight out of the window.

We dragged our way back into the game. Some hard work by Carlos caused a mistake in the United defence and Gareth Barry equalised.

We went 2-1 down just after half-time but three minutes after they had taken the lead, I equalised. Ji-Sung Park and John O’Shea came out to the edge of the box to try to close me down but I cut inside O’Shea and hit a screamer around Rio Ferdinand, across Ben Foster and into the top corner. It was one of those goals where I knew it was in as soon as it left my boot.

It was a superb end-to-end game. Ten minutes from the end, they went ahead when Darren Fletcher headed in a Giggs free-kick. Set-pieces were City’s Achilles heel under Sparky. We couldn’t mark and if we did mark, we got it wrong.

But then in the last minute, Rio tried to chip a cheeky pass over Martin Petrov near the halfway line. Petrov fed it to me and suddenly I was one on one with Rio. Down the years, it had been hard to outpace him but I found myself sprinting away from him this time. He was an outstanding player, Rio. He can annoy me but he is one of the best players I have played against.

As I bore down on Foster, he came off his line to try to narrow the angle but I knew he would be anticipating that I would try to curl a shot round him. I think he got a bit disorientated because he left a gap at his near post so I jinked to the left and slid it past his right hand. That was 3-3 with 90 minutes gone and I thought I had saved the day. I thought I was the hero.

But the referee played six minutes of injury time and in the last of them, Giggs played a beautifully weighted pass through our defence. It went to a red shirt. I thought ‘who’s that?’ and then realised it was Michael Owen. I didn’t even know he was on the pitch. ‘When did he come on?’ I thought as he controlled the ball. He’d come on 12 minutes from time for Dimitar Berbatov but he’d hardly had a touch. Still, that was Michael Owen. He didn’t need many touches to score. He controlled Giggs’ pass with his first touch and, with his second, he slid the ball past Shay Given.

It was 4-3 to them. It was obvious time was almost up. But the game had been such a thriller I thought anything might still happen. Then I saw a United fan running on the pitch. Some stewards had grabbed him and wrestled him to the floor but he was delaying the restart. I marched over to where he was standing. I was thinking about getting my hat-trick.

“Get the fuck off the pitch,” I yelled at him.

“Fuck off,” he said.

So I pushed him in the face. I didn’t punch him, like some people said. I just couldn’t be bothered with him. I didn’t even get asked to see the FA. A few people tried to make it a problem but the police didn’t want to speak to me.

Then the final whistle went. I couldn’t believe we had lost. It was a great game. A joy to be a part of but we had lost. United and their fans were exultant. Maybe it was a bit early in the season for it to be a turning point but we struggled to recover from it. We beat West Ham at home in our next match but then we went on a run of seven successive draws.

I was playing well. I was creating goals and scoring them. I was getting plenty of playing time. But as a team, we just kept conceding daft, daft goals. We outplayed teams and took the lead but we made a habit of allowing the opposition to come back at us. We got panicky. If we hadn’t made so many errors, we could have been top of the league but we had slipped out of the Champions League places and below the notorious line on Garry Cook’s graph.

I got on well with Garry. I was playing well so I was everyone’s mate. If you’re playing well, everyone’s saying what a great signing you have been and what an asset to the club you are. I liked Garry’s passion. Whether he was talking bullshit or not, I still liked his passion. People ridiculed him and he did make one or two gaffes but he did an awful lot to establish City among football’s elite.

The run of seven draws left us in sixth place. We were only three points behind Arsenal, who were fourth, but the owners were desperate to qualify for the Champions League the following season and I think they were getting nervous about our prospects of achieving that. In the last of the draws, I was sent off for two bookable offences at Bolton. That meant I missed the next game at Spurs.

We played badly at White Hart Lane. Robinho was particularly poor. I had actually grown to like Robbie. He was a lot more approachable when Elano wasn’t around but I don’t think he ever really settled properly in Manchester. We lost 3-0 that night in mid-December and the loss dropped us to eighth. There was a lot of speculation that Sparky’s job could be in danger.

The following Saturday, we were playing Sunderland at Eastlands. I got up that morning and saw I had a couple of missed calls from Kieron on my mobile phone. I didn’t return them. No one can get hold of me the morning before a game. It won’t happen. But before I got to the ground, I turned the radio on and found out why Kieron had been ringing.

The Sun had printed a back page story saying Sparky would be sacked whatever the result against Sunderland. I didn’t think much of it. How could they have decided that already and let it leak out without telling the manager? It wasn’t possible, surely. I think that if we lost against Sunderland, that would be the end for him but I didn’t think we were going to lose.

I could see the strain in Sparky before we went out to play but nobody mentioned anything about The Sun story. We went 2-0 up quickly but then allowed them back into the game and they drew level. I put us 3-2 up and I was determined to get Sparky out of the mess it seemed he was in. Sunderland got it back to 3-3 but Roque Santa Cruz scored the winner for us 20 minutes from time.

After the game, we were all sitting in the dressing room and Sparky came in and made a speech. He thanked everyone for what they had done. He said he didn’t know what was going to happen to him or his staff. He said he did not know anything but that he was aware there appeared to be some uncertainty about his position.

“If this is it,” he said, “I would like to thank you all. We have started something here and no one will be prouder if you go on and win stuff. I would like to wish you all good luck.”

I looked at Shay Given. “What the fuck’s going on here?” I asked. Shay just shook his head.

A couple of minutes later, I’d climbed into one of the ice baths when someone came down from upstairs and asked Shay and Kolo Toure to go up to the boardroom. They came back down after 15 minutes and said Sparky had been sacked and that Roberto Mancini would be replacing him. We were told we shouldn’t say anything to the press and that our Christmas party had been cancelled. Like I felt like going on it now anyway.

It was reported the next day that I had flown into a rage when I heard the news. Well, I hate to damage my image but I was too tired to fly into a rage. I was more sad than angry. I went to see Sparky in his office. He was there with his staff. Everyone seemed a bit stunned. I didn’t know what to say. Part of me thought that he had brought me to the club and if he was leaving, maybe I ought to leave, too.

I had a quick chat with him. I said how sorry I was about what had happened and that I hadn’t been able to do more to get the results he needed. I asked him what he thought I should do now, whether I should leave, too. He told me to stay and to fight for my place and build on everything I’d already achieved. I felt angry towards Garry for the way it had all been handled. I felt Sparky had been humiliated. Everyone had known about this apart from him.

Sparky’s wife came into the room next and she was trying hard not to cry. Then his old man came in as well and he was tearful. And then I looked at Sparky and saw that he was welling up.

I knew it was time for me to leave. This was his big opportunity and now it was gone. It sunk in then what had really happened. I got out of there and drove back to Cardiff. There was still a Christmas do, which some of the boys went on. Life goes on. It’s football. That’s the game.

25

Lost In Translation

T
he following Monday, Roberto Mancini spoke to us all in a group. He spoke well. He said he felt sorry for Mark Hughes but that he had won championships at Inter Milan and been sacked. He was right about that. It happens. It wasn’t his fault that Sparky had been fired. Mancini had been given an opportunity. He had to take it. I didn’t feel any bitterness towards him.

I went to see him in his office later. I told him I had been close to Sparky and that I found the way he had been forced out hard to deal with. But I also told him I would give as much effort for him as I had for the last manager. I told him I believed in what the club was trying to do and would do everything I could to help it reach its goal.

It was quite a speech but he looked a little bit blank when I’d finished. His English wasn’t great then. I’m not sure if he understood any of what I’d been saying.

Then Garry Cook and Brian Marwood, who was the club’s Football Administrator (whatever that meant) called me in and told me that they were going to let Robinho leave. They said that was a measure of how much they valued me. They were going to let the club’s record signing go because they recognised that I was keeping him out of the team and I deserved to be keeping him out of the team.

Roberto’s first game was against Stoke at Eastlands. He asked me whether I wanted to start that game or the match the following midweek at Wolves. I told him the tougher game would be Wolves away and that Robinho probably wouldn’t do so well in the away match. I said that, for that reason, it would probably make sense to start me against Wolves.

So that’s what he did. I was pleased he’d consulted me, to be honest. Of course, when I was named on the bench for the Stoke match, the papers said I’d paid the price for my loyalty to Mark Hughes and that Roberto had dropped me. That suited their narrative but it wasn’t true.

Roberto brought me on for the last 20 minutes for the Stoke game anyway. I replaced Robinho, who had had another difficult game. I felt for him a little bit when he came off. I got a massive cheer when I was coming on and it must have been a little bit difficult for him. I had come to like the guy but I didn’t worry about it too much. I felt proud of how far I’d come at a great club like City.

Roberto changed a lot of stuff straight away. I saw some good people who had helped me a lot at City lose their jobs. They got rid of Raymond, for a start. It was obvious they would do that because he was so outspoken. Every couple of weeks, someone else was gone. I felt guilty. These people had done so much for me. I kept convincing myself this was football, this was just how it was. I asked myself if it was acceptable that I was just standing by while they were getting fired. In the end, I just got on with it.

It didn’t take long for a little friction to build between me and Roberto. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t train every day. He said I had to train every day. I told him I couldn’t because of my injury history. He said I had to do double sessions – training morning and afternoon – and I told him I couldn’t do double sessions. If I do two sessions, I put too much stress on my hamstrings. I am an explosive player. He shook his head. He said in Italy, you have to train all the time. It was frustrating. I had been doing so well. I had felt so comfortable with my routine and it had been getting the best out of me. Now Roberto wanted to change it.

In mid-January, we played United in the semi-finals of the Carling Cup. There was a lot of hype around it and a lot of talk about how this was the gateway to City winning their first trophy since 1976. We won the first leg 2-1 at Eastlands but I didn’t hang around celebrating on the pitch for too long afterwards. I shook hands with the United players and got down the tunnel as fast as I could. I knew we still had to go to Old Trafford for the second leg and if we milked it, they would make us pay.

We didn’t milk it but Garry Cook did. Garry was a brilliant talker. I loved listening to him. He was very entertaining and could talk you into anything.

But sometimes, by his own admission, he didn’t know when to stop. In the build-up to the second leg, he was filmed telling City supporters in New York’s Mad Hatter Saloon that City would get to Wembley “not if, but when, we beat United again.”

That played straight into United’s hands. There were other things I was worried about, too. Roberto was still learning the ropes. Some things that he introduced were beneficial. We went zonal at the back and that sorted us out defensively. It suited us. But sometimes, his lack of experience in the Premier League was a problem. Sometimes, the ProZone guy was taking the team talk because Roberto didn’t know enough about the opposition. Roberto was listening in like he was a player. I didn’t have time for him to feel his way into the job. I needed to win things now.

The atmosphere at the club quickly became tense under Roberto. The mood changed. He was not worried about whether players liked him or not. It was of no interest to him. You could walk past him and he would not even say hello. Brian Kidd was brought in to be the good cop. But he didn’t really have much of a line in to Roberto. He had no say whatsoever, from what I could see.

The Carling Cup was important to us that season. People made fun of the competition but it would have been the perfect stepping stone for us. Clever managers can use a victory even in a lesser competition as a catalyst for greater achievements. Jose Mourinho won the League Cup at Chelsea in 2005 on the way to winning the Premier League. The League Cup was his first trophy.

I’m sure United realised how important it was to try to stop us making that psychological step, too. Sir Alex Ferguson had been talking about us being ‘noisy neighbours’ and they were desperate to silence us. They went some of the way to doing that at Old Trafford in the second leg when Paul Scholes put them ahead on the night.

Michael Carrick put them 2-0 up but then 15 minutes from the end, I swung over a cross and Carlos darted ahead of Rio Ferdinand, stuck out his right leg and flicked the ball past

Edwin van der Sar to bring the scores level on aggregate. It looked then as though the tie was heading to extra-time. If that happened, having interrupted their momentum, I fancied our chances.

The last few minutes were mayhem. I’d already been hit by a coin when I went over to take a corner earlier in the game and the atmosphere got more and more intense. Then, two minutes into injury time, Giggs swung a cross over and Rooney, who was in the form of his life that season, rose unchallenged in our box and headed it past Shay Given to take United to the final.

When we got back to our changing room, we could hear the United boys celebrating next door. I was devastated. We’d got what we deserved. We’d been naïve in the build-up and we had fed them motivation. I knew that, in time, we would go on and win the league and the Champions League but I wondered if my time was running out to win something with the club.

I found it increasingly difficult with Roberto. I felt that faith in me was slipping. When I played that season, I had been staying on until the end of matches because I had been playing well and had been regarded as a constant threat. But during a defeat to Hull at the beginning of February, Roberto substituted me. It was a bad sign.

I went out in Manchester that evening with Wayne Bridge and Shaun Wright-Phillips and at the end of the night, I allowed myself to get into a scrape with a United fan. It was a bit of pushing and shoving. There was a group of United fans waiting for me as I went to get into my car. They were taunting me and because I was in a bad frame of mind, I got involved. It was nothing serious but it was serious enough that I aggravated my knee injury during the fracas.

I was out for two weeks because of that. I came back to training and I did some running. Roberto said I would be running the next day, too. I said I couldn’t do two days solid in a row. He said I had been off for two weeks so I had to. I told him I couldn’t. I had to stick to my programme. He called me into his office for a meeting with him, his fitness coach and the club doctor. He was confrontational from the start.

“Is it okay for you to be out for two weeks and think you can decide what you are doing?” he said.

“I am sticking to my programme, that’s all,” I said. “It has kept me fit all season and I don’t want to risk being injured now.”

“Okay, then, you have been away for two weeks,” he said. “Now you can go home for the rest of the season. Go on.”

“What are you on about?” I said.

“Well, you don’t want to train,” he said.

“It’s not that I don’t want to train,” I told him. “I know my knee. I know it will react tomorrow if I train again and if it doesn’t, my hamstrings will.

“No, no, no,” he yelled.

So I went home. I told Brian Marwood and Garry Cook what had happened. Garry came round to my house to talk about it. He said something had been lost in translation. I went in the next day and trained but Roberto and I didn’t speak after that. That was a cut-off. That was him done with me, really. Rafa was harsh. Roberto wasn’t far behind.

He didn’t freeze me out. I still played and I still put in some good performances. But it became common knowledge that we’d had a big disagreement and the tension between us grew.

At the end of March, we lost to Everton at Eastlands and David Moyes and Mancini had a bout of handbags on the touchline. At the end of the match, Moyes came up to me and we had a bit of a chat. We’d had contact before when he’d tried to sign me for Everton and I had a great deal of respect for him.

“What about you two, pushing and shoving,” I said. “Why don’t you just have a fight?”

We had a bit of a laugh about it and that was it. The next thing I know, there were rumours that I was being investigated by the club because I had told Moyes he should have battered Mancini. Or something like that. It was bizarre but it did worry me a bit. I didn’t want Roberto to turn against me completely.

Roberto kept playing me. I scored twice in a 4-2 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and I got another in the 6-1 win over Burnley at the beginning of April when we went 3-0 up inside the first seven minutes.

By then, we were neck and neck with Spurs for the fourth and final Champions League place. With three games to go, they were one point ahead of us. We beat Aston Villa 3-1 in the next game and I got the last goal. Roberto started me in the next game, the showdown with Tottenham at Eastlands that would decide who finished fourth.

The Spurs defender, Younes Kaboul went right through me with a bad tackle after about 20 minutes and caught me with his knee in the small of my back. I was having back spasms for the rest of the game. The more the game went on, the more I struggled to run. Eight minutes from time, Kaboul went past me to the byline and cut a cross back. Our keeper, Marton Fulop, pushed it out and Peter Crouch headed it in for the winner.

So we finished fifth. The whole point of replacing Sparky was supposed to be that Roberto would get us into the top four but it didn’t work. Although I wasn’t terribly fond of Mancini, I was upset for the club. The fans had been tremendous to me from start to finish and I only wanted the best for them. I didn’t feel too bad for them. I knew the good times were just around the corner.

I had got a fairly clear idea of the way things were going as far as my future was concerned about a month before the end of the season. I’d been accused of getting into a scuffle with a charity worker in Sierra Leone and I sued The Sun over it because it had never happened. It got complicated and in the end I dropped the case but by then it had cost me about £400,000 in legal fees. I asked City if they would pay it off for me and take it out of my wages month by month the following season.

“We don’t know if you’re going to be here next season,” Brian Marwood said.

I was annoyed. I told him he was taking the piss. But I suppose I should have seen it coming really. Things were moving on and Roberto had no particular loyalty to me. It wasn’t personal. These things aren’t usually. It was just about one man’s vision for the club and whether you fit into it or not.

So the game against Spurs was the last time I ever pulled on a City shirt. Mancini took me off six minutes from the final whistle and that was the end of my City career. I wasn’t selected for the last game of the season against West Ham at Upton Park and, during the summer, rumours started to circulate that City were offering me around to other clubs.

I knew that Liverpool were trying to get me back. Roy Hodgson had taken over and they wanted me on loan but City said they weren’t interested in a loan. Then Tottenham were pushing and pushing but City told them they wanted £10m. Spurs are never going to pay that for a 31-year-old. Daniel Levy is too cute for that.

Steve Walford rang to say that Martin O’Neill wanted to take me to Villa. He said City were offering me in part-exchange for James Milner. Steve McClaren rang me, too. He was manager of Wolfsburg at the time and he said my name had been mentioned as a makeweight for City’s attempts to sign Edin Dzeko. I didn’t like that. I didn’t want to be a makeweight for any deal. I wanted to decide where I would go but it was obvious City were getting increasingly keen to offload me.

I suppose I’d known it was coming but it still hurt. I had begun to come to terms with the idea that I wasn’t going to play any further part in the great revolution that was sweeping over the club but I was also acutely aware of what I was going to miss out on. I did feel some regret about leaving City because I could see what was coming and what they were going to achieve.

But I knew I would be a bit-part player and I didn’t want that. I had been through all that at Liverpool and I didn’t want to do it again. It wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to be playing, not watching and wondering whether I was going to see my name on a teamsheet or not. At some point, City named a Uefa squad and my name wasn’t among the 25. I got told by the media about that. It could not get any clearer what was happening.

I didn’t know what to do. All the transfer talks seemed to have broken down so when pre-season began, I did the only thing I could and went back to train with City. I gave it everything in the first weeks of pre-season. I didn’t have much contact with Roberto but I trained hard and tried to make an impression. The first pre-season match was against Valencia. I was on the bench. Mancini used every substitute except me. As messages go, it wasn’t very subtle.