If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation.
– Vaclav Havel, Living in Truth
The writing doesn’t always stay motionless on the wall; sometimes it jumps out and slaps you on the face. I have known Peter Cappuccio all my life. We went to school together, he was my best man on the day I married Sarah, and his brother Tony is married to my sister, Mandy, which makes him as close to family as any friend can be. One Sunday afternoon, during the last days of Porterfield’s regime as manager of Chelsea, we were sitting having a drink together, when he began complaining about an ongoing problem he was having at work – which would have been fine, if it hadn’t related to an ongoing problem I was having at work.
‘Are you going to liven up?’ he enquired.
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I’m taking so much stick, defending you from the Chelsea punters at work, that it’s driving me fucking crazy!’
He knew, as soon as he said it, that I was hurt and apologized immediately. What he didn’t know was that he had also done me a favour because, while I can’t say the incident was a turning point, it was certainly a starting point. Maybe it’s the nature of the game, but we always think of ourselves as the only people in the firing line. I’d never considered Peter at work or Michael, my ten-year-old son, at school, or what it was like to be the mother or sister or wife of ‘fucking Cascarino’. And so, that summer of ’93, during a two-week holiday with Sarah and the kids in Florida, I took to the roads and ran every day and resolved to turn things round.
When I close my eyes and think of Glenn Hoddle, two images spring to mind. The first is of Hoddle the player, and that incredible goal for Spurs, when he raced with the ball to the edge of the Watford box and chipped the goalkeeper when everyone expected him to cross. The second is of Hoddle the manager, on the morning Paul Elliot arrived in our dressing room wearing an immaculate leather trenchcoat and stood there, stunned, as Hoddle the manager raced to the ‘cover’ of a bin in the corner and started shooting him with imaginary bullets – ‘Pshhhh’, Pshhhh’ – like a five-year-old with a cowboy pistol set. What Paul didn’t realize was that Glenn was trying to be funny, and when Glenn tried to be funny it was time to pass round the laughing gas because he was probably the unfunniest man I have ever known. He was also completely besotted with himself.
On one of his first sessions in charge of Chelsea, he gathered us around one morning at the training ground and explained a new drill that would sharpen our skills. Ten players were to spread out and form a circle around a player in the middle. Taking the ball, a player from one half of the circle was to chip to the man in the middle, who had to control and then volley the ball to a nominated player on the opposite side, without letting it touch the ground. One by one, we awaited our call to the middle, and one by one, our technical deficiencies were exposed. When it was my turn, I was all over the place and was instantly dismissed by the manager. ‘Look,’ he groaned, ‘if you can’t do that, you’ve got no chance.’ And then, putting himself on the spot, Glenn gave an exhibition of how it was done. Later, a five-a-side was organized and again, to no great surprise, Glenn was the star of the show. At the age of thirty-six, he left us in no doubt at all that he was still a class act; but while we were all genuinely impressed, no player likes to be belittled by his manager and we returned to the dressing room feeling pretty pissed off. ‘That fucker is unbelievable!’ one of the wags opined. ‘If he was an ice cream he would lick himself!’
Hoddle didn’t fancy me. He never actually called me into his office and said, ‘Look son, I don’t fancy you,’ but I was never going to be his type of player, and I was aware as soon as he took the job that he was looking for a replacement. But, ball juggling deficiencies apart, pre-season training went better than I could ever have imagined. The overtime I put in during my holidays had made a huge difference and I regularly led the line and was one of the fittest in the squad. A week before the season began, I scored a hat trick against Spurs in the final of the Makita Tournament and walked off the pitch at White Hart Lane with the supporters chanting my name. In almost two years at the club that hadn’t happened before: I was our best player by a streak. Now Glenn, being Glenn, probably thought: I have saved this player. He has seen the error of his ways. It’s all down to me. But I knew differently.
A week later, when the serious stuff began, I was unlucky not to score with a volley that crashed off the bar, in a 2–1 defeat at home to Blackburn. I played well in our second game, a 1–1 draw at Wimbledon, but didn’t get a kick when we were beaten at Ipswich; and the pressure was starting to build, by the fourth game of the season, when we played QPR at home. With just one point from three games, Hoddle needed a win to quell the rumblings of discontent; and with no goals from three games, the amnesty awarded to me at the Makita was also up for review. But cometh the hour, cometh the man reborn, and I sent them all home singing with a sweet left foot that secured our 2–0 win. In the next game, a 1–1 draw at home to Sheffield Wednesday, the renaissance continued with my best performance of the season and I woke up on Sunday morning, feeling better about myself than I had for years.
In the afternoon, Steve Wishart, my former manager at Crockenhill, invited us over for a barbecue and life was good as we sat down with a couple of drinks to shoot the breeze. I should, I suppose, have known better than to have been drawn into a match on his tennis course, but it was only a bit of fun; my opponent, Mike McLean, was a professional golfer, and how much damage could two professional athletes inflict on each other in an amiable joust? But midway through the opening set, I felt a dart of pain in my hamstring and slowly, horribly, my season began to unravel.
Three days later, I scored after fifteen minutes when we played Tottenham in our biggest game of the season. I had been carrying my leg in training in the hope that the injury would simply disappear, but before half time it was obvious I was struggling. Hoddle asked me to stay on for as long as possible as I was winning a lot of ball and still causing problems for the Spurs defence, and I managed to hold out until the final ten minutes, when I limped off the field to a great ovation. Hoddle seemed pleased with my performance after the game; with ten days to kill before the visit of Manchester United, there was every chance my injury would heal. But three days before the United game, Ireland were playing Lithuania in Dublin in a World Cup qualifier and though my first loyalty should have been to the club, I couldn’t bear the thought of withdrawing from Jack’s squad. Hoddle wasn’t sure and insisted on a fitness test.
‘Do you think you’ll be OK?’ he asked, when I came through unscathed.
‘I’m sure I will,’ I replied.
But despite continuous treatment, the injury continued to niggle me for the next three days.
On the Wednesday, I came off the bench to replace Niall Quinn with fifteen minutes to go in the 2–0 defeat of Lithuania, then caught the first flight back to London for training on Thursday morning.
Hoddle watched me more closely than was usual.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, suspiciously, when it was obvious I wasn’t.
‘Bloody hammy is still at me a bit,’ I replied.
He wasn’t pleased.
On the Saturday, we beat United 1–0, but there was no great joy in the result for me, as I was forced to limp off at half-time. Hoddle cut me in two with a glance and to be fair, there wasn’t a lot I could say in defence. Travelling to Dublin had clearly been a mistake; I had taken a chance and acted unprofessionally; I had clearly stepped offside. And when you stepped offside with Glenn, there was nothing to do but accept your fate and hope that you returned in the next life as talented and as perfect as him . . .
Jack Charlton was also feeling the heat. A month after the win against Lithuania had established us as favourites to top the qualifying group, we had been taken apart by Spain in Dublin and were suddenly faced with the onerous task of having to play Northern Ireland in Belfast, needing a result. Playing at Windsor Park is never a pleasant experience at the best of times, but to have played there in November ’93 was definitely the worst of times. A week before the game, seventeen people had been massacred in a bombing and a shooting; tension between the communities had rarely been as high. From the moment we stepped off the coach, we knew we were in for one long and difficult night. And so it proved . . .
To be sure of qualifying for our second successive World Cup, we needed to beat Northern Ireland, unless the game in Seville between Spain and Denmark ended in a win for either side, when a draw would suffice. Niall Quinn was selected to start up front, as he had for most of the campaign, while I watched the drama unfold from the bench, as I had for most of the campaign. Jack was popping and hissing like a pressure cooker from the moment the game kicked off. We started cautiously but began to improve in the second half, when word came through after sixty-three minutes that Spain had gone one up. The game was balanced on a knife edge. We were taking control but weren’t creating chances, and with every second that passed, Jack was becoming more and more irate. For some reason, perhaps because he was closest to us on the wing, Ray Houghton was taking most of his stick. ‘Look at him!’ Jack exploded again. ‘Look at fucking Raymond!’ So I did look at him, but he seemed to be doing all right by me. A few minutes later, however, Ray made a mistake and lost possession. Jack lost it completely: ‘Off!’ he said, turning to me on the bench. ‘Get him fucking off.’ I was stunned. Was he serious? Did he really want me to run to the touchline with a board for Ray?
In the seventy-third minute, disaster struck, when Jimmy Quinn rifled a volley past Packie Bonner, to put the North 1–0 in front, against the run of play. The ground absolutely erupted. Jack spun around in disgust and immediately ordered me to get stripped. It was a cold, blustery night and experience had taught me to wrap up well on the bench. Pumping with adrenaline, I ripped off my coat, kicked off my tracksuit bottoms and unzipped my top, and discovered that all I was wearing underneath was a plain cotton T-shirt. For the first, and only, time in my career, I had left my jersey on its peg in the dressing room! Oh fuck! What am I going to do?
Jack was getting impatient and kept glancing over his shoulder. ‘Come on! What’s keeping you?’ Until the penny finally dropped that there was something amiss. ‘Where’s your bloody shirt?’
‘I don’t know, Jack,’ I spluttered. ‘I think I’ve left it in the dressing room.’
His face turned purple. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. ‘You fucccccking idiot!’
Charlie O’Leary, our kit man, was immediately despatched to the dressing room, but as he raced down the touchline, I couldn’t help thinking, What if the dressing room is locked? What if the geezer who has the key is enjoying the game from the stands? Deciding I would retrieve the situation myself, I turned to Dave Kelly, who was also on the bench.
‘Dave,’ I said, panicking, ‘just give me yours.’
‘What? Do you mean swap?’
‘Yeah, just give me yours.’
Jack flipped. ‘Whaaat! You can’t do that! You’ll have us thrown out of the tournament, you fucking idiot! Charlie . . . where’s Charlie?’
I have always believed that had Alan McLoughlin not equalized with a volley from the edge of the box as we were waiting for Charlie to return, there’s a fair chance Jack would have chinned me, or at least changed his mind about sending me on. But Alan’s goal was enough to secure the draw, and with Spain winning 1–0 in Seville, an extremely tense and difficult evening ended in celebration.
Ten days later, Niall snapped his cruciate ligament playing for Manchester City and was ruled out for the rest of the season and for the World Cup. It was a devastating blow and I genuinely felt for him, but in football, one man’s poison is often another man’s meat and after four years of playing second fiddle for Ireland, I was relishing the prospect of reclaiming my old position. But within days, I was sidelined with problems of my own.
If relations with Hoddle had started to cool following my hamstring injury in September, they were positively freezing by the time December came. It was a vicious circle: in order to impress Glenn, I had to get into his team. In order to get into his team, I had to play well. In order to play well, I needed to be sharp. In order to be sharp, I had to be fit. In order to be fit, I needed to train hard. In order to train hard, I needed the cartilage in my knee to function normally. And because it had long stopped functioning normally, and was acting like a pumice stone instead of a pillow, my knee was ballooning every time I played. The problems started in late September, a week after I’d shaken the hamstring injury and returned for the game against Liverpool. Desperate to stay in the team, I started ‘cheating’ in training and nursing it through sessions, with the result that my fitness dropped and – well, you get the picture. By December, Hoddle had given up on me, the supporters had forgotten me and my career had returned to the awful state of limbo of the season before.
A week before Christmas out at the training ground, I was jumping for a ball thrown to me by Nigel Spackman, when I felt a snap in my knee and collapsed in a crumpled heap. The pain was excruciating. My knee was locked at ninety degrees. Nigel immediately came to my aid and, in the time-honoured tradition of defying the bleeding obvious, asked if I was OK.
‘My knee’s fucked,’ I moaned. ‘Get Wardy, quick.’
Bob Ward, the team physio, arrived and I was carried back to the dressing room for a preliminary examination. The lateral meniscus – a specialized piece of cartilage, shaped like a quarter-pipe, that sits on top of the leg and cushions it against the thigh – had pulled away and wedged itself like a door stopper between the bones. ‘I’m afraid you’re looking at an operation,’ Bob announced. And after he applied more ice, I was lifted to his car and driven to Charing Cross Hospital in West London.
After the briefest of delays, I was examined by a kindly surgeon, who explained the urgency of straightening the knee before proceeding further. To facilitate the process, a mask was placed over my mouth and nose and I was invited to take a few deep breaths of nitrous oxide, to numb the pain and relax the muscles in spasm around the knee. Nitrous oxide, or laughing gas as it is more commonly known, has also been known to act as a quasi truth serum. Within seconds of sucking in a breath, I was delirious.
Bob moved round opposite the surgeon and put his hand on my leg. He was telling me to cover my eyes. He was telling me I wouldn’t feel a thing. I brought my hands up to my face but started peeping through my fingers. Did they think I was born yesterday? They weren’t fooling me.
‘I see Wardy,’ I laughed, giddily. ‘I know exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to jump on my leg, aren’t you? You’re going to force the fucker down.’
Bob smiled and told me to shut up.
‘Look, what’s the point?’ I continued. ‘We all know I’m a disaster for Chelsea. I have to be the worst fucking player ever to wear the Chelsea shirt.’
They started laughing.
‘I mean, just look at me. Look at the fucking state of me. Do I look like a professional athlete? If the supporters could see me now, they’d be laughing their bollocks off. Wouldn’t they, Bob? You’ve heard them. Admit it! They’d be saying: “I hope he doesn’t ever play for us again.” They’d be saying: “Don’t you worry about getting that knee straight, doc! What you really need to do is chop the fucker off!”’
They stepped back for a moment, unable to continue. Bob had tears in his eyes. The surgeon was looking at me: ‘He’s a lunatic, this fellow.’ When eventually they managed to straighten the knee, it was strapped into a brace and I was sent for an X-ray. Three days later, there was good news and bad news when they opened me up at a private clinic in London. The good news was that the operation was a success. The bad news was that the rehabilitation would take at least three months.
I started having a recurring dream, a dream I had never had before: a dream about love. I kept dreaming I had met a woman and fallen head-over-heels in love. Don’t ask me her name or the colour of her hair or what being head-over-heels in love was like. She didn’t have a name. She wasn’t anyone I knew or had ever met. It was all very vague, but all very real. I’d wake up in the morning, knowing I’d spent the night with her, and look forward to dreaming of her again.
Sarah and I had been struggling for a while. The move to Glasgow had proved as big a disaster off the field as on it and though we weren’t arguing as frequently since returning to London, things hadn’t really improved. Teddy had been born and there were times when we were OK but the underlying problems weren’t going to change. I didn’t love Sarah. I didn’t enjoy being in her company. I was constantly looking for ways to escape – to training in the morning, to the card school in the afternoon, to Mac or Wish or whichever of my friends was available in the evening, and now, at night, to the woman in my dreams.
One night, during the period when I was injured, I came home late from a game of cards to discover a fire engine outside the house and Teddy’s bedroom burnt out. I ran inside and found Sarah sitting with the kids, safe and well apart from a touch of smoke inhalation.
The incident shook the life out of me and after a night spent tossing and turning, I decided I would have to change. Somewhere along the road, Sarah and I had stopped loving each other, but that didn’t make us different from most married couples. And it didn’t mean I had to be a stranger to my sons. I would try to be a better father and spend more time at home. I would stop seeing the woman in my dreams. Love was far too complicated and obscure. You could always put a face on lust.
You always know you’re in trouble at a club when the manager calls you in during the week of the transfer deadline in March and offers you a choice of where you’d like to be sent on loan. There were no shortage of suitors. The giants of the second division were all queuing up: Birmingham City, Charlton Athletic, Tranmere Rovers – the choice was mine. Or almost mine. Hoddle seemed particularly keen on Birmingham. The transfer deadline was his last chance to get me out of the door before my contract expired, and the Birmingham offer seemed to represent the best deal for the club.
‘I don’t want to go to Birmingham,’ I told him.
‘Well, you’re not going to play for me,’ he insisted.
‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘but I’m not going to Birmingham.’
Now it’s possible the move to Birmingham would have been the best of my career. It was certainly a better option than spending the last two months of the season with the reserves. But I didn’t want to go down a division, and I didn’t want to leave London, and I still believed I could get back into the Chelsea team.
On 2 April, after I had spent almost four months in the shade, my gamble paid off when I returned to the first team as a sub in the 2–0 defeat of Southampton at Stamford Bridge; with Mark Stein injured, and Robert Fleck out of form, Hoddle had been forced to offer me a recall. Two days later, I held my place for the away game at Newcastle and then the following weekend laid on both goals for Gavin Peacock in the semi-final of the FA Cup at Wembley, when we beat Luton 2–0.
I was thrilled to be back in the spotlight and my form continued to improve. At the end of the month, I scored in our 2–2 draw against Manchester City at Maine Road, and again four days later, when we beat Coventry at home. Our final league game of the season was a home game against Sheffield United. A week later, we would travel to Wembley to play Manchester United in the final of the FA Cup. On the day before the Sheffield game, I was informed by Hoddle that as Mark Stein was fit again, I would start both games on the bench. I was crushed, and argued that Mark wasn’t fit, having just returned after being out for six weeks. But Hoddle was adamant he was making the right call, and when Stein scored twice on his return the following day, his decision was vindicated.
A few days later, I was sitting in the dressing room with Gavin Peacock when I made a prediction about the final.
‘Hoddle is going to name himself as a sub.’
‘Do you think so?’ Gavin replied. ‘He wasn’t on the bench on Saturday. He hasn’t played for a while.’
‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘And if we’re losing, he’ll put himself on.’
‘Naah, if we’re losing, he has to put you on.’
‘No, logic has nothing to do with it – you know what he’s like. He’s so full of himself he’ll think, I can change it. I’ll give you any odds you want.’
When the final came around my nap, unfortunately, proved correct. At 2–0 down, Hoddle decided to send himself on and it wasn’t until after we’d gone 3–0 down, with eight minutes to go, that I was finally given the nod. At a reception the following day, he informed me that although he’d had second thoughts, following my performances at the end of the season, he had been forced to make a choice between myself and Nigel Spackman and wouldn’t be offering me another contract. And that was it. A day after playing in the FA Cup final, I was suddenly out of a job. But all wasn’t lost. I would put myself in the shop window at the World Cup finals and prove him wrong.
On the first Monday of June, the Irish team left Dublin in a blaze of glory for a training camp in Orlando, USA, to acclimatize for two weeks before the competition began. The weather was surprisingly poor for the first few days and our training was frequently disrupted by thunder and lightning storms. On the second or third afternoon, we were forced indoors to the gym again, when, while using a Stairmaster machine I felt my calf muscle suddenly tighten. I shrugged it off and hoped it would go away, but the following morning, when I joined the lads for the warm-up, it was as if someone had plunged a knife into my leg and within ten minutes I could hardly walk. Of the many setbacks I’d had in my career, this was undoubtedly the cruellest. I knew, pretty much immediately, that there was no way I was going to recover in time for any of our group games. And if we didn’t qualify from the group, I’d be flying home from the World Cup without having kicked a ball. ‘No,’ I thought, ‘not now. I can’t afford to be injured. I’m out of a fucking job.’
The next three weeks were as depressing as I’ve known. When I wasn’t arguing with Sarah, I was negotiating a truce in the war that had broken out between our respective families who, to be fair, had never seen eye to eye. The uncertainty over my contract was also adding to my woes. Every day I’d return from the treatment table to a fax from some third division manager, wondering if I’d give him a call. Was there no fucking end to humiliation? I used to be a million-pound player! Had it really come to this? And then, just when I was sure I had touched rock bottom, I returned one afternoon to find a message from Mike Walker, who was managing Everton at the time. I hurried back to the room and dialled the number immediately.
‘Hello, Mike. It’s Tony Cascarino.’
‘Tony! Thanks for getting back to me, mate.’
‘No problem, Mike. Thanks for the call.’
‘Listen, I’m not sure what your situation is but we’re really interested and would like you to come. We want to give it a real go this year. We’ve got Forest up the road who . . .’
As soon as he mentioned Forest, I realized that the manager I was speaking to wasn’t Mike Walker from Everton but Mick Walker from Notts County. And though I tried my hardest to be polite when letting him down, I’m sure he thought I was a right prat. Blackpool called and announced they were interested. John Sheridan thought it a great move, when it was mentioned over dinner. ‘Blackpool! That would be interesting, Cass. They’ve got a great Big Dipper, ye know!’ I tried to laugh along but it was hard. I was fucked. There was no way back. And then, Denis Roach – who, ironically enough, was Glenn Hoddle’s agent – called with the news that Olympique Marseilles, the 1993 European Champions, wanted to sign me.
‘Sure, Denis,’ I said. ‘Pull the other one. No, let me guess, you are pulling the other one. What you really mean is Olympic Marsay from the Southern fucking league.’
‘No, listen,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard about the sanctions they’ve been given as a result of the bribery scandal? Well, they’ve just been relegated to the second division, and because they’re not allowed to buy any players, they’re looking for internationals who are available on a free [transfer]. Are you interested?’
‘Yeah, Denis, of course I am.’
‘OK, I’ll get back to you.’
A week after we had returned to England, Denis gave me instructions to phone Bernard Tapie, Marseilles’s colourful and controversial president, at his home in Paris. The deal, he insisted, was basically done: ‘Just phone him at this number and tell him you are “happy to play for his club”.’
I dialled the number tentatively.
‘H-e-l-l-o? M-o-n-s-i-e-u-r T-a-p-i-e?’
‘Oui.’
‘I-t-’-s T-o-n-y C-a-s-c-a-r-i-n-o.’
‘Ah oui, Cascarino, yes, Marseilles, you must come.’
‘Yes . . . er . . . I a-m h-a-p-p-y t-o p-l-a-y f-o-r y-o-u-r c-l-u-b.’
‘OK, come tomorrow.’
‘OK, er . . .’
But he had already hung up.