Craig Bellamy - GoodFella (11 page)

11

Off To A Flier

M
y arrival in the north-east didn’t exactly fire the imagination of the Geordie Nation. I had the radio on as I drove to St James’ Park for my first day of training and the phone-in was discussing my signing. It was being interpreted as an indication that ambitions weren’t high. I was a symbol, they were saying, of low expectations and a difficult season ahead.

My first job was to get in the team. If I could do that, I thought we had the players to do well. There was Alan Shearer up front, of course.

When I first met him, he managed a cursory ‘hiya’ and that was it. He struggled even to muster a handshake. I think Al’s attitude was that you had to win his respect before he started being nice to you. He didn’t acknowledge me that much. He probably didn’t think that much of me as a player, which was fine. It didn’t matter anyway.

There was a great bunch of lads at Newcastle. On the pitch, I hit it off with players like Nolberto Solano straight away. He was such a clever player and he made it so easy to play with him. He would put his head up and disguise the pass as if he was going to play it wide and then he’d play it in to your feet. He was always available for a pass but when he had the ball, he would always give it to you at the right time and he was always available to get it back off you.

If you wanted to make a run, he would pick you out even when you thought he hadn’t seen you. He had that ability. His set-pieces were incredible. He was such an immense player. The movements I had learned from Gordon Strachan all came to fruition at Newcastle and stood me in good stead. Too late for Coventry, but in time for me to excel at my new club.

Then there was Gary Speed. Speedo set the standards at Newcastle, even in warm-ups. I wanted to copy him as much as I could. He would be at the front in warm-ups so I would be at the front too. He would go and do weights after training so I wanted to go and do weights too. He was a talented player but his attitude made him an even better player. He was the type of guy that if there were a war tomorrow, you would want him next to you because he would do anything for you. I admired his character immensely.

We had Shay Given in goal who was a terrific keeper. Kieron was a superb midfielder, at his best through the centre. Rob Lee was still there, although he was coming to the end of his time at the club. Carl Cort and Shola Ameobi were promising young forwards, Laurent Robert, the French winger, came in just before the start of the season, and Sylvain Distin arrived from PSG at the start of September to bolster a defence that had Nikos Dabizas and Andy O’Brien.

The previous season had been disappointing for Newcastle. They had finished 11th in the Premier League, 10 points away from qualifying for the Uefa Cup. So they had entered the Intertoto Cup to try to get into Europe by the back door. It meant that my pre-season was blissfully short and free of the hard running that had characterised many others. We were straight into matches.

First up was Belgian side Lokeren in the third round of the Intertoto. The first leg, my first game in a Newcastle shirt, was away. It was low-key, a summer’s day in the middle of July that felt absurdly early to be playing competitive football. There were only 6,000 people there and Shearer was missing because he had just had an operation for tendinitis. I set up the first two goals for Wayne Quinn and Shola and we cruised to a 4-0 win.

A week later, we played them in the second leg at St James’ Park. It was always going to be a formality but it was still special for me because it was the first time I’d played for Newcastle at the stadium and I felt like I had really arrived. There were nearly 30,000 people there for a game in late July when we already had a 4-0 lead. That tells you everything you need to know about Newcastle’s support. I scored after an hour and we won the game 1-0. It was the perfect start.

The way Bobby wanted to play was perfect for me. He wanted the ball on the deck, for a start. He liked me dropping deep but he also wanted me to play on the shoulder. He wanted me to mix it up. He said an influential player like me should be on the ball as much as possible. That was music to my ears.

I felt at home straight away. And I felt privileged to be there. Until you settle into the area, you don’t realise how big a club Newcastle actually is. It was a new level of scrutiny and a new level of expectation but after my troubles at Coventry, I wanted to seize the second chance I felt I had been given with both hands. I wanted to embrace the challenge.

I enjoyed working with John Carver too. He acted young and he was on the same wavelength as the players. He was the link between the manager and us and because he was a Geordie boy, he had a real feeling for the club. We had a good fitness coach, Paul Winsper, and everything felt as if it was geared to success. The first few weeks were brilliant. I loved every moment of it.

Sometimes in pre-season you are just concentrating on getting fit and staying out of trouble. Sometimes, a lack of match fitness can catch you out when you get to the first game of the league season. But the run in the Intertoto Cup solved that issue. After Lokeren, we beat 1860 Munich away and at home and that put us into the final against Troyes.

We under-estimated Troyes. I did, anyway. We drew 0-0 in the first leg in France but they were superb. They were managed by Alain Perrin, who had a brief spell in control of Portsmouth, and they played one-touch stuff. We were chasing shadows. They should have beaten us quite comfortably at their place but somehow we hung on for a draw.

We went 1-0 up in the second leg at St James’ Park but then they took us apart. They were 4-1 up after an hour and although we dragged ourselves back into it and Aaron Hughes even scored a last minute equaliser, they deserved to go through. The supporters, of course, were disappointed because they wanted European football but it was probably the best thing that could have happened to us.

We had a good squad but we didn’t have a big squad and now our playing resources wouldn’t be quite so stretched. The six Intertoto games we had played had bedded everybody in and the players watching from the sidelines, like Shearer and Kieron, were thinking they were going to come back into a decent side. There was optimism around the place.

The first game of the league season was against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. They had spent £32m on Frank Lampard, Emmanuel Petit, William Gallas and Boudewijn Zenden and they had ambitions of challenging for the title. But we matched them. We fell behind early but we finished strongly and Clarence Acuna equalised for us with 13 minutes to go. It was an early boost for our morale.

The next weekend, we were at home to Sunderland in the Tyne-Wear derby. I had sampled a few East Anglian derbies. In fact, I scored in one and the atmosphere was always brilliant. But it had nothing on that Newcastle-Sunderland game. I had never been involved in anything like it. It is on occasions like that when you realise why people talk about St James’ Park as one of the great cathedrals of football.

Sunderland had a little bit of a hold over Newcastle at that time. A couple of years earlier, Ruud Gullit had decided to leave Shearer on the bench for a Tyne-Wear derby. It was widely interpreted as a power-play, an attempt to prove he could take on the Geordie hero on his own patch. It didn’t work. In fact, many people interpreted the team sheet he handed in for that game as tantamount to a managerial suicide note. Sunderland won 2-1 and Gullit was out.

This time, we went a goal down after 20 minutes. Kevin Phillips had scored in Gullit’s last game and now he scored again after about half an hour. But there were 52,000 fans inside the stadium and they kept up the support. Two minutes before half-time, Laurent Robert played me in and I slotted it past the Sunderland keeper. That gave me a lot of confidence and belief and helped establish me with the fans.

Shearer returned to the team for the next game against Middlesbrough and that felt like a big moment for me as well as the supporters. I knew what he was all about because I had watched him down the years, not just for England but for Southampton and Blackburn before his move back home. He was an incredible player. By the time I worked with him, he had dipped a little because of the number of injuries he had suffered but he was still a brilliant player. He could hit the ball like no one else I’ve ever seen. He was great at holding it up and he was magnificent in the air.

Sometimes people say ‘be good with your left as well as your right, always work on ironing out imperfections’ but Alan knew the time for that had come and gone. Alan just improved his strengths. If there were some things he couldn’t do, he didn’t try to do them. He worked hard, although pre-season, he wouldn’t do any of the running that the rest of us did. He did his own stuff because he wasn’t a runner. He wasn’t quick. He didn’t have those qualities. But he gave the team confidence. When you know Shearer’s in your team…well, it can’t help but give you a lift. He had something. He had stature. He had presence. The crowd adored him. When it was known he was coming back against Middlesbrough, the anticipation around the region was intense.

If you put the ball into the right area, Alan would always pick on the weakest defender. He had a sixth sense for sniffing out a defender’s vulnerabilities. If that defender couldn’t head the ball, he would be on him. He was just clever. When we started playing together, I did a lot of his running for him. I was coming short to receive passes and it was probably ideal for him. It allowed him to concentrate on being in the right areas.

I’m the kind of player who creates chances, too. I will be wide and crossing it or cutting the ball back. Sir Bobby Robson knew exactly what he was doing when he paired the two of us up. We hit it off straight away. We played together against Middlesbrough and he scored twice in a 4-1 win at the Riverside. We were very, very different personalities off the pitch, but on it, we clicked.

Early on in our partnership, the quality of his striking took me by surprise. Once, I made a run on the outside and Laurent Robert used my movement to slip the ball inside to Alan. I was watching and thinking he had time to take a touch but he hit it first time and it went straight in the top corner. I ran over to him and I was thinking ‘that is something different to anything I have ever witnessed’. That was what made him different to every other player. When he hit the ball first time like that, nine times out of ten it would go in and if it didn’t the keeper would have to make a very good save.

Newcastle was Alan’s club. He was very strong within the club politically. Everybody was scared of going up against him. It wasn’t thought of as a battle you would be able to win. I was just grateful to be playing with someone like him.

He wasn’t a guy that went around giving people advice. There was no question that if you had a problem you would go and see him. He wasn’t that type of character. I didn’t mind about that because I had Speedo to go to.

Alan didn’t want to know about other people’s problems. He concentrated a lot on himself but then a lot of footballers do. That is probably what made him the player he was: he was very single minded. He did only think about himself. That was his only concern. Not the team, not the other players. It was about himself. That is probably his biggest strength.

Even when he got flak, it didn’t bother him. He knew his own ability and if someone criticised him, he would set out to prove them wrong and succeed.

I got an extra-time hat-trick against Brentford in the League Cup the following week. I got three in the space of 12 minutes. The highlights were coming thick and fast. I had wanted to hit the ground running at Newcastle and those first few weeks were everything I’d hoped for. In fact, the best was still to come. We were at home to Manchester United next. It was one of the most dramatic games I’ve been involved in.

The atmosphere was electric. United were unbeaten. People were saying they might go the whole season without defeat. They had Juan Sebastian Veron, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Laurent Blanc and, of course, Roy Keane. We were already full of confidence, though, and we tore into them.

We went 1-0 up. They equalised. Then Fabien Barthez made a mistake and Rob Lee put us back into the lead. Dabizas put us 3-1 up before they pegged us back to 3-3 with two goals in two minutes. It was breathless stuff. Seven minutes from the end, I managed to get away from Blanc and lay a pass out wide to Solano. His shot was saved by Barthez but it rebounded to Alan and Wes Brown could only deflect his effort into the net. It turned out to be the winner.

I was substituted soon after that because I’d got a kick on the knee so I was watching when Alan and Roy Keane clashed on the far side of the pitch in the last minute. The ball went out for a throw-in and Keane, who was already wound up anyway, reacted to something Alan said and threw the ball at him. It hit him on the back of the head and Alan complained to the referee. The referee sent Keane off and Keane went absolutely nuts. He looked like he wanted to rip Alan’s head off. It took about five of the United players to restrain him.

I adored Keane. He was one of the best players I ever played against. I idolised him, in fact, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go up against him in those circumstances. I saw him waiting for Alan in the tunnel at the end of the game and Alan didn’t seem to be hurrying off the pitch. He was one of the last to come off, actually, which we all made sure we remarked on when he finally made it back to the dressing room. Keane had had to be dragged back into the United dressing room by then. There was a lot of laughing and joking about it all. The spirit was good, United had been beaten, we were off to a flying start.