BECAUSE I FELT INCREASINGLY lonely I began to drink more and more. Sometimes, as a new day dawned, I went straight from the boozer to the training ground. I never knew whether McLeish suspected anything or not.
In my defence: contrary to popular belief I wasn’t plastered all day. And I didn’t wake up with a bottle of vodka in my mouth. C’mon, you couldn’t survive a lifestyle like that, especially not at a club like Glasgow Rangers. So, no, I wasn’t George Best the Second or The New Paul Gascoigne. Unlike them, I could resist temptation. Sometimes – honestly! – I didn’t drink for days. Most of the time I wasn’t intoxicated at all, dear reader, but when I did drink, for instance after a match, I drank until I fell over. I was unstoppable, and would down anything – beer, wine, spirits – as long as it contained alcohol.
I have to set the record straight here. I did feel lonely, but I seldom went out for a drink on my own. Now, that would have been sad. I was always joined by some drinking buddies from the club, and it sometimes happened that we didn’t have a match or training on a Wednesday. If that was the case, we went to London for a drink.
Yes, London!
Joined by the usual suspects – Barry Ferguson, Craig Moore, Jean-Alain Boumsong – I’d fly down to the capital for two nights of adult fun. Who cared about Thursday’s training? There would always be an early flight back that day, so we wouldn’t miss a minute of the activities at Murray Park. Call us insane, because that is what we were. But I loved every single minute of it. I simply needed a bit of thrill seeking, and there’s no better place for that than London!
It may not come as a surprise that we didn’t go to London to visit Buckingham Palace or watch the Changing of the Guard. After all, we weren’t bloody tourists. We were pissheads. We wanted to drink – as much as possible and as fast as possible. And being the superstars we thought we were, we didn’t end up in your average local watering hole. No, it had to be Tiger Tiger or Chinawhite, the trendiest nightclubs in Soho, where at some stage we would be joined by some French footballeurs, friends and countrymen of Boumsong. Or so I was told. By the time they arrived, I was mostly too plastered to notice.
I was busy doing other things. You see, being a footballer at a major British club, means women find you, let’s say, interesting. The moment they clap eyes on you, they want to score.
And I always let them score. I’m not that difficult. It must have been nice for them to get lucky. Lucky, in this case, meaning finding out I wasn’t too smashed to perform.
Still, not every chick would go for us in London. This was, after all, the Champions League of gold digging, so a lot of them were only interested in players from Chelsea and Arsenal. Glasgow Rangers may have been a bit substandard for them.
Not so in Glasgow, where Celtic and Rangers were top of the league when it came to female attention. And it would have been very impolite to neglect that attention, wouldn’t it?
So, every time a girl came up to me asking me for a ride, we had that ride – sometimes even in a car! Or we played hotel inspectors and went out to test beds. I made sure I never checked in using my own name – didn’t fancy the idea of reading a review in the tabloids a few days later – and I always, always dumped my passport, jewellery and money in the hotel safe first.
Those were the encounters on neutral turf. But at times I had a home game. Yes, in my own house. Totally shameless, I know. Those legs – no pun intended! – were alternated with away games. And on one occasion, the phrase ‘away game’ sums it up perfectly!
It was after beating FC Copenhagen, on 27 August 2003. We had qualified for the Champions League, so there was a reason to hit the bottle. It was party time!
I got so intoxicated on tequila that night I even forgot where I lived. So when this bird suggested spending the night at her place, it seemed like the most logical thing to do.
‘Hi, darling,’ I heard several hours later.
I turned over and got the shock of my life.
Not because she was ugly – she wasn’t at all. Call me Mr Arrogance if you want but I never pulled an ugly chick. No, it was the décor. More to the point: its colour.
Pink. Everywhere. The doors, the ceiling, the walls: literally everything had been painted pink. It was too sweet to handle! I lost it. I knew this time I’d really lost it. Where was I? I had to go! Now!
‘Maybe it’s better if you call a friend,’ my pink lady said, as she started to make coffee.
‘Why?’ I replied.
‘Cause you can’t get a cab over here, honey. It’s impossible.’
Now I was getting desperate. ‘No taxi?’ I said. ‘Where the hell am I?’
She pointed at the window. ‘Just open the curtains.’
Still glowing after a night of hot and passionate sex and wearing nothing but my Y-fronts, I opened the pink curtains – only to get the second shock of a lifetime. I expected anything and everything, but not this view! Because there, right in front of me, in all its green and white glory, was ... Celtic Park!
Hours earlier I had picked up this girl, and for the best part of the night we’d been screwing the living daylights out of each other. And all the time this Glasgow Rangers player didn’t have the slightest idea that he was having a carnal carnival on the doorstep of his biggest rival’s ground ...
I immediately closed the curtains, scared shitless that somebody would spot me.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I mumbled.
‘And I’m Celtic too,’ she said, offering me a hot beverage. ‘Just like my brothers.’
I started to sweat. Not for the first time in that room, but this time it felt a lot colder.
‘But don’t you worry, cutie,’ she whispered. ‘I won’t do you any harm.’ And she kissed me on the mouth.
My brain went into overdrive. What to do now? Going outside and waiting for a taxi wasn’t an option. The Celtic mob would lynch me. That was why I didn’t know where I was. I’d never made the mistake of entering Celtic territory before, so when last night’s girl directed the taxi with the two of us to her house, I didn’t have the slightest idea where we were. I simply didn’t recognise the area.
Well done, Rangers guy, I said to myself. You’re trapped in the heart of Celtic Land!
The only guy I could think of to pick me up was streetwise Victor Morgan. And, yes, he came, within thirty minutes. As soon as I knew he was downstairs, with the motor running, I ran out of the apartment straight into his car.
‘Outta here!’ I yelled.
Victor roared with laughter. But he did manage to get me out of there without anybody noticing.
Five months later, it was Celtic away. As the players’ coach turned up at the stadium, I saw the apartment and immediately remembered what had happened there. I pointed at the pink curtains and told a few teammates about my adventure. From that moment on they knew it, that Ricksen guy is totally mental!
All in all, it had been a close call. And I was still married to Graciela ...
Bedding a bird was a tricky thing to do anyway. Some tabloids even pay women to do it for them, after which they get all the juicy details first-hand. So, every famous footballer becomes a target, especially if he’s married. Like I was.
Too bad for them that I always sensed the proximity of these well-perfumed decoy ducks. They always seemed to be desperate, despite the fact that they were drop-dead gorgeous. Too obvious, girls!
Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to stay out of the tabloids all the time. But then, it was almost impossible not to be spotted with a delicious blonde or brunette. You didn’t even have to have sex with them – a simple photo of the two of you could be enough ‘evidence’. Sometimes those women pretended to be Rangers fans. ‘Please, Fernando, can I have my pic taken with you?’ And an hour later the photo would be at a newspaper’s desk, where reporters would knit a sensational story around it. ‘One onlooker said ...’ were the main words of choice. It was always ‘a friend of a friend’ who provided the quotes (the fake quotes, of course). But because all the nasty bits were between quotation marks, I could never sue the filthy press hounds.
It drove me nuts. For it wasn’t just once that they saw me with ‘a new girlfriend’, I was dubbed a ‘love rat’ hundreds of times! And what could I do to defend myself? Go into hiding? Now that would have been suspicious. Refuse every single request for a photo? Disrespectful to the real supporters. For reasons of ‘safety’ the papers were never obliged to name their ‘source’, so there was absolutely nothing I could do.
What I did do though was stop any kind of cooperation with those scumbags. No interviews any more – screw you! And they only had themselves to blame.
Each and every day I expected something in the papers, and, boy, did I get it one lovely day in spring 2002! I opened the paper and there she was: a girl with a familiar face. No doubt about it: she was the one I’d slept with just a few days earlier, in my own home. It was a wild tale of our adventures on and off the bed, raunchy stuff – hotter and steamier than the coffee the paper came with. And to prove she’d really stayed in my bedroom she described exactly what it looked like. No detail was spared. I couldn’t believe my eyes. An article this big about two grown-ups having sex? Was this really news?
I admit, it wasn’t a total lie. It’s true that I’d picked her up in Tiger Tiger near Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow, where me and the boys frequented the VIP area, but in all honesty, we didn’t have sex. Stop laughing – it’s the truth! She was too drunk! I’d brought her home, without having had intercourse.
Maurice Ross and Robert Malcolm would testify for me, as this time I was not going to take it. Here was a bunch of lies that I had to refute. And with success: the tabloid had to apologise. Which they did ... on page two, hidden away in a little corner, unnoticed by the masses.
In a way I could understand those girls. Had I been in their shoes – don’t even try to imagine what that looks like! – I might have done the same. In fact, I probably would have. After all, it’s an easy way to make a thousand quid, and that’s a monthly salary to a lot of people.
Still, I shouldn’t complain, I said to myself. This was one story of a girl who pretended you’d made the world’s oldest move on her. Okay, it was a bit inconvenient, but what about the 100 times you did shag a strange bird and it did not make the papers? Call yourself lucky, guy.
Yes, there have been truckloads of them. Girls, girls, girls. Everywhere – and always available, because I was young, rich and famous. They wanted me, and I couldn’t resist the temptation. Would you?
Still, I had one strict rule: never without a condom. Oh no, the idea of putting a bun into a British oven – ‘Girl Pregnant By Rich Football Player’ – well, I think you get the picture. And, man, it’s tricky at times. There are girls out there for whom pregnancy is the ultimate goal. Girls who want the child of a wealthy football player and not one of some bus driver. It’s nasty, I know, but it happens. Hence my ever-present packet of johnnies.
So, hands up, I was a love rat. I’m not trying to justify myself – that would be hypocritical – but I wasn’t the only one. Most footballers are. And you can’t blame them, in my opinion. The most gorgeous women want to meet you, and how on earth can you resist? You’d be stupid if you did! Speaking for myself, I took advantage of the situation over and over again, because of the thrill, but also because, in my opinion, you shouldn’t eat the same dish every day. Back home I had the juiciest, most tender steak I could get. It’s just that sometimes you feel like having a pizza – or a kebab.
I hereby officially declare that 90 per cent of the footballers I knew had sex with women they were not married to or otherwise engaged to. The one exception was Mark van Bommel. Loyal as a Labrador. Full-on, dedicated family guy. But the rest? Hey, ever asked yourself why footballers always have two or three phones? Not because they collect the bloody things!
I had two. Two mobiles. One for daily use, with a number known to Graciela, my friends and my family, and another one, er, that didn’t really exist. That was the one stored under the driver’s seat of my car, or in my locker at Rangers – the one that Graciela couldn’t see, as it was loaded with girls’ names and numbers, girls I could always call in case of an ‘emergency’.
In order to collect those numbers, I only had to be me, the footballer. I swear to God I found them behind the wipers of my Jeep or Ferrari – or tucked in my trouser pocket – just like that! It happened all the time. At a press conference, the opening of a shop, a photo shoot, everywhere and anywhere! Those were the moments that I thought, my God, it’s better being a footballer than a bricklayer!
It was so easy, sooo easy ... It really surprised me at times. Like one night in 2004. Once again I was out with the boys and once again we were at Tiger Tiger. We were having a ball. And, believe it or not, after a few hours of drinking and laughing, we staggered out of the club without any female company. You see, sometimes it’s good to have just a boys’ night out. There’s no need for sexy chicks all the time ...
That feeling lasted until we reached the taxi stand. There and then, we all of a sudden decided that we could do with a girl or two. So off I shuffled towards a few. No idea who they were. Never seen them before. I simply pointed my finger at them.
‘You, you and you! You’re coming with us!’
As my teammates were doing the same, within minutes we had a harem of twelve gorgeous chicks. That’s what fame does for you.
The destination? Well, as Graciela was in Holland, it had to be my place. Plenty of room to play. I just didn’t want anybody to sneak into my private bedroom on the second floor, that was all. As I was the proud owner of a brand new bath, next to the bed, I was very careful. I didn’t want anything to happen to it. In a few days’ time Graciela would return and if by then the bath was damaged, so would I be.
Apart from this restriction, we were having great adult fun with those bare-naked ladies, who were performing acts on us that you normally only see in porn movies. It felt like heaven with those...
Wait a minute. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Ten?
Didn’t we pick up twelve of them?
Oh my God!
I immediately crawled towards one of my teammates. ‘We’ve lost two!’
He didn’t know what I was talking about.
‘Look! Come count with me. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! We’re two girls down!’
After searching the corridor, the kitchen, the loo, all over the place, we still couldn’t find them.
Total panic. Until someone said, ‘Your bedroom!’
And, yes, despite the fact that I’d closed the door to the holy place, there they were.
In my new bath. Both of them, giggling.
I couldn’t get too angry. Actually it made me laugh. Maybe it was nerves.
Now, over the years I’d seen a lot – and I mean a lot! – when it came to women and sex, but what happened on this particular night, in my own penthouse overlooking the Clyde, was un-be-liev-able! Naked bodies all over the place. Wherever I looked I saw teammates shagging one – or two – of the twelve chicks we’d picked up near the taxi stand. In the hall, in the living room, in the kitchen: everywhere people were playing hide the sausage. Threesomes galore! It was one big orgy!
One teammate told me that it was the horniest thing he’d ever experienced. ‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime,’ he said. I had to agree with him. It was pure madness.
Nevertheless, I was shocked next morning when I saw the mess we’d made. Empty bottles and clothes everywhere – a G-string in my plants!
Immediately I thought about Graciela. Not that I felt guilty. It was just, well, I didn’t want her to know – and that meant I had to clean the place before she came back.
I succeeded – or so I thought. The very moment she entered the apartment, a few days later, her attention was drawn towards the white wall in the corridor.
‘What’s that?’ She pointed at a large brown stain, somewhere around knee height. It looked like a piece of modern art, but obviously it wasn’t. However, I didn’t have a clue how it came to be there. I really didn’t. Graciela didn’t believe me, which was a pity, because this time I honestly wasn’t lying!
And then, all of a sudden, I remembered my Portuguese pal, who had been standing there for what seemed like hours ...
The next morning, just before training, I asked him what the hell he had been doing in my corridor. Because of that mysterious, big brown stain. He started laughing. Then he told me how he had bonked a girl in that particular spot and how, while doing that, he had pressed her face against the wall. Off came her spray-tan make-up, thus leaving the aforementioned piece of art on my once virginal white wall.
I was in stitches.
Graciela, who must have suspected where the stain had come from, never spoke about it. Thank Christ, ’cause I wouldn’t have known what to tell her! To me, however, that brown splodge was a nice souvenir from an unforgettable night.
So, yes, it’s official: British birds on a night out are an extremely easy prey. They simply want to be caught by any successful, loaded hunter. Yet, those short-skirted, high-heeled bimbos are not the easiest of the lot. The most ready and willing women, believe it or not, are lawyers. I’ve bumped into quite a few of them at charity events and, I can tell you, those well-educated beauties in their nine to five office suits have only one thing on their mind: sex!
They crave it – and they want it fast. More than once I’ve been grabbed by the balls and pulled into the toilets by one of those bespectacled hotties. Added bonus: most of them are happily married, so no fear of revelation. All they ever want is their daily shot of sex and sensation. And most of the time they are one-offs, so they don’t even bother giving you their phone number! Well, that was fine by me.
The numbers I did have were for the times Graciela was in the Netherlands. On those occasions I got bored quite easily, so a phone bursting with girls’ names came in handy. And, you know, sometimes I just wanted to have some company over dinner. Sometimes.
Anyway, I did change my number on an almost monthly basis. Didn’t want them to bother me too much. Oh, and I never, ever sent any sleazy text messages. Way too risky – they could end up in the tabloids within hours.
I never had any regrets about cheating on my wife. I simply shouldn’t have married Graciela. Not because of her, please don’t get me wrong! When we tied the knot on 29 September 2000, at the Eastwood Register Office in Renfrewshire, I really, really loved her. I just wasn’t ready for life as a married man. I was too young and too restless. Despite the kiss that sealed our marriage, I wanted to rock and roll all night and party every day. And, above all, I wanted other women’s attention.
I couldn’t live a life without partying. So I couldn’t have felt any better than when in 2003, after winning the treble, we partied for seven days and nights in a row. Together with the frenzied fans we drank and danced in the pubs on Paisley Road until we collapsed. And when that happened I was dragged to a bed nearby. Or maybe far away. I’ve no idea where exactly. I just remember that in that particular week I didn’t see my house at all. We were champions, and it had to be celebrated Fernando-style with the two Bs: booze and birds. It was my life and I wanted to live it the way I did.
Yes, I was a full-blown egomaniac, and in my never-ending search for lust, by autumn 2003 I would hit the jackpot.